Local coffee company a pick-me-up for literacy Indonesian coffee roasted right here at home

Local coffee company a pick-me-up for literacy
Indonesian coffee roasted right here at home
By Bob Morgan
(Created: Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:06 PM CST)

SUMMERDALE, Ala. — This community is no stranger to crops but coffee beans are something else. Yet, there are tons of Indonesian coffee beans right here just waiting to be roasted and turned into one of the four types of coffee that Tändük Coffee Co. makes available. (It’s pronounced Taan Dook.)

Roasted beans have complete the roasting process. Raw coffee beans have sugar in them that, once heated, begin to carmelize which gives the coffees their distinct tastes. (Bob Morgan/staff photo)


From Java, one of the Indonesian islands, to a cup of “java” locally, the world of coffee has a local flavor what with Tändük's roasting facility and warehouse in Summerdale.

The roastmaster is Kenneth Ferguson, a retired Marine major and helicopter pilot who lives in Foley at Glenlakes. How Kenneth, who has operated a Maytag business and taught at Summerdale school during retirement, became the company roaster actually begins with his son, Beau, going as an English teacher to Indonesia some years back.

After a short tour there, Beau and his wife felt led to go back to Indonesia, especially in light of the tsunami that struck the country a few years ago. The couple got involved with a village library program and Beau came up with the idea of starting a coffee company.

It was last year when Beau got a shipment of 14,000 pounds of coffee beans together and had them shipped to this area. A warehouse was found and Kenneth said they had to make some changes in the building to comply with the Health Department.

A roaster that was handmade in a “little shop” in Indonesia was shipped with along with the coffee beans.

“We made a few modifications in it,” Kenneth said of the roaster, which weighs about 2,000 pounds.

The coffee beans that arrived came from two regions in Indonesia, which is a country made up of 15,000 islands or so and is the largest Muslim country in the world by population. The beans are Sulawesi Toraja Arabica and Sumatra Mandheling Arabica. To get an idea of what a commodity coffee is in Indonesia, Kenneth notes there are five or six coffee regions on the island of Sumatra alone.

Roastmaster Kenneth Ferguson pours coffee beans into the top of Tändük Coffee Co.’s handmade roaster. (Bob Morgan/staff photo)

“Both are well-known in the coffee world,” Kenneth said of the Toraja and Mandheling coffee beans.

Tändük Coffee also offers a blend of the two coffee beans and a dark roast coffee, “Toraja bold.”

As Kenneth explains it, the coffees from the islands of Sulawesi and Sumatra are bold, low acid type coffees. A high acid coffee “bites the tip of the tongue,” Kenneth said, while a low acid coffee “lays on the back of the tongue.”

“Coffee, like any plant, picks up the flavors of other plants,” Kenneth said. Thus, Sulawesi coffee has undertones of a chocolate “bite.”

Tändük (which means “horns”) started out primarily as an Internet site but is today multi-faceted.

“We would like to be able to establish a clientele of people who buy the green beans,” Kenneth said. That would be coffeeshops and the like.

But Kenneth and Beau also want to use the Internet to reach groups and organizations that want to support the village library program.

“We give a portion of our profits to the village library program at Cinta Baca,” which is a non-profit literacy and community development organization which has 15 learning centers throughout Indonesia. The illiteracy rate in Indonesia is very high, Kenneth said.

Locally, however, Tändük wants to use its coffee in fundraising efforts. Tändük coffee has been used for a fundraiser for Summerdale School and soccer teams at Spanish Fort that wanted new goal posts.

“We think coffee is a good vehicle to raise funds for schools,” Kenneth said.

As a matter of fact, the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce Foundation, an educational enterprise, is allowing Tändük to sell coffee by the cup and bag at its upcoming BBQ and Blues event.

“Like half of what we make on the coffee will go to the Foundation,” Kenneth said.

By going to the company Web site, www.tandukcoffee.com, interested persons can learn how to buy Tändük coffee and even join local coffee clubs.

A roaster like the one Kenneth uses would cost about $45,000 if bought in the U.S.; the Indonesian roaster, however, cost $8,500. Kenneth figures he can roast about 35 pounds of coffee at a time.

Fresh roasted coffee will be the Tändük trademark, he said.

As Kenneth explains it, there is a distinct human element in Tändük Coffee Co. He refers to it as “relationship coffee,” which means that Tändük wants to get to know the Indonesian growers who supply the coffee beans, even the grower who perhaps has only a small plot of land on which to grow the beans, and who might have only the one outlet for his crop.

And Kenneth said he isn’t above delivering coffee “Indonesian style” when the weather permits. He has a scooter, and he’ll zip around the county and deliver coffee when the need arises.