📷 A Starling (mobile coffee) vendor pedals through Jakarta’s streets, balancing drinks and daily livelihood

Coffee Nation: Indonesia’s Relationship with Coffee

A Photo Essay by William Kalengkongan

Coffee Nation: Indonesia’s Relationship with Coffee

This photo essay reveals how coffee flows through Indonesian life — from the roaster’s fire to café conversations — reflecting resilience, creativity, and belonging. It captures the human layer of coffee, while showing how climate change increasingly threatens this sweet-and-bitter relationship through shifting seasons, fragile harvests, and uncertain futures for those who live by it.

Globally, Indonesia stands as the fourth-largest coffee producer in the world, after Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia. With coffee grown across diverse landscapes from Sumatra and Java to Sulawesi and Flores. the country plays a critical role in the global supply of both Arabica and Robusta. 

Coffee is deeply woven into everyday life in Indonesia, with many people making 2-3 cups daily as part of their routine. Domestic coffee consumption has risen steadily to around 1.8 kilograms per capita per year, reflecting how “ngopi” has become a shared habit across generations and regions. From traditional warung kopi to modern urban cafés, coffee continues to shape social interactions, conversations, and a strong sense of togetherness in Indonesian society.

In Indonesia, coffee goes beyond a simple beverage. It is not just a drink, it is a long-term relationship.

📷 When the cup is empty, the question remains: what happens to coffee when climate change dries the source before the last sip?

At the Roots

📷 A Robusta coffee tree in Manggarai regency, Flores, eastern Indonesia, bearing ripening cherries beneath dense leaves, an image of abundance that now depends on seasons and a climate farmers can no longer predict as they once did.
📷 A woman sorts Robusta coffee beans by hand at her home in Flores, eastern Indonesia, a quiet daily ritual where patience and skill sustain livelihoods.
📷 A farmer rakes sun-drying coffee beans in Flores, eastern Indonesia, carefully tending the harvest as shifting weather patterns make timing and tradition harder to rely on.
📷 Rows of Robusta coffee beans dry on raised wooden beds in Flores, eastern Indonesia, where careful post-harvest work depends on sunlight that is becoming less predictable.
📷 A makeshift security post rises above the coffee plantation in Manggarai, Flores, eastern Indonesia, reflecting farmers’ efforts to protect their crops.
📷 A coffee plantation landscape in Flores, eastern Indonesia, where fertile volcanic slopes have long sustained coffee farming,
📷 Women play a vital role in coffee production. Here, a woman carefully sorts freshly harvested coffee cherries in Manggarai, Flores, eastern Indonesia, ensuring quality through skilled and often unseen labor.

Craft — The Transformation

📷 Freshly roasted coffee beans tumble in the drum, where heat and timing transform raw harvests into aroma, flavor, and the final chapter of a long journey from the roots.
📷 Green coffee beans rest in a scoop, the raw form of the harvest before heat and time transform them.
📷 A careful hand inspects freshly roasted coffee beans, where touch and sight guide quality.
📷 Roasted coffee beans slide from the cooling tray, a quiet pause after heat and motion, where aroma settles and the harvest takes its final form before reaching the cup.

🔊 Coffee Roasting Soundscape

📷 Freshly roasted coffee beans cascade from the roaster, marking the moment where craft and precision complete the journey from plantation to cup.
📷 A roaster releases freshly roasted coffee beans into the cooling tray, where skill, timing, and human judgment shape the final character of each batch.
📷 Under focused light, a female staff hand-picks defective beans after roasting, a meticulous step where quality is protected one decision at a time.

Culture

Credit and Contributor

All photos are under Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Concept and Creator: William Kalengkongan
Responsible: Fransiskus Tarmedi & Marion Regina Mueller

Published by: Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia

on 14 January 2026

Permanent Link: <https://th.boell.org/en/coffee-nation-indonesia>

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