Sidamo Hambella Flower Queen Coffee Beans: Flavor Profile and Pour-Over Brewing Guide

2025 New Harvest FrontStreet Coffee Hua Kui Coffee Beans

What exactly is Hua Kui coffee? For those familiar with coffee, this is certainly known, but for friends who aren't very familiar with coffee, they might not know. However, when you mention Yirgacheffe, they might immediately recognize it as Ethiopian. Actually, Hua Kui is also Ethiopian coffee, and it's a highly sought-after specialty coffee! At FrontStreet Coffee, washed Yirgacheffe coffee and Hua Kui 5.0 coffee are very popular!

FrontStreet Coffee's daily brew Yirgacheffe coffee, as a representative of Ethiopian coffee-producing countries, naturally has its reputation widely known. Just as people who don't drink coffee know Blue Mountain coffee. In fact, Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and many varieties were introduced from Ethiopia. The floral aroma and fruity acidity of Yirgacheffe coffee leave an endless aftertaste. Of course, not everyone likes this bright acidity. As the genetic home of coffee, most coffees in Ethiopia are named after their coffee-producing regions. Yirgacheffe and Sidamo are two famous specialty coffee-producing regions in Ethiopia. If you're not quite accustomed to the lemon acidity of Yirgacheffe, FrontStreet Coffee suggests considering a cup of Sidamo coffee!

Coffee from the Sidamo region has a richer juice sensation than coffee from the Yirgacheffe region, with less acidity in terms of flavor, but instead has a citrus aftertaste. The coffee flavors from various regions in Ethiopia show significant differences. To allow more friends to taste the flavors from various Ethiopian regions, FrontStreet Coffee has acquired over a dozen single-origin coffees from Ethiopia alone.

Let's Get to Know the Sidamo Coffee Region Together

Sidamo's coffee flavors are very diverse because different soil compositions, regional microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties have created obvious differences and characteristics in the coffee produced in each town area. The Sidamo region is located in southern Ethiopia, extending east to the Arsi and Bale administrative regions, and west to the Gamogofa administrative region. Sidamo coffee is cultivated at altitudes between 1400m-2000m. The main industry here is agriculture, with coffee planting areas primarily located around the East African Rift Valley. Sidamo has developed rapidly in recent years and is an important coffee export hub. The most famous coffee-growing areas in the Sidamo region include Guji and West Arsi.

Guji Region

The Guji region was formerly part of the Sidamo region but was established as a new independent region by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) in 2010. The Guji region is located southeast of Yirgacheffe and is an area with complex terrain changes including towering mountains, valleys, and plains. The geology in this area consists of nutrient-rich black soil (Vertisol) with soil depth reaching nearly two meters and an average altitude above 1800 meters. The significant day-night temperature differences created by geographical characteristics provide all the terroir conditions necessary for producing high-quality specialty coffee locally.

What is Hua Kui Coffee?

It's said that good climate environments also produce excellent coffee beans, but what truly made the Guji region famous is Hua Kui coffee.

The original name of Hua Kui coffee beans is Hambella, and the name Hua Kui was given by domestic green bean merchants. This bean comes from Hambella, located in Ethiopia's largest coffee-producing region, Guji, administratively belonging to the Oromia region. Hambella's west faces Yirgacheffe's Kochere across mountains, with the two regions separated by high ground with an altitude of 3200 meters and width of about 30 kilometers. It borders Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha sub-regions of Guji to the southeast, east, and north respectively, making it Ethiopia's highest-altitude coffee sub-region.

Currently, there are about 20 processing plants of various scales in the Hambella region. In 2017, Ethiopia's DW green bean company sent their coffee beans to the TOH (The Taste Of Harvest) green bean competition hosted by the African Fine Coffee Association. A natural processed batch from the "Buku Abel" processing plant won the TOH Ethiopia championship with its rich strawberry and cream aroma. That year, this batch of green beans was imported to China by Beijing green bean trader Hongshun. In the same year, Li Jianfei used this bean to win the runner-up position in the 2017 World Brewers Cup China region. This Ethiopian bean stood out particularly among many Geisha competition entries, thus earning the name "Hua Kui" (Geisha means geisha in Japanese, while Hua Kui means the leader among geishas, indicating the outstanding quality of this bean).

Subsequently, DW company added processing plants in the core Hambella region of Dimtu, namely "Buku Abel," "Buku Saysay," "Haro Soresa," and "Tirtiro Goye," with an annual coffee production of about 1100 tons. Among all these estates and processing stations, strictly speaking, only the natural processed coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing plant can be called "Hua Kui coffee beans."

Coffee is also an agricultural product and naturally affected by climate and environmental conditions, with flavors varying each year. To distinguish these differences, they are named: Hua Kui 2.0, Hua Kui 3.0, Hua Kui 3.1, Hua Kui 4.0, Hua Kui 5.0, and Hua Kui 6.0.

Sidamo Coffee Processing Methods

Washed Yirgacheffe coffee, as the name suggests, uses washing, but actually Ethiopia's original coffee processing method was natural processing, with washed processing only being introduced later. Most coffee from the Sidamo region uses natural processing, and FrontStreet Coffee believes that natural processing gives Sidamo region coffee beans rich fruit aroma and smooth texture.

During the coffee harvest season, coffee farmers in the Sidamo region only pick mature red fruits, placing them one by one into baskets. The harvested coffee fruits have uniform size, similar maturity, and contain no other impurities. During processing, defective coffee beans and immature or overripe coffee fruits are first manually selected. Then the red coffee fruits are spread evenly on raised wooden frames or entire drying racks for sun drying, which avoids the risk of beans absorbing off-flavors from being placed on the ground.

During the drying process, the beans are constantly turned to ensure even exposure and uniform water loss from the coffee beans; every three to five days, farmers manually remove defective and moldy beans. After the fruit skins dry and become hard, a hulling machine is used to remove the dry, hard fruit skins. After obtaining the green coffee beans, farmers conduct one final selection to pursue perfect flavor.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations:

How should such excellent coffee beans be brewed to extract delicious flavors? FrontStreet Coffee believes that coffee bean freshness is a very important factor, as fresh coffee beans allow for the fullest appreciation of coffee's rich flavors. Coffee beans shipped from FrontStreet Coffee are all roasted within 5 days, because FrontStreet Coffee deeply understands that coffee bean freshness greatly affects flavor. FrontStreet Coffee's roasting philosophy is "Freshly Roasted Good Coffee," ensuring that every customer who orders receives the freshest coffee. The coffee's resting period is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive their coffee, it's at its peak flavor.

Of course, some customers need FrontStreet Coffee to grind the beans, which is also fine, but FrontStreet Coffee must remind: if coffee beans are ground in advance, there's no need for a resting period, because during transportation, the pressure from carbon dioxide buildup in the packaging can also help round out the coffee flavor, so you can brew a cup immediately upon receiving the ground coffee. However, ground coffee needs to be brewed promptly, because ground coffee oxidizes relatively quickly when exposed to air, meaning the coffee's flavor will dissipate more quickly, and the coffee's flavor won't be as good. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends purchasing whole beans and grinding fresh before brewing to better appreciate the coffee's flavor.

FrontStreet Coffee's Hua Kui Coffee Brewing Parameters:

To fully extract the rich layers of Hua Kui coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee uses higher water temperature and finer grind size for extraction, but to avoid over-extraction caused by high temperatures, faster flow rate drippers like the V60 are used. The V60 dripper has a 60° conical shape, and the conical angle allows coffee grounds to concentrate, while the water flow automatically converges toward the center of the dripper during pouring, ensuring sufficient contact time between water and coffee grounds, thus extracting suitable coffee liquid. Additionally, the ribs on the inside of the V60 dripper extend clockwise in a spiral from bottom to top, creating enough space between the filter paper and dripper, allowing good water flow. Combined with the large hole at the bottom, the water flow rate is relatively faster than many other drippers.

FrontStreet Coffee's specific brewing parameters are: V60 dripper, water temperature 90°C, water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, coffee amount 15g, grind size (80% pass rate through China #20 standard sieve)

Using segmented extraction, bloom with twice the amount of water as the coffee grounds, meaning 30g water for 30 seconds of blooming. The blooming process is necessary to allow the coffee grounds to release internal carbon dioxide, ensuring more stable extraction in the later stages. Using a small circular pour, segment at 125g, then continue pouring to 225g and stop. Remove the dripper once all water has dripped through. Time from the start of pouring: 2'00". Next, pick up the entire coffee and shake it evenly before pouring into cups for tasting.

[2025 New Harvest FrontStreet Coffee Natural Sidamo Coffee Flavor]

Floral notes, berries, citrus, sweet and sour notes of plum, mango juice, honey, with a black tea-like sweet aftertaste.

As FrontStreet Coffee mentioned earlier, the coffee flavors from various Ethiopian regions have significant differences. To allow more friends to taste more excellent flavors from Ethiopia, FrontStreet Coffee has acquired over a dozen single-origin coffee beans from Ethiopia alone. Of course, if you want to try flavors from other producing countries, FrontStreet Coffee can also satisfy you, because FrontStreet Coffee has dozens of single-origin coffees from different regions. Welcome to taste!

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)

For more specialty coffee beans, please add private WeChat FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee), WeChat ID: qjcoffeex

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473