Premium Coffee Bean Recommendations--What Coffee Beans Should You Use for Pour-Over Coffee?

As more people in China develop the habit of drinking coffee, many enthusiasts have begun to actively learn about coffee brewing, wanting to make their own cup of coffee. In this article, FrontStreet Coffee will discuss which coffee beans are suitable for beginners when it comes to pour-over extraction.

What is Pour-over Coffee?

The roasted coffee beans we typically purchase undergo a series of chemical reactions during high-temperature roasting, generating various aromatic compounds. When we brew coffee, we use water and equipment to extract these aromatic components. Pour-over coffee involves grinding coffee beans into powder first, then pouring hot water to contact the coffee grounds to "dissolve" the substances from the coffee. Essentially, it uses a filter cup with filter paper or other tools to trap coffee grounds, preventing them from entering the server below, thus producing a cup of clear-tasting black coffee.

From bean selection to extraction, every step in the process affects the flavor of pour-over coffee to varying degrees. Therefore, to brew a cup of pour-over coffee, based on FrontStreet Coffee's brewing experience, besides high-quality coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee believes you need at least these pieces of equipment: a pour-over kettle for pouring water, a filter cup and filter paper to trap coffee grounds, a server, a coffee grinder for grinding beans, a digital scale to measure water volume and time, and a thermometer to measure water temperature.

Delicious coffee naturally离不开 good ingredients—high-quality coffee beans. FrontStreet Coffee suggests choosing coffee beans that are within 4-30 days of their roasting date, which is the optimal tasting period. This helps ensure stable extraction and fuller flavor in pour-over coffee. To ensure freshness, FrontStreet Coffee ships coffee beans roasted fresh within 5 days, typically arriving in 1-3 days, so the coffee beans you receive are also within their optimal tasting period, ready for you to start exploring extraction techniques.

Pour-over Specialty Coffee Bean Recommendations

If you're a newcomer to pour-over coffee, worried about wasting expensive, limited-quantity beans through poor brewing, FrontStreet Coffee suggests starting with FrontStreet Coffee's cost-effective daily beans. FrontStreet Coffee has selected 7 excellent classic coffee regions, covering multiple representative origins, varieties, and natural processing methods. So-called daily beans, as the name suggests, are varieties that are affordable for daily consumption with approachable prices and flavors. FrontStreet Coffee has selected multiple "flagship representatives" to help everyone recognize the basic flavors of major coffee regions.

Ethiopia's FrontStreet Coffee Washed Yirgacheffe Coffee Beans

The so-called Yirgacheffe flavor features elegant citrus, lemon, berries, and rich floral notes, along with a clear tea-like quality that makes it unforgettable once tasted. To express such refined flavors and textures, excellent growing conditions, varieties, processing methods, as well as roasting and brewing are all indispensable.

Located on the African continent, Ethiopia has underdeveloped water resources, so traditionally, ancient natural drying methods were used to process green beans—drying directly under sunlight. Due to the rough techniques, coffee quality was generally low. It wasn't until 1972 that Ethiopia introduced Central and South American washed processing technology and equipment to improve coffee bean quality. Unlike other regions, Yirgacheffe is a wetland area more suitable for washed processing. The multiple steps in washed processing significantly reduce defect rates, showing higher clarity and making the inherent aroma clearer and more transparent.

This initiative also amplified the citrus-lemon acidity and white floral notes of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe coffee beans multiple times, while also making the taste fresher and brighter. FrontStreet Coffee's FrontStreet Coffee Yirgacheffe daily beans use medium-light roasting to preserve more fruit acidity, maintaining its classic Yirgacheffe flavor profile, suitable for pour-over, cold brew, French press, and other brewing methods.

Guatemala's FrontStreet Coffee Washed Huehuetenango Coffee Beans

The Huehuetenango highlands are located in Guatemala's western non-volcanic region, which has the driest climate and highest altitude. Due to its location at the edge of tectonic plate activity, the diverse mountain basin terrain creates rich and varied coffee flavors. Like the Antigua region, it also has abundant volcanic soil, with altitudes reaching up to 2000m. However, dry hot winds from Mexico's northwest allow coffee trees to grow at these 2000-meter high plateaus.

As we know, each country has its own coffee grading standards. Guatemala's green coffee beans are mainly graded by altitude—the higher the altitude, the denser the coffee beans, and the higher the grade of green coffee beans. Most coffee from the Huehuetenango region belongs to SHB (Strictly Hard Bean), which is the highest grade in Guatemala's green bean classification.

This FrontStreet Coffee Huehuetenango coffee bean uses washed processing, presenting cleaner tones typical of Guatemalan coffee. Due to its rich and intense fruity aroma, medium-light roasting is used, allowing us to smell citrus and nutty sweet aromas after grinding the coffee.

Colombia's FrontStreet Coffee Washed Huila Coffee Beans

Huila region gained fame in the 21st century, frequently appearing on award lists for various green bean competitions, and received official Designation of Origin certification in 2013. The Huila region is named after Huila Province, located in southwestern Colombia, on the side of the Andes Mountains, near the Huila volcano. Volcanic ash from eruptions added fresh nutrients to the soil, particularly benefiting coffee tree growth. Compared to other regions, Huila has year-round rainfall and suitable temperatures, allowing coffee trees to even be planted at altitudes exceeding 2000 meters. High-altitude coffee produces bright acidity and chocolate aromas.

Huila coffee is mainly produced by small farmers, with local farms typically under 1.5 hectares. Managers plant shade trees to provide better growing conditions and quality assurance for coffee. When coffee cherries ripen, Colombians pick the most mature and full coffee fruits for post-processing at the freshest stage, ensuring freshness at every step. The washed FrontStreet Coffee Huila daily beans feature both soft acidity and appropriate richness with sweet aftertaste. FrontStreet Coffee hopes to present classic Colombian nutty notes while preserving some acidity, choosing medium-dark roasting.

Brazil's FrontStreet Coffee Semi-washed Cerrado

Brazil's coffee plantations don't have the high altitudes of African or other South American coffee origins—most are flat plains only a few hundred meters high. Brazilian growers pursuing mass production mainly use large-scale sun-dried planting methods. Therefore, Brazilian coffee fruits mature quickly, lacking the rich fruit acidity found in high-altitude coffees, with flavors leaning toward sweet, mellow, and balanced. It's precisely because of this approachable characteristic that Brazilian coffee is used in espresso blends—both highlighting the roasted aroma and making extraction flavors more stable.

The Cerrado region, located in northwestern Minas Gerais state, has a long coffee history and mature planting and production experience. Many companies have established medium to large coffee plantations here. With altitudes between 800-1300 meters and distinct seasons (humid summers and dry winters), the soil here is rich in minerals, producing coffee with nutty and creamy smoothness, balanced taste, and very classic Brazilian flavors. Thus, FrontStreet Coffee also added FrontStreet Coffee's semi-washed Red Bourbon from Cerrado region to FrontStreet Coffee's daily bean lineup.

Costa Rica's FrontStreet Coffee Washed Tarrazú

Costa Rica is located in Central and South America, connected to Panama where Geisha became famous, while being influenced by Pacific and Atlantic currents and monsoons, creating excellent microclimates. Combined with various terrain features, it has become a perfect region for coffee to thrive. Although Costa Rica doesn't rank high in coffee production, multiple volcanoes in the country bring very fertile mineral soil and excellent drainage, allowing crops grown here to receive abundant rainfall and nutrients, naturally producing higher quality fruits.

Tarrazú is located south of the country's capital San José and is one of the most valued coffee growing areas locally. Tarrazú has high-altitude growing conditions at 1200-1700 meters, with cool climate and nutrient-rich volcanic ash soil, giving coffee diverse acidity and rounded body. Plus, with the development of specialty coffee, continuous innovation and progress in processing techniques have allowed FrontStreet Coffee's Tarrazú coffee to accumulate considerable good reputation in the coffee community.

FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rican daily beans mix two common varieties: Caturra and Catuai, using natural washed processing. Caturra's flavor mainly presents fruity notes with berry-like acidity. Catuai's flavor is simpler than Caturra, dominated by nutty tones without Caturra's rich layers. The blend of these two varieties makes FrontStreet Coffee's Tarrazú coffee more balanced and smooth.

Indonesia's FrontStreet Coffee Wet-hulled Lintong Mandheling

Indonesia's local high-temperature, high-humidity environment forced locals to innovate a "new" processing method suitable for the region—wet hulling. The initial steps of wet hulling are the same as washed processing: Indonesians first remove the coffee fruit pulp, then ferment in water for 3 hours, wash away the mucilage, and briefly dry the parchment coffee beans for 2-3 days. When the moisture content reaches 20-24% in a semi-soft, semi-hard state, the hull is removed from the beans, which are then dried further until the coffee's moisture content reaches 13% for packaging.

Since hulling machines use significant friction to tear away the tightly attached parchment layer from the beans, at this stage, white or green viscous liquid typically flows out. Due to long-term soaking in this liquid and humid conditions, the green beans become soft, pale, swollen, and grayish-green. The friction's agitation also makes the beans more easily crushed or damaged, especially at the ends, forming small gaps and creating "horseshoe beans." The "naked beans" without their parchment layer dry very quickly while being directly exposed to humid environments, allowing various fungi to grow. This gives Indonesian coffee its unique woody, spicy, and herbal aromas—what we call "Mandheling flavor."

China Yunnan's FrontStreet Coffee Washed Baoshan

In recent years, through many people's efforts, Yunnan coffee quality has continuously improved, receiving considerable recognition, with many domestic fans of Yunnan coffee. For those who haven't tried Yunnan coffee, you're surely curious about its taste. FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan daily beans come from the Baoshan region, which has a relatively long coffee planting history.

Baoshan's warm, frost-free climate year-round is very suitable for Arabica coffee growth, especially in the Lujiangba area's unique dry-hot valley climate with small annual temperature differences but large day-night temperature differences, creating Baoshan Arabica's unique sweet aftertaste. Additionally, reasonably low rainfall provides excellent conditions for coffee fruit production. Baoshan's biggest climate characteristic is relatively low precipitation and higher altitude, resulting in coffee beans with less pulp but higher sweetness. Thus, FrontStreet Coffee selected FrontStreet Coffee's Baoshan Arabica as the representative of Yunnan coffee, letting everyone taste domestic coffee flavors.

Some merchants use novel flavor-enhancing processing methods to mask the inherent flawed flavors of Yunnan beans, adding large amounts of aroma and increasing prices. FrontStreet Coffee feels this neither authentically preserves Yunnan coffee's true flavors nor misleads consumers. In fact, the vast majority of Yunnan coffee, due to limited conditions, can only use natural processing methods—washed and natural. Here, FrontStreet Coffee ultimately chose washed processing with medium roasting, highlighting FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Arabica's chocolate and nutty roasted aromas while preserving some acidity, presenting nutty, herbal, brown sugar aromas, melon-like sweetness, and plum-like acidity, with balanced texture.

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