Java is where the Dutch first cultivated and exported coffee. Its arabica today is centred on the Ijen Plateau estates in the east.
Java is where the Dutch East India Company began cultivating and exporting coffee: the first exports reached Europe from Java in 1711, reaching 2,000 pounds shipped in 1717. West Java was the region of the earliest plantations. A rust plague in the late 1880s killed much of the plantation stock in the Sukabumi area before spreading to Central Java and parts of East Java, and the Dutch replaced arabica first with Liberica and later with Robusta.
Today Java's old colonial-era plantations provide only a fraction of the coffee grown on the island, but they produce primarily arabica, centred on the Ijen Plateau in the east at more than 1,400 m. Dutch plantations on Java were nationalised in the 1950s and are now managed as state-owned plantations under PTPN. The estate coffee is prized as one component of the traditional "Mocha Java" blend.
Field notes
- i
Some estates age part of their coffee for up to five years, and the aged beans, called Old Government, Old Brown or Old Java, can show cedar or spice flavours with a thick, almost syrupy body.
- ii
The Java programming language was named after Java coffee.
- iii
A seedling sent from Java to the Amsterdam Botanical Garden in 1706 is credited as the ancestor of much of the arabica grown across Brazil, the Caribbean and Latin America.
In the cup, according to guides
- BodyMoreIjen estate coffees are described as having good, heavy body and a sweet overall impression.
Processing
Elsewhere in Indonesia
Sources · 3 Every sentence here was checked against a source we read. Taste notes are what guides describe, not promises about your bag. Last revised 2026-11-10.
- Java coffee — Wikipedia · Wikipedia
- Coffee production indonesia — Wikipedia · Wikipedia
- Java Malabar Coffee: West Java's Original Volcano Arabica · Indonesia Specialty Coffee (specialtycoffee.id)