Introduction to Yunnan Coffee and Americano, Is Yunnan Coffee Good

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With the rise of domestic trends, Chinese brands have been gaining momentum. Yunnan's coffee boom has also surged, with more people walking into cafés and asking: "What Yunnan coffee beans do you recommend that taste good? Do you have Yunnan small-bean coffee?" As people's pursuit of specialty coffee becomes increasingly refined, they have even started paying attention to Yunnan coffee bean varieties. Next, FrontStreet Coffee will introduce you to information about Yunnan coffee.

Yunnan's Ideal Coffee Growing Conditions

As everyone knows, crops need suitable growing environments to achieve wonderful flavors. Besides high altitude, climate is also an important factor. Many famous coffee-growing regions are mostly concentrated in the "coffee golden growing belt" between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

In China's vast territory, Yunnan and Taiwan meet these requirements, being both located in the "coffee golden growing belt" and having suitable altitudes. However, for China's land, tea is the native plant, while coffee is an imported product. The earliest documented record of coffee cultivation in China dates back to 1877, when Ding Richang, the Governor-General of Fujian, drafted the "Regulations for Pacifying Indigenous Peoples and Opening Mountains," which mentioned asking the indigenous residents of the Ryukyu Islands to plant a series of economic crops to replace hunting and thereby civilize the indigenous people. Among those crops was coffee.

The Three Waves of Yunnan Coffee Cultivation

The earliest place to grow coffee in mainland China was Yunnan. Both the "Binzhou County Annals" and "History of Catholicism in Yunnan" mention that in the 30th year of the Guangxu reign (1904), French Catholic missionary田德能 (Tiande Neng), sent by the Dali diocese church, set foot on the land of Binchuan Prefecture, built a church in Zhukula Village, and planted the first coffee tree for his own consumption.

Today, Yunnan's coffee cultivation has experienced three waves:

First Wave (1950s-1960s)

The first wave began in the 1950s and 1960s, when many people didn't even know what coffee was, let alone what it tasted like. At that time, coffee beans were exported to the Soviet Union to repay loans. Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation cultivated coffee, and the national foreign trade department was responsible for procurement. The main coffee cultivation farms at that time included: Baoshan Lujiang Farm, Xincheng Youth Farm, Dehong Zhefang Farm, Ruili Farm, Wanding Farm, Wenshan Babu Farm, and Tianbao Farm. The Yunnan coffee varieties at that time were locally propagated Typica and Bourbon variants.

As the loan repayment work ended, the foreign trade department no longer actively procured Yunnan coffee beans. Meanwhile, due to the infection and spread of coffee diseases, large-scale coffee trees became sick and even died. To prevent the spread of coffee tree diseases, extensive cutting had to be carried out. The area of coffee tree cultivation shrank to less than 3,000 mu at once.

Second Wave (1980s)

The second wave began in the 1980s when the reform and opening-up policy was implemented. Nestlé strongly supported the development of Yunnan's coffee industry in 1988 and actively promoted the cultivation of the Catimor variety in Yunnan. Since Catimor's yield is three times that of Typica and it has strong disease resistance, farmers, who didn't have much understanding of coffee flavors, were more concerned about coffee procurement prices and how many coffee fruits they could harvest. In Yunnan, the Catimor variety replaced Typica's position, becoming the main force of Yunnan coffee bean varieties, even accounting for 90% of Yunnan's coffee production at one point.

Third Wave (Post-2000)

The third development wave came after 2000, when China's booming economic development attracted the attention of many coffee brands, and the concept of specialty coffee was also introduced to China. As people's enthusiasm for pursuing specialty coffee grew, the selection and cultivation work for Yunnan coffee actively developed. Currently, the journey of Yunnan coffee specialization is still ongoing.

Yunnan Small-Bean Coffee and Catimor Variety

Yunnan small-bean coffee gets its name from Typica coffee, as Typica variety coffee beans are small in size, hence the name "small-bean." As FrontStreet Coffee introduced earlier, due to the high yield and strong disease resistance of the Catimor coffee variety, many coffee growers reluctantly cut down Typica trees and switched to planting Catimor. Currently, the planting area of Catimor variety in Yunnan is still large, and the variety of Yunnan small-bean coffee is the Catimor variety.

The Catimor variety was developed in 1959 by the Portuguese Coffee Leaf Rust Research Center CIFC, as a hybrid of Timor's Timor coffee variety and Caturra variety. Inheriting the Robusta genes from Timor, the Catimor variety has better resistance to coffee berry disease and coffee leaf rust, and also has some resistance to coffee pest diseases.

Regarding the Catimor variety, Taiwanese specialty coffee master Han Huaizong once described it as having a "devilish aftertaste." Due to the addition of Robusta genes, Catimor variety coffee may have an earthy, fishy taste. Of course, with the improvement of coffee cultivation and processing techniques, the flavor of Yunnan Catimor is also improving.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Coffee Estate

To pursue Yunnan's terroir flavors, FrontStreet Coffee established its own coffee estate in Lincang. Yunnan's Lincang coffee producing area is located in the southwestern part of Yunnan Province, with the Tropic of Cancer crossing its southern part, adjacent to Pu'er, Dali, and Baoshan, and bordering Myanmar to the southwest. It is a brilliant pearl on China's southwestern border. Here, there are planting altitudes above 1,000 meters, annual temperatures around 17°C, distinct wet and dry seasons, and sufficient sunlight. This provides excellent growing conditions for FrontStreet Coffee to plant Typica coffee trees on this land.

The Typica coffee beans grown at FrontStreet Coffee's estate use natural processing methods. Mature coffee fruits are spread completely and evenly on raised beds for sun drying, and are regularly turned to avoid uneven drying that produces unpleasant fermentation flavors. Additionally, keeping the fruits intact allows more sugar substances from the coffee fruits to penetrate into the raw coffee beans, making FrontStreet Coffee's coffee beans more aromatic and sweeter.

When FrontStreet Coffee's roaster received these natural-processed Typica coffee beans, considering the need to highlight their aroma and sweetness while emphasizing the mouthfeel of Yunnan small-bean coffee, a medium roast level was adopted.

For the taste of Yunnan small-bean coffee, besides pour-over, FrontStreet Coffee also recommends tasting it through regular Americano coffee. FrontStreet Coffee's basic blended espresso beans contain a certain proportion of Yunnan small-bean coffee, using medium-dark roast, which can highlight richness and intensity in the coffee. Below, we'll use FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan espresso blend coffee beans to make an iced Americano and see how it tastes.

For making Americano, a widely used operation is to dilute double-shot espresso extracted normally (mostly using 1:2 coffee-to-liquid ratio) with water at a 1:5-1:8 ratio. In many scenarios, as long as the raw materials are ensured, an Americano coffee doesn't have many strict requirements for ratio, cup volume, or water temperature, and it can be served both hot and cold.

FrontStreet Coffee will first prepare a 300ml glass, add 90 grams of ice cubes, then pour 120g of room temperature water to about eight-tenths full of the glass. Next, use 20g of Yunnan espresso blend coffee beans to extract 40g of double-shot espresso, pour it into the ice water, and an iced Americano is ready.

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