Brazil Red Yellow Bourbon Coffee Bean Variety Origin Flavor Profile Characteristics How to Brew Cerrado Pour-Over Coffee for Great Taste

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Everyone has different tastes, and their preferred coffee beans vary as well. Some people love the delicate floral notes and refined, clean fruity tones of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe; some enjoy the distinctive smoky flavor of FrontStreet Coffee's Guatemala coffee beans; some appreciate the mouthfilling cherry tomato juice sensation of FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya coffee beans; while others are passionate about the perfectly balanced sweet, sour, and bitter notes of FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee.

Although today's single-origin coffees generally pursue floral and fruity aromas, there will always be traditionalists who seek low acidity, richness, and nutty flavors. FrontStreet Coffee's physical stores are no strangers to customers who dislike acidic coffee—those who say "I don't want acidity, and even strong flavors like Mandheling won't do." Whenever this happens, FrontStreet Coffee's baristas passionately recommend Brazilian coffee beans. But as a "world coffee region collector," how could FrontStreet Coffee only have one type of Brazilian coffee bean?

Brazil's Premium Coffee Regions

Among the Brazilian coffee beans offered by FrontStreet Coffee, besides the Yellow Bourbon from Queen's Estate Farm, Brazilian coffee regions can also be found in the daily coffee beans and drip coffee bag series. This demonstrates that Brazil, as a coffee-producing country, is indispensable in classic coffee flavors.

Those who have read books on coffee know that Brazil is actually not the best region for coffee cultivation. Although Brazil has good soil conditions and a humid climate, its altitude is not high—this is Brazil's fatal flaw in coffee production. It's important to understand that such growing conditions cannot compare with the world's top-tier coffee regions, but everything has its pros and cons. Such natural environmental conditions have also become a major contributing factor to the balanced flavor profile of Brazilian coffee.

After medium-dark roasting, the balanced, nutty flavor of Brazilian coffee becomes its greatest advantage: no outstanding strengths but no obvious flaws either. Mild and smooth in taste, with low acidity, moderate body, and subtle sweetness—all these moderate flavors mixed together create a challenge for the taste buds to distinguish them individually. This is precisely what many loyal Brazilian coffee fans are crazy about. Ordinary and gentle, it can pair with all coffee beans. Even when used in espresso, it doesn't lose its characteristics when colliding with milk; instead, it blends in perfectly. This is why we find that many espresso coffees on the market today use Brazilian beans as an important component of their blends.

Brazil's Rich Coffee History

Brazil's coffee history is long and storied. According to FrontStreet Coffee's research, Brazil introduced coffee from French Guiana in 1729. To this day, Brazil has become the world's largest coffee-producing country. Historical experience has allowed local coffee farmers to accumulate knowledge through intensive cultivation, changing processing methods, and improving planting techniques, which has to some extent improved coffee quality and increased coffee production.

According to FrontStreet Coffee's research, although Brazil has vast territory, its main coffee-producing regions are concentrated in four places: Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Bahia, and Espírito Santo, accounting for 90% of the country's total exports. Our common Santos and Mogiana both come from São Paulo. Cerrado and Sul de Minas in Minas Gerais produce more specialty beans due to their higher altitudes. Cerrado is located in the western part of Minas Gerais and is a flat plateau with elevations ranging from 750m to 1200m.

Sul de Minas consists of hilly terrain at elevations of 700m-1200m and is Brazil's earliest coffee production area. Due to rising labor costs, most harvesting is now done mechanically. It is also Brazil's earliest commercialized coffee region, where we can see many large exporters established. The Bahia production region in northern Brazil mainly produces washed Brazilian coffee, while the coastal Espírito Santo region is the main export area for Brazilian Robusta varieties.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian Selections

Take FrontStreet Coffee's Queen's Estate Farm coffee as an example. The specific green bean information for this coffee bean is as follows:

FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Queen's Estate Farm Coffee Beans
Region: Mogiana region, São Paulo state, Brazil
Altitude: 1400-1950m
Variety: Yellow Bourbon
Processing: Natural processing

When FrontStreet Coffee received this coffee, they noticed that the green beans had a very solid texture with slight orange peel and spice aromas. The green beans had relatively low moisture content, which gave the entire coffee strong heat absorption capability. FrontStreet Coffee's roaster used 200°C as the entry temperature, then high heat with small airflow to accelerate dehydration. After the dehydration phase ended, they used medium airflow and medium heat to allow the coffee beans to fully undergo the Maillard reaction, not rushing the process, and completed roasting just before the first crack ended.

At the same time, FrontStreet Coffee also purchases large quantities of cost-effective, affordable daily coffee beans from Brazil's Cerrado region. Cerrado actually occupies 22% of Brazil's total area as a vast grassland, deep in Brazil's interior. The Portuguese meaning of Cerrado is "closed place." The Cerrado grasslands originated in Mato Grosso province in southwestern Brazil, extending through central-western Minas and reaching western Bahia province. The Cerrado coffee region referred to by FrontStreet Coffee is not the entire Cerrado grassland, but limited to coffee cultivation areas above 1000 meters altitude in central-western Minas province that can be called the Cerrado coffee region. This area represents the essence of the Cerrado grassland, with high altitude and fertile soil, making it possible to grow specialty coffee beans that are sweet, rich in body, and clean in flavor.

So how is FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian Cerrado? In one word—excellent! Here is the green bean information for FrontStreet Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) Cerrado coffee:

FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Red Bourbon Coffee Beans
Country: Brazil
Region: Cerrado region, Minas Gerais state
Altitude: 1000 meters
Variety: Red Bourbon
Processing: Semi-washed

As mentioned earlier, Brazilian coffee beans are characterized by their rich body. To highlight this flavor, FrontStreet Coffee uses medium roasting. However, due to the variable moisture content of the green beans, FrontStreet Coffee needed to change the roasting method. Compared to Yellow Bourbon, FrontStreet Coffee extended the roasting time for this coffee while using a relatively lower entry temperature.

The Bourbon Varietal

FrontStreet Coffee chose these two coffee beans from the Bourbon variety—why? Bourbon coffee is Brazil's main variety. Bourbon coffee was initially cultivated on Réunion Island, which was also called Bourbon Island (Le Bourbon) before 1789. The introduction of the Bourbon variety to Brazil was thanks to the American Civil War, which caused a surge in demand for Brazilian coffee. Brazil sought higher-yielding coffee varieties and thus introduced it for cultivation. The Bourbon variety is a subspecies resulting from a Typica mutation and belongs to the oldest existing Brazilian coffee varieties along with Typica. When green fruits mature, they present a bright red color. Generally, after Red Bourbon coffee trees flower and bear fruit, the color changes of the coffee cherries go from: green > slightly yellow > slightly orange > mature red > darker ripe red, which is why some people call it [Red Bourbon variety]. In fact, Red Bourbon is just the Bourbon variety we generally refer to.

Bourbon varieties grown at high altitudes typically have better aromas and brighter acidity, sometimes even presenting red wine-like flavors. Simply put, the Bourbon variety is a coffee tree variety belonging to a branch of the Arabica species. It generally produces red fruits, called Red Bourbon. Besides this, there are also Yellow Bourbon and Orange Bourbon. Yellow Bourbon has relatively lower yields but better quality.

Brewing Recommendations

Because these two coffees are roasted to a relatively dark degree, FrontStreet Coffee uses KONO drippers to highlight the richness of these coffees. The characteristic of KONO drippers lies in their steeping function, which can use steeping to extract more coffee substances and enhance the rich mouthfeel. Because their ribs are few and located at the bottom, they can make the filter paper fit tightly against the dripper to achieve the effect of restricting airflow, thereby slowing water flow and increasing water-coffee contact time.

FrontStreet Coffee uses segmented extraction. The bloom water amount is twice the coffee powder, meaning 30 grams of water for 30 seconds of blooming. After small circular pouring to 125 grams, segment. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225 grams and stop. The total extraction time is 2 minutes.

Using the same brewing method, but the flavors of these two coffees are quite different. The brewed flavor of Queen's Estate Farm coffee is sweet, clean, and the semi-washed processing makes its acidity slightly bright yet well-integrated with sweetness, with some even showing tropical fruit aromas, especially the overflowing aroma during brewing, which is even more delightful. Fresh sugarcane juice sweetness, black tea, smooth and mellow fruit sweetness, distinct nutty flavors, balanced and gentle acidity, weak and clean bitterness, containing rich chocolate aroma and nutty flavors, with a bright, refreshing, smooth, and delicate mouthfeel. The Cerrado, on the other hand, has obvious sweetness on entry with subtle lemon aroma, containing rich nutty flavors, with distinct dark chocolate flavors in the finish, giving an overall rounded feeling.

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

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Important Notice :

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