The story of Sanger, a speciality coffee from the city of Banda Aceh
Coffee is a basic need for making a cheerful day of typical Acehnese’s daily life. I assume almost 95 per cent of Acehnese people –well, including me — take a cup of coffee, at least, every morning before breakfast. If we see the healthy limit of coffee for a day, we will find that consuming less than four cups a day is good. Some of the Acehnese people go beyond this number however, I found once an old man who takes more than 10 cups of coffee a day –not to mention the cigarette — and he thinks that if he just drinks eight cups or less, he will feel some dizziness or being not cheerful for that day.
Whilst I recognise that the old man has a coffee addiction, and I assume it is in chronic level, I mark that the coffee culture in Aceh is such a special thing. Right, it is too large to describe it in one story and I am going to write it in several posts, but there is one thing has to be covered in this brief story, that is “Sanger”.
Firstly, what is sanger?
To start let’s take a look at how an Acehnese enjoys its coffee. Basically, there are two types of coffee beans in the world, Arabica and Robusta. Both have a different character and can be recognised easily by smelling it.
The Arabica beans have a mild taste, sourer due to high acidity, and nice aroma. Meanwhile, the Robusta, stronger, more bitterness since it contains less sugar and somehow more peanutty or more coffee (seriously, I have no idea about this word, but I hope you get the point). Well, I believe every one has its preference and distinct description of it, but three facts should be admitted by all of us: Robusta has more caffeine; consumed in certain areas; cheap.
The last fact affects the coffee culture in Aceh. The Acehnese people are not a hedonic society who desire to pay a great amount of money for a cup of coffee, not because of the financial issue, but due to the high intensity of consumption. I mentioned before, most Acehnese people probably take four or more cups of coffee every day. If they have to pay $1.5 (the average price of an arabica espresso in Aceh) for each cup then they have to pay at least six bucks every day, this amount of money is considered too much for Acehnese. With $6 you can feed a whole family a day, so you will not spend it for your daily coffee, don’t you?
Besides, Robusta is the right choice for the consumer and also for the seller. I will talk later about the coffee house in Aceh, but concisely they do not use an espresso machine for brewing the coffee. The brewery tools are two big stainless mugs (1 litre), a big filter, a spoon, and enough, literally, it is only those tools. These tools can produce up to 20 cups each time they brew the coffee. At this point, using an expensive coffee bean, I mean arabica here, is not profitable thus the Robusta is the best option. A cup of Robusta Acehnese coffee costs you about IDR 4.000 (0.3 USD) each cup.
Now, return to sanger, what is it? It is a cup of Robusta coffee, with a negligible amount of sugar and condensed milk. This ingredient produces a cup of sweet coffee without losing the bitterness which is the main character of Robusta coffee. Then what makes it really special? Since there are similar products of this kind, latte, cappuccino, flat white and else?
Before I describe deeper about it, I am going to state that the only way to know how sanger tastes is to drink it directly in Aceh. Perhaps my description will ease you to imagine how is it.
Since the coffee is Robusta, the bitterness is somehow intolerable for particular people. To deal with this intolerance, most people add some sugar to the black coffee or add condensed milk because it is also sweet. However, on some occasion, the bitterness is eliminated by the sweetness of either sugar or condensed milk, which makes those people annoyed. Besides, the price increase significantly for sugar and milk addition, each cup costs 7000 Rupiah, there is 3000 Rupiah gap between the authentic black coffee and the sweet milked coffee.
The coffee house then created a product which fills the gap between bitter black coffee and the sweet milked one. This product then is known as sanger. I am not certain why the name of this product is sanger, perhaps it was an acronym of sama-sama ngerti or saling mengerti. Probably this would be a great topic for etymology research.
But what differs this kind of coffee to the latte or vanilla latte or cappuccino? The answer is definitely price tag, besides the measurement of milk or condensed milk.
The invention of sanger
Its history shows why the name of sanger was born, there are two version stories on the creation of sanger. First one, back then in late 90s, in a crowdy area namely ulee kareng, a coffee house called Solong which has served coffee for nearly 20 years, was thinking how to satisfy the request from middle-class people and whose intolerance with the Robusta coffee. They want the taste of milked coffee, without removing the character of Robusta, but still at affordable price. Solong’s barista then brewed a thick black coffee and add a very small amount of sugar and condensed milk which turned the black coffee to be brown, and folks, they literally love it. It costs them a thousand rupiah more, but the taste is magnificent.
The alternative story comes from another area, still within Banda Aceh, specifically in Darussalam. This region is the venue of two prominent universities in Aceh Syiah Kuala University and the Islamic University of Ar-Raniry. Well, most of the student, of course, sought a cheap and good quality coffee. In the same flow with the solong’s story, sanger was created.
This name is such a philosophical term. The main point is “we (the middle-class people and student) can’t afford for the milked coffee, not strong enough to take a black coffee, but still want to savour the Robusta coffee, please sympathise with us”. This condition is represented in the term sama-sama mengerti or saling mengerti which in English can be translated a sympathy. The term later is shortened to sanger.
Currently, sanger is the most popular coffee in Banda Aceh. Some coffee house owners admit this fact. Perhaps in 7 of 10 visitors ordered sanger, but this number is just an estimation based on my observation of course. Some venues now are serving the arabica version of sanger, the same measurement, but replacing the Robusta with Arabica. For me, the authentic one still the best choice compared to the Arabica sanger. Anyway, I prefer to drink a thick black coffee without sugar.
This is one story on the coffee culture in Aceh, the next story will be on the Acehnese coffee brewery
