Ruteng is home to Tuang Coffee, a forerunner of specialty coffee production and ethical sourcing on Flores. Tuang was founded by Andre Hamboer, who grew up there surrounded by his father’s extended family in Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta. Deciding that the life of a corporate lawyer in Singapore wasn’t for him, Andre established Tuang in 2014 with a vision to elevate Manggarai coffee in ways that deliver higher incomes for coffee farmers.

The dominant variety in the region is Kartika, a portmanteau of Kopi Arabika Tipe Katai, which is a localized version of Catuai. Other varieties are present in smaller volumes throughout the area, including Yellow Bourbon and Juria, an old typica variety that was planted in an earlier era of coffee production in Flores, with a few hearty trees remaining.

The coffee plants on the farm are primarily surrounded by yum yum trees, taro, and banana trees.

  Tuang’s anaerobic washed coffee starts with selective picking of ripe red cherry by smallholder farmers, which they then deliver to a collection point where additional sorting is performed. The collector then brings the cherry to Tuang’s mill in Ruteng, where ripeness is checked and then loaded into water tanks that have been repurposed for fermentation. The tank is sealed and the coffee is left to ferment for up to 10 days. As the fruit breaks down a liquid is produced, which is pulled from the tank and its pH tested. When the liquid reaches a pH of 3.8 the coffee is removed from the tanks  and fully washed before being spread on raised beds for drying down to 11 percent moisture content over the course of 2-4 weeks, at which point it is moved to the warehouse for storage. Lots are maintained separately by village and date received throughout the process to maintain the highest levels of quality control.

Tuang’s coffee comes from more than 1000 smallholder farms at elevations of 1400-1700m in thirteen villages in the districts of Manggarai and East Manggarai. They’ve worked closely with their village-based collectors to develop a steady supply of meticulously picked and sorted red coffee cherry, which they then process in Ruteng. They work with their collectors to set the price to be received by farmers and then pay the collectors a separate fee — a departure from the standard practice of paying collectors a set rate and lacking knowledge of the price farmers receive.

Tuang partners with local farmers in Manggarai Region, Flores Island, Indonesia, providing processing infrastructure for the farmers so they do not have to care about their cost in processing their coffee. The farmers have a mind-set that coffee is a simple commodity product that tastes bitter, but Tuang Coffee wants to change that thinking into coffee being a complex product that does not taste bitter at all, because it’s a fruit.