Costa Rica Musician Series Coffee Beans: Flavor Characteristics, Stories, and Brewing Parameters for Mozart

Costa Rica: The Sweetest Coffee Region in the Americas

Where is the sweetest coffee-growing region in the Americas? Costa Rica. FrontStreet Coffee keeps a collection of Costa Rican Musician Series coffees on the menu, and most are honey-processed, which customers describe as floral and fruity with a sweetness like honey.

There is a great deal to explain about honey processing, so FrontStreet Coffee offers some background. Limited by water and climate, honey processing has become steadily more popular across Costa Rica. This "sweet as honey" method is in fact an improvement on Brazil's pulped natural method, designed to raise sweetness. The key is to keep as much of the mucilage layer on the bean as possible. It is a precise method: the color of the coffee depends on how much mucilage is left on the beans before drying. Mucilage content is the deciding factor for sweetness, and traditionally the more mucilage, or "honey," left on the beans, the greater the sweetness and depth. Based on the proportion of mucilage, honey-processed coffees are classified as black honey, gold honey, yellow honey, red honey, white honey, and so on.

The Musician Series from Canet Estate

As noted, the Musician Series comes from Costa Rica. FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rican Musician Series consists of four varieties: FrontStreet Coffee Mozart, FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven, FrontStreet Coffee Bach, and FrontStreet Coffee Chopin. Since FrontStreet Coffee Chopin is temporarily unavailable for green bean sourcing, we will not go into it here, beyond noting that it has excellent rose floral notes, a tea-like quality, and a sweetness that recalls drinking floral tea.

FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rican Musician Series comes from Canet Estate, in the highest coffee-growing area of Costa Rica's Tarrazu region. Canet is the name of a small farm in the area, a 5-hectare estate in the town of San Marcos in Tarrazu, owned by the Robles brothers, Leo, Elian, and Melvin, who have worked together in cultivation and production for over 10 years and share a small wet mill, or beneficio.

By adjusting their machinery they produce honey-processed coffee, with the degree of honey processing varying. This area is also the most intensive fruit-growing region in Costa Rica. The estate owner grows mainly passion fruit, and coffee is quite scarce by comparison. Coffee is planted only in a specific area and given special care, with only ripe red cherries harvested, so the resulting coffee receives more meticulous attention through harvesting and processing and shows superior quality and flavor.

Introducing Three Musician Series Varieties

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will focus on three coffees, FrontStreet Coffee Mozart, FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven, and FrontStreet Coffee Bach, and use them to introduce Costa Rica's coffee-growing regions.

FrontStreet Coffee Mozart

FrontStreet Coffee · Costa Rica Canet Estate Musician Series Mozart

• Region: Tarrazu
• Variety: Caturra, Catuai
• Altitude: 1950m
• Process: Raisin Honey
• Flavor Notes: Osmanthus, berries, fermented wine aroma, raisins

FrontStreet Coffee Bach

FrontStreet Coffee · Costa Rica Canet Estate Musician Series Bach

• Country: Costa Rica
• Region: Tarrazu
• Altitude: 1950m
• Process: Raisin Honey
• Grade: Strictly Hard Bean (SHB)
• Variety: Caturra
• Flavor Notes: Tropical fruits, nuts, cream, fermented aroma

Both FrontStreet Coffee Mozart and FrontStreet Coffee Bach use a raisin honey process, which differs slightly from the honey processing described earlier. Raisin honey is in fact a double fermentation method. On the day the cherries are harvested, the fruit is poured into large water tanks to remove bad beans, and the selected cherries are dried on raised beds for at least three days. The skins are then removed while the mucilage is preserved, and drying continues. During drying the coffee must be turned constantly to ensure evenness, and the frequency of turning has to be carefully controlled to avoid over-fermentation. Preserving 100% of the mucilage and using zero water not only raises the difficulty of honey processing but also demands strict control of timing.

FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven

Next is the Musician Series variety made with a different process, FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven.

FrontStreet Coffee · Costa Rica Canet Estate Musician Series Beethoven

• Region: Tarrazu Region
• Estate: Canet Estate (Finca Canet)
• Variety: Yellow Catuai
• Altitude: 1900m
• Grade: Strictly Hard Bean (SHB)
• Process: Washed
• Flavor Notes: Citrus, black tea, caramel

FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven uses a washed process. After harvest it is screened again to remove unripe and overripe beans, then the pulp is removed and the remaining mucilage is taken off with a centrifugal washer to prevent fermentation. The coffee is washed with clean water and finally laid out on shaded raised beds to dry for 12-14 days, turned constantly for evenness. Washed beans have a cleaner, brighter profile.

The Tarrazu Region

Although the processes differ, you may have noticed that all three coffees come from Tarrazu. Through FrontStreet Coffee's research, Costa Rica has a total of 8 coffee-growing regions: West Valley, Central Valley, Tarrazu, Tres Rios, Orosi, Brunca, Turrialba, and Guanacaste. Tarrazu is one of the most important coffee-growing regions in the world.

FrontStreet Coffee's Musician Series coffees come from this region. Tarrazu is arguably one of Costa Rica's most valued coffee areas. The coffee from La Minita Tarrazu is a local specialty, though production is limited to approximately 72,600 kilograms a year. It is grown on land called La Minita, owned by the British McAlpine family for the past three generations, who hold the La Minita estate in Tarrazu with an annual output of only 160,000 pounds, even though the land could produce over 450 tons of coffee a year.

It is worth noting that Tarrazu coffee is grown without artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Harvesting and selection are done entirely by hand, which avoids to some extent the damage that air-jet sorting can do to the beans. At the same time, the high altitude of over 1,500 meters means that nearly 95% of the coffee grown in Tarrazu is Strictly Hard Bean (SHB).

Many customers who visit FrontStreet Coffee assume that coffees from the same region and the same estate should taste alike. That is not the case. Even within one estate, an identical growing environment cannot be guaranteed, since altitude and variety are factors that shape flavor. If you do not believe it, buy every variety in FrontStreet Coffee's Musician Series and compare them yourself. Of course, you can also follow FrontStreet Coffee through a "cloud experiment."

Brewing Method and Tasting Notes

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Parameters:

• V60 dripper
• Water temperature: 91°C
• Water-to-coffee ratio: 1:15
• Coffee dose: 15g
• Grind size: 80% pass-through on the China standard #20 sieve

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Technique: Use 30g of water to bloom for 30 seconds. With a small, steady stream, pour in circles to 125g, then pause. When the water level drops to the point where the coffee bed is just exposed, continue pouring to 225g and stop. When the water level again drops to just expose the bed, remove the dripper. Timing starts from the bloom. Extraction time: 2'00".

FrontStreet Coffee Mozart - Dry aroma: berry and fermented aromas. Wet aroma: raisins and sweet orange on entry; the fermented wine aroma and osmanthus fragrance become more apparent as the temperature changes.

FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven - Dry aroma: berries and a tea fragrance. Wet aroma: citrus and black tea on entry; caramel and tea-like qualities become more apparent as the temperature changes.

FrontStreet Coffee Bach - Dry aroma: fermented aroma. Wet aroma: tropical fruits and fermented flavors on entry; cream, nuts, and caramel become more apparent as the temperature changes.

In mouthfeel, FrontStreet Coffee Mozart and FrontStreet Coffee Bach show more prominent fermented and fruity notes, with a fuller body and ample sweetness, while FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven leans toward citrus and black tea with a cleaner, fresher mouthfeel.

In aroma, FrontStreet Coffee Mozart has prominent and relatively rich complex aromas, FrontStreet Coffee Beethoven tends toward tea-like fragrances and is relatively fresh, and FrontStreet Coffee Bach has complex, rich fermented fruit aromas.

An Alternative: Blueberry Coffee

Of course, for some people FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rican Musician Series may not be the best choice. FrontStreet Coffee also offers its Costa Rican Blueberry coffee from the Brunca region, processed with an anaerobic double honey method. The dry aroma carries subtle rose florals with a faint fermented note, and the cup presents a blueberry gummy candy texture with a hint of minty coolness in the finish. It is a coffee that tastes excellent both hot and cold brewed.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Costa Rica's honey process grew out of Brazil's pulped natural method, so Brazilian coffee is the logical place to see where that lineage began. FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic Brazilian single origin. Cerrado is a well-known growing region known for high-quality beans, and the variety here is red Bourbon, common across South America. Given a medium roast it opens with dense creamy peanut, toasted bread, caramel, and hazelnut aromas, with a round body, no acidity, and a light bitter note. It works not only as pour-over but in a moka pot, as an espresso SOE, in a siphon, or in a French press.

For a rarer Brazilian expression, FrontStreet Coffee Queen's Estate comes from Mogiana, close to South Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil lets the fruit take up plenty of nutrients and develop a full aroma. The region mixes farms that keep to traditional management with others that have adopted modern, standardized operations, which has improved local quality considerably. The variety is the rare Yellow Bourbon, a genetic mutation of Red Bourbon with a cleaner fruit character, and through pour-over, a moka pot, or a home espresso machine it shows a sugarcane-like clarity that other regions rarely offer, along with fruit and chocolate notes.

And if you are building a milk drink rather than a black cup, Brazilian coffee is the backbone of FrontStreet Coffee's espresso blends, from the oil-rich Classic Blend to the nut-forward Specialty Blend, FrontStreet Coffee's Black Cocoa Blend baristas so often recommend, and FrontStreet Coffee's Commercial Blend built for cafes. The Brazilian component supplies chocolate and cream aromas along with a soft sweet-sour-bitter balance that keeps extraction stable.