Want to Buy Imported Pure Coffee Beans? Can You Recommend What Brands to Buy? Why Instead Look for Small Bean Suppliers?

Coffee, Wine, and Tea: Flavorful Foods

Coffee, wine, and tea are all flavorful food products. China's coffee bean production accounts for less than 1% of the world's total, so most coffee beans are imported. If you are planning to buy some brand-name beans with a casual attitude toward flavor, it is fine to experiment. However, if you plan to buy a bag of coffee for someone who truly knows coffee, you should give up on selecting beans from large supermarkets.

Freshness: The Fundamental Principle

Whether for espresso or single-origin coffee, the most fundamental principle for selecting coffee beans is only one: freshly roasted. Whether it is Starbucks or a supermarket, if you check the roasting date, most products are from months ago. Coffee is made from roasted coffee beans, and the longer the time since roasting, the more the aroma dissipates. Although some brands use various preservation technologies (such as nitrogen flushing), beans that are several months old will certainly have lost much of their fragrance. Some major coffee brands also roast their beans darker to enable longer storage, which in turn means even more flavor loss.

Three Key Information Elements

Besides freshness, regardless of which country the coffee comes from, look for three pieces of information about the beans: variety, altitude, and processing method. If the seller emphasizes these three elements, the resulting beans will generally not be bad. On the other hand, the smaller and more specific the origin region you can confirm, the better it will naturally be. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Flower Queen coffee beans from Hambela, Sidamo Province, Ethiopia, will generally be of higher quality than beans simply labeled as Ethiopian coffee.

Recommended Fresh-Roasted Specialty Coffee Bean Brands

FrontStreet Coffee

A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find both famous and lesser-known beans. They also provide online shop services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Mingqian

I have visited them. Mingqian has one significant characteristic: their branding is excellent. But as for their coffee, well, let us talk about something else. The simple iron packaging plays a big role in this. In China, finding people who know design, love coffee, and are willing to work with you is truly not easy. I really admire Zhongshun for this. https://shop36409483.taobao.com

Kalita

It is said to be run by Japanese people, but Japanese people always do things differently from people of other countries, always having their own style. They do not follow internationally common evaluation standards, so their roasting methods are not mainstream.

Zhiguan

I am not familiar with them, but I just searched and saw a screen full of barista credentials, which left me speechless. Dear, can you have some coffee shop ambiance? https://zhiguansp.tmall.com

Black Mage

I had not heard of them either, so I looked them up. You can drink their coffee for fun, but if you want to advance and drink better coffee, you can give up on this shop.

Uncle Bean

This is a coffee shop that puts more thought into marketing than into coffee. Surprisingly, their sales are still average... https://doushu.tmall.com

Fisher Coffee

This one is decent, though a bit expensive. https://shop33121581.taobao.com

17 Degrees Coffee

Recommended for friends who are just starting out. The price is not expensive, and the cost-performance ratio is high.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Freshness and traceability are what matter most, and Ethiopian coffees make both easy to check because the producing village or cooperative is usually named on the bag. FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the entry point: it carries clear jasmine aroma and bright citrus acidity, light and elegant with a tea-like body, like a clean glass of lemon tea.

If you want a specific cooperative, FrontStreet Coffee's Gedingding comes from the Woka region at the southeastern end of Yirgacheffe, separated from the Woka cooperative to stand as a single origin. Because the fruit is pulped before drying, its inherent aromas read more clearly, giving citrus and lemon notes with elegant white florals. For a natural-process alternative, FrontStreet Coffee's Sun-Dried Red Cherry is dried whole for about two weeks, then screened by density and color and hand-sorted, with a flavor of peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon.