Cup of Excellence Indonesia · 2021–2026
Since 2021, 94 Indonesian coffees have won a place in the Cup of Excellence. A few scored above 90. Most landed around 87 or 88.
What did the top ones have in common? We looked at everything the results tell us.
Each dot is one winning coffee. 94 of them, from 4 competitions.
The further right, the higher the jury scored it.
Every year brings a new jury and new coffees, so scores shift a little from year to year.
To compare fairly, we line every coffee up against its own year. The dotted line is the middle of that year.
Natural coffees win most often: 52 of the 94.
But every process has coffees near the top and near the bottom. The white lines show each group's average. They hardly move.
What about the new fermentation methods? Anaerobic, carbonic maceration, added yeast: 24 winners used one.
They scored the same as the classic coffees.
Most winners come from Aceh and West Java. But once a coffee is in the final, its region doesn't lift its score.
Only Jambi stands out, a little lower than the rest.
Is Jambi really different? Probably not.
We made 17 comparisons. When you look that many times, one usually stands out by luck alone. With only 9 coffees, Jambi's gap is too small to trust.
Ateng grows across Aceh and is behind almost half the winners. Sigararutang, S-795 and Typica make up most of the rest.
The picture repeats: wide spread, averages close to the middle.
Higher farms are said to make sweeter coffee. Here are the 47 winners whose altitude we know.
The line is flat. A coffee from 1,200 m does as well as one from 1,700 m.
From smallholders with less than half a hectare to estates of fifty and more.
Flat again. Size doesn't predict the score.
Maybe the data is just too noisy to show anything? Here are the same coffees, score against auction price.
Now the dots climb. Buyers pay more for higher scores. When a link exists, you can see it.
Every comparison on one chart. Each dot is a group's difference from the middle. Each line shows how sure we can be.
Lines that cross zero mean no clear difference. Almost all of them do. Only price stands far apart.
Not the process. Not the region. Not the variety, the altitude or the size of the farm. Among Indonesia's top coffees, none of these told us which one would come first.
An origin is not a flavour. Aceh doesn't taste one way. Neither does Java, or Bali. The same hillside can give a cup that sings and a cup that stays quiet.
The difference is in the hands. The picker who waits one more day for the cherry to ripen. The processor who turns the drying beds before the rain. The farmer who tastes, changes one thing, and tries again next season.
That is why we look past the map, to the people on it.
What this covers. The 94 coffees that placed in the Cup of Excellence Indonesia in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2026. A lot split into two places counts once. National Winners, the coffees just below the cut, are not included. Because every coffee here is already a finalist, this says nothing about what gets a coffee into the final.
How. Each coffee is compared with the middle score of its own year. For each group we measured the average gap from the rest of its year, how sure that gap is, and whether it could be luck, then corrected for having made 17 comparisons. Auction prices cover 2021, 2022, 2023; the 2026 auction is on 1 December 2026.
Sources. Alliance for Coffee Excellence results and auction pages. Altitude and farm size from the farm directory, where published.
| Group | Coffees | Gap vs its year | Likely range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process: New ferments | 24 | −0.08 | −0.64 – +0.57 |
| Process: Natural | 52 | +0.24 | −0.16 – +0.63 |
| Process: Honey | 21 | −0.01 | −0.51 – +0.50 |
| Process: Washed | 15 | −0.40 | −0.81 – +0.07 |
| Process: Wet-hulled | 6 | −0.16 | −0.90 – +0.78 |
| Region: Aceh | 38 | +0.15 | −0.29 – +0.59 |
| Region: West Java | 27 | +0.10 | −0.33 – +0.54 |
| Region: South Sulawesi | 6 | +0.46 | −0.11 – +1.05 |
| Region: Jambi | 9 | −0.76 | −1.18 – −0.32 |
| Region: East Java | 6 | +0.34 | −0.65 – +1.64 |
| Region: Bali | 5 | −0.64 | −1.22 – −0.22 |
| Variety: Ateng | 44 | +0.02 | −0.41 – +0.41 |
| Variety: Sigararutang | 17 | −0.20 | −0.67 – +0.33 |
| Variety: Typica | 10 | −0.20 | −0.64 – +0.26 |
| Variety: S-795 | 13 | +0.22 | −0.36 – +0.75 |
| Link: Altitude | 47 | r −0.02 | −0.31 – +0.27 |
| Link: Farm size | 42 | r 0.00 | −0.30 – +0.30 |
| Link: Auction price | 70 | r +0.66 | +0.50 – +0.77 |