Characteristics, Flavor Profile and Taste Description of Yirgacheffe Coffee Beans - Is Pour-Over Yirgacheffe Coffee Delicious?

For those who love coffee with floral and fruity notes, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe will be quite familiar. As a representative flagship of Ethiopian coffee, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe not only possesses delightful floral aromas but also carries fresh and rich fruit flavors, making it the top choice for coffee beginners.

The Unique Growing Environment of Yirgacheffe Town

As seen on the map, Yirgacheffe is a small town administratively belonging to Ethiopia's Sidamo region, located in the south-central part of the country with an altitude of over 2,000 meters, making it one of Ethiopia's highest-altitude coffee-growing areas. Local farmers plant coffee trees in their backyards or intercrop them with other crops in their fields. Each household's production is modest, making it typical pastoral coffee.

The high altitude creates significant day-night temperature differences. Coffee trees grow slowly, and the fruit takes longer to mature, consequently storing more aromatic substances. Therefore, the harvesting season is also relatively late. The harvesting season generally runs from October to January of the following year. Busy farmers can be seen harvesting coffee cherries in the mountains and their home gardens, then sending them to village cooperatives for unified processing. The Rift Valley, represented by Misty Valley, is perennially shrouded in mist, with spring-like conditions year-round, gentle breezes, cool and humid weather. Thousands of coffee tree varieties thrive and multiply here, nurturing the unique terroir of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe, where distinctive floral and fruit aromas intertwine mysteriously and ever-changingly.

We often hear about micro-regions like Kochere, Misty Valley, and Gedeb, all of which are renowned micro-regions within the Yirgacheffe coffee area. They all have excellent cooperative production teams, and their coffees are highly distinctive. The Worka region, located in the southeastern part of Yirgacheffe, has another mature production team - the "Buncho Cooperative," with about 300 member farmers. It was established separately in 2012 because the FrontStreet Coffee Yirgacheffe produced showed uplifted and bright flavors. Many small farmers were originally members of the Worka Cooperative, so their coffee production skills are unquestionable. FrontStreet Coffee's Buncho Cooperative coffee uses traditional washed processing.

The Formation of Classic Yirgacheffe Flavor

In the eyes of coffee professionals worldwide, Yirgacheffe is one of the outstanding representatives of African coffee beans. It possesses bright acidity, concrete yellow lemon aromas rather than general citrus notes, and a very clean mouthfeel and aftertaste. The reason FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe can have such a distinctive style, besides innate terroir conditions, is largely due to the washed processing technology that the Ethiopian government introduced from Central and South America in 1972.

Farms using the washed method must build washing pools and be able to access continuous fresh water, resulting in higher production costs. During processing, the fermented beans are placed in the pool and moved back and forth, using the friction between beans and the power of flowing water to wash the coffee beans until they are smooth and clean. Each step removes impurities and defective beans, so the green bean quality is more uniform, and the final trading price is higher than naturally processed coffee. Washing not only significantly reduces the defect rate of coffee but also earns FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe its fresh citrus notes and elegant white floral aromas, with overall flavors that are bright, delicate, and clean.

In the past, most of the coffee we drank was dominated by bitter flavors. Coffee's strong bitterness mainly came from roasters deep-roasting the beans, with flavor profiles oriented toward nuts and dark chocolate. With the emergence of specialty coffee concepts, to preserve more acidity, roasters only roast FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe to an appropriate light level. Light-roasted FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe shows pleasant fruit sweet-sourness and white floral aromas, which can be said to have opened the "new era of fruit-acid coffee." Preferring sweetness and avoiding bitterness happens to align with popular tastes, which is one reason why Yirgacheffe is so popular worldwide.

FrontStreet Coffee's FrontStreet Coffee Yirgacheffe daily bean uses washed processing and medium-light roasting, carrying classic Yirgacheffe flavor notes, suitable for pour-over, cold brew, French press, and other brewing methods. FrontStreet Coffee's daily bean series allows friends new to the coffee circle to taste the basic regional flavors at affordable prices, with small packaging designs that also avoid waste from unfinished coffee, making it suitable for newcomers to pour-over coffee. If you want to taste the classic aromas of Yirgacheffe, FrontStreet Coffee believes that pour-over extracted black coffee is most suitable.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Coffee Bean Pour-over Parameters and Ratios

Regardless of the extraction method used, FrontStreet Coffee believes the freshness of coffee beans is very important. Coffee roasted more than two months ago has likely lost much of its aroma, and even the best extraction techniques can hardly restore the cup's aroma. To let everyone experience coffee's best tasting period, FrontStreet Coffee only ships beans freshly roasted within 5 days, so you can start brewing when you receive them.

Because FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe uses light roasting, the coffee beans are relatively hard and require high-temperature water of 92°C-93°C to stimulate the floral and fruit flavors in the coffee. FrontStreet Coffee recommends a medium-fine grind size (78% pass rate through China standard #20 sieve). Too coarse a grind cannot extract the full-bodied substances, making the brewed coffee seem thin. Too fine a grind can easily lead to over-extraction at high water temperatures, making the brewed coffee prone to bitterness.

During cupping, FrontStreet Coffee noticed that this bean shows different flavors at different temperatures, so the brewing method uses three-stage extraction, allowing different flavor compounds to better express themselves during the staged temperature increase of the coffee bed. To highlight the fresh and charming aromas of FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe, FrontStreet Coffee uses a V60 dripper for brewing. The dripper's spiral rib design allows the coffee grounds to degas better, maximizing the volatilization and dissolution of acidic aromatic substances.

In terms of brewing ratio, FrontStreet Coffee believes 1:15 to 1:16 are both acceptable. If you want a richer mouthfeel, use 1:15; if you want to more clearly feel the floral sweetness, you can use 1:16 to let the flavors spread out more.

Dripper: V60
Water temperature: 92-93°C
Dose: 15g
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15
Grind size: Fine sugar consistency (78% pass rate through #20 sieve)

Three-stage pouring: Use twice the amount of water as the coffee grounds to wet the coffee bed, forming a dome and blooming for 30s, then use a small water stream to pour in circles from inside to out to 125g for the first stage. Wait for the coffee bed to drop to half the dripper's height, then continue with the same fine water stream to inject the third stage to 225g. Remove the dripper once all the coffee liquid has filtered through, taking about 2 minutes. After the coffee from the dripper flows into the lower server, remove the dripper, then shake the coffee liquid in the server to mix evenly, and you can begin tasting FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe flavors from high temperature.

FrontStreet Coffee's Washed Yirgacheffe Pour-over Flavor Description

When FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe coffee beans are ground into powder, you can smell the fresh aromas of honey and jasmine. When FrontStreet Coffee pours hot water, it begins to release hints of berry flavors. The pour-over black coffee enters with bright lemon, citrus, and green tea notes. As the temperature changes, there are berry, cream, and sugarcane aftertastes, with obvious sweet aftertaste and a clean, sweet mouthfeel.

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Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473