Today’s post covers the best Sumatra coffees. I’ve include a variety of different products – whole bean Sumatra coffee, ground Sumatra coffee, and even convenience items like Sumatran pods and K-cups.
The best Sumatra coffee is earthy and rich, with a natural creaminess. All that turned-earth richness acts as a base for the high touches of chocolate and even mushroom. Traditional processing methods result in a low-acid bean that has world-class mouthfeel and body for days.
Here’s the standard read on Sumatra beans – the coffee should be full-bodied, rich in flavor, and low in acid. Typically, coffee roasters match that with a relatively dark roast, though you can find coffees treated with other roasts (and even processed using different methods) in the market.
Starbucks is a major buyer in the Sumatran coffee marketplace. They use it as a base for their various espresso blends. They also sell some single-origin Sumatran coffees, but I don’t like them very much.
If you want to try awesome Sumatran coffees in a real coffeehouse setting, check out my post on the best coffee shop in every US state.
Here are the ten best Sumatra coffees you can buy right now:
1 – Best Dark Roast Sumatra Coffee – Cooper’s Cask Sumatra Organic Dark Roast
Here’s the thing – most Sumatra coffees come with a dark roast. That’s not to say nobody puts a light or medium roast on Sumatran beans. But, for the most part, roasters honor the natural characteristics of Sumatra coffee beans with a decidedly darker toasting.
Picking just one great dark roast Sumatra was tough. I decided to go with a coffee that’s not only roast just this side of burnt, but it also goes out of its way to highlight what’s great about coffee from this region.
Cooper’s Cask Sumatra Organic Dark Roast is my pick. It’s made from Grade 1 wet-processed sun-dried beans. The roast is midnight black, which helps bring out the undertones of dark cocoa, dark stone fruit, and even a little raw tobacco.
2 – Best Ground Sumatra Coffee – AmazonFresh Sumatra Ground Coffee, Dark Roast
I picked Amazon’s brand of ground Sumatra coffee because it’s the one ground Sumatran product I’ve bought this year that didn’t let me down. I’m naturally against buying ground coffee. I just don’t think the coffee ever tastes as fresh and clean as it will when I grind it just before brewing.
That said, sometimes you need a convenient cup of coffee. I don’t always have time for grinding and preparation of whole beans. So, if I’m going to try and enjoy a rich low-acid cup of Sumatran coffee before work or whatever, I sometimes have to grab a ground product.
The dark roast AmazonFresh puts on these beans is lighter than most other dark roasts I’ve tried. In fact, I’d say it’s just this side of a medium roast. That leaves behind a mysterious smoky chocolate profile that’s more than a little addictive.
3 – Best Whole Bean Sumatra Coffee – Bean & Bean Indonesia Sumatra
I’m a whole bean coffee fanatic, so this category is close to my heart. I picked Bean & Bean’s Indonesia Sumatra for myriad reasons. They’re fair trade – that’s cool. The beans are wet-hulled (as they should be IMO) – so that’s also great. But even if those things weren’t true, I’d still love it.
Bean & Bean’s Indonesia Sumatra consistently produces the perfect cup of Sumatra coffee. Notice that it’s a medium roast. It lends a longer finish and more structure to the body of the coffee. Of course, you’ve got the standard notes of turned earth, mushroom, and chocolate, but there’s also a tang of sweet cherry at the top of the palate that’ll surprise you.
Buy Bean & Bean for the recyclable packaging if you must, but to me, it’s all about the roast and the flavor. If you want to taste Sumatran coffee at its’ best, you have to buy Bean & Bean’s version. Brew it in a French press to really appreciate the profile of a Sumatran bean in a medium roast.
4 –Coffee Bean Direct’s Dark Sumatra Mandheling Is Also Awesome
I had to list a runner-up in the whole bean Sumatra category to honor what Coffee Bean Direct is doing with their Dark Sumatra Mandheling. Even though I despise the “Mandheling” name (it doesn’t really refer to anything and is just a marketing name), I love the lighter-than-usual roast here.
Okay, so I’ll admit it – the relatively price (about $0.75/ounce as I type this up) doesn’t hurt either. At around $0.40 per cup, its one of the best values in single-origin coffees that I found this year.
All the typical Sumatra aromas and flavors are here. I also notice a distinct blast of baking spices on the finish, which I attribute to the medium-to-dark roast.
5 – Best Decaf Sumatra Coffee – Volcanica Sumatra Mandheling Decaf
Volcanica Sumatra Mandheling Decaf isn’t cheap. Any time you read the description of a coffee and it says things like “Swiss Water processed” and “rainforest certified,” you can pretty much feel your wallet getting lighter. And, indeed, the $1.62/ounce price I’m looking at as I type this is pretty steep.
But, and this is important, the decaf Sumatra coffee you get for that price is totally worth it. I’m not necessarily a guy who likes to spend extra on a brand name or fancy process. This coffee proves me wrong.
When you drink Volcanica’s Sumatra Mandheling, you won’t notice that you’re drinking a decaf coffee. Between the perfect medium roast and the Swiss Water processing, this is a decaf product that doesn’t strip away any flavor. All of the characteristics of a medium roast Sumatran are here, but something like 99% of the caffeine has been stripped away.
6 – Best Sumatra K-Cup Pods – Green Mountain Sumatra Reserve
Picking Green Mountains Sumatra Reserve K-Cup Pods for this category was easy. Mellow and low-acid coffees just don’t translate well to convenience formats. That’s why, when I find a convenience coffee product that’s even a halfway-decent representation of what it’s meant to be, I latch onto it.
I’ll keep it simple – Green Mountain’s medium-to-dark roast comes through perfectly in these fresh little bombs of woody, earthy, herby Sumatran beans. While the experience of drinking it is nothing compared to a fresh-ground French Press Sumatran coffee, it comes pretty close.
By the way – if coffee gives you heartburn, you should try Sumatran. It has a naturally low acidity that the best coffee producers recognize and honor in their roast and presentation.
7 – Best Recyclable Sumatra K-Cup Pods – EKOCUPS Organic Sumatra Coffee Pods
I picked this product because I know a lot of people are turning against K-Cups. They do seem to have a bad environmental impact. EKOCUPS Organic Sumatra is a close second to Green Mountain in terms of taste. More importantly, their cups are totally recyclable.
Toss these cups in your recycling bin when you’re done and avoid filling up your local landfills. It’s that easy. Maybe we should all be doing this.
The roast here is bold and dark. It’s not necessarily my favorite way to drink Sumatran, but I do appreciate the richness that comes from this coffee’s near-midnight roast.
8 – Best Light Roast Sumatra Coffee – Allegro Coffee Sumatra Lake Toba
Allegro’s Coffee Sumatra Lake Toba is delicious. It was hard for me not to name this as my overall favorite Sumatran coffee. It’s in the running for my “Best Coffee of …” post I’m working on.
This coffee is so good it made me rethink how I drink Sumatran coffees altogether. So, why didn’t I name it best overall?
Because I’m a coward. This is a decidedly light roast on a Sumatran bean. Most coffee people, even other coffee snobs, would probably turn their nose at it. Why put such a light roast on such a mellow and low-acid coffee? Won’t it be terribly weak?
Light roast Sumatra coffee brews like a strong tea. The characteristics change. Gone is chocolate, replaced with a heavy tannin like a red wine. Herbal notes and baking spices pop out. There’s even a heavy hint of grapefruit on the mysteriously long finish.
It doesn’t hurt that you’re supporting an indigenous community when you buy this product. The beans used here come from Linton Nihuta, a coffee collective in the far north of Sumatra. Their native process leaves us with a coffee that has tea-like herbal notes. By buying the coffee, we’re supporting one of the last true indigenous coffee practices in this part of the world.
9 – Best Affordable Sumatra Coffee – FRC Dark Sumatra Pre-Ground Packs
Bold of me to put an institutional coffee product on this list, isn’t it? Yes – just as bold as you’d have to be to slip this exotic coffee into the pot at your next PTA meeting.
FRC’s Dark Sumatra Pre-Ground Packs are designed for use in institutional settings, meetings, and other public gathering places. They include a filter, for God’s sake. It’s a ready-to-go coffee you can dash into the communal coffee pot at your next get-together.
This blend is bold. It’s rich with all the right Sumatran flavors and producing that characteristic herbal Sumatran aroma.
FRC’s Dark Sumatra Pre-Ground Packs are also affordable. At $0.55 an ounce as I type this, each cup comes out to about $0.25. However, when you factor in the savings from not having to buy filters, I bet the per-cup cost is more like $0.20.
10 – Best Overall Sumatra Coffee – Boulder County Coffee Company Sumatran
Boulder County’s Sumatra whole bean coffee sits at the perfect intersection of price and flavor. At the time of this review, you can pick up bags at around $1.60 an ounce. That means each cup of perfect Sumatran deliciousness is about $0.80.
Go find a cup of coffee at Starbucks or McDonald’s that’s anywhere near this satisfying – I dare you. If you’re looking for gourmet-grade single-origin Sumatran coffee that doesn’t cost more than a buck per cup, this is the one.
I’ve had few Sumatra coffees better than this one. They were all a lot more expensive. I really appreciate the Vienna roast, dark enough to highlight the deep chocolate notes in the beans, but light enough to maintain some mouthfeel.
Conclusion
There you have it. My list of the ten best Sumatra coffees you can buy right now.
If you want to dig deeper for awesome exotic coffees, check out one of the blogs on our list of the best 50 coffee blogs.
Do you think I missed a great Sumatran coffee? These coffees are among my favorites of all the single-origins I’ve ever tried. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of Sumatran coffee.
So, I’d love to hear what you guys have to think. Drop a comment and let’s get talking.