Guatemala Coffee Brands & Antigua Coffee Bean Flavor Characteristics Story

FrontStreet Coffee has discovered that coffee from this small Central American country has shown remarkable performance in recent years: harmonious, sweet, and gentle, with abundant aromas. Savoring it is like exploring its roots (Mayan culture).

Guatemalan coffee beans, with their unique style, have joined the ranks of world-renowned coffee producing regions in recent years. In the shady volcanic highlands, coffee beans develop complex aromatic layers and full-bodied flavors, inevitably reminiscent of the region's ancient Mayan culture—profound, distant, and mysterious.

Pacaya Volcano is an active volcano located 33 kilometers south of Guatemala City. It is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. The local government has opened climbing routes allowing tourists to reach the crater edge at an altitude of 2,552 meters to enjoy the heat and sulfur smell from the crater. The volcanic ash ejected by the volcano enriches the surrounding soil with abundant minerals. Combined with the significant temperature differences between day and night in the volcanic environment, coffee beans produced in this region develop unique flavors. According to data provided by coffee merchants, small coffee farmers in the Pacaya volcano region choose to plant very close to the volcano peak to ensure coffee receives more nutrients. This approach, of course, comes with the risk of unexpected volcanic eruptions, making the green coffee beans from this region scarce but high quality, highly sought after by coffee enthusiasts.

FrontStreet Coffee's Guatemala Antigua La Flor del Café

FrontStreet Coffee Guatemala Antigua La Flor del Café Coffee Beans

Origin: Guatemala Antigua

Estate: La Minita

Varieties: Bourbon, Caturra

Altitude: 1,200 meters

Processing Method: Washed processing

After brewing, FrontStreet Coffee's Guatemala La Flor del Café coffee beans exhibit prominent citrus acidity with a juice-like sourness, rich floral aromas, pleasant sweetness, medium body, with slight caramel and smoky notes in the finish. The overall character is clean, gentle, and smooth-textured, with balanced, lively, and multi-layered flavors.

Guatemala's Coffee Growing Regions

Guatemala is located in the Central American isthmus, with many high mountains and plateaus formed by volcanoes. It produces high-quality Central American high-altitude strictly hard bean coffee, ranking as the world's 9th largest coffee bean producing country. Guatemala's main coffee producing regions include seven major areas: Antigua, Huehuetenango, Atitlan, Coban, Fraijanes, and Acatenango. All coffee beans produced in Guatemala's seven coffee-producing regions are Arabica, located in subtropical highland terrain with abundant and stable rainfall, and fertile volcanic ash soil, providing extremely suitable natural conditions for coffee cultivation throughout the country. Among these, Guatemala's Huehuetenango and Antigua regions have become most well-known in recent years.

Each producing region has unique flavors, with excellent acidity and fruity aromas that are smooth and palatable, belonging to the category of world-class premium coffees, suitable for single-origin drinking. The Antigua producing region is located in the entire area dominated by the Madre plateau within the topographically mountainous range that crosses Guatemala. Due to natural conditions in this region, Antigua has become Guatemala's most famous producing region.

The Antigua producing region itself is the most famous among Guatemala's seven major regions, with high altitude, unique volcanic soil, and shade cultivation, giving Antigua region coffee beans a distinctive regional flavor.

Antigua's summers have little rainfall, and winters occasionally experience frost due to excessive cold, conditions actually not suitable for coffee tree growth. Fortunately, the region is situated in an active volcanic zone. After volcanic eruptions, volcanic pumice falls into the soil and, upon cooling, forms numerous fine pores that are excellent for moisture retention. Combined with large numbers of shade trees planted in the estates, coffee trees are protected from cold damage in winter. These factors that overcome adverse conditions, along with significant temperature differences between day and night, create Antigua's unique microclimate, giving the coffee beans here a subtle smoky flavor and rich fruit aromas.

La Minita Estate and La Flor del Café

La Flor del Café is a brand coffee under the La Minita company, with its producing region located in Antigua City, Guatemala—a highland surrounded by active volcanoes at an altitude of 1,850 meters, making it the country's most award-winning and famous producing region.

La Minita Estate is renowned for its excellent cultivation and processing techniques, as well as extremely strict quality control. They commission Las Pastores, Antigua's largest washed processing plant, to handle the green beans according to these standards and name the coffee La Flor del Café. In addition to preserving the original regional flavors, the dry aroma carries rich floral and tea fragrances. Upon entry, lime acidity and berry notes emerge, transitioning to a honey-like finish. Excellent cleanliness and rich layering are the characteristics of this La Flor del Café.

La Minita Estate's coffee cultivation management is extremely strict. The estate does not use pesticides, and due to its geographical advantages in climate and altitude, these conditions limit pest populations, with the small number of pests having minimal impact on coffee trees. As the rainy season approaches its end, coffee fruits begin to ripen. Green fruits start turning red, but coffee fruit maturation is very slow and uneven, unlike the rapid and consistent flowering. Therefore, harvesting work must be handled more carefully, collecting only fully ripe deep red fruits. The fruits from a single tree may require up to 5 separate harvests based on ripeness. The estate conducts soil testing twice yearly to determine fertilization methods. La Minita Estate is very careful when using products that can increase yield, fertilizing approximately 3 times per year.

Additionally, the application of trace elements such as zinc, boron, and copper can provide more nutrients to coffee trees and prevent diseases. Such scientific cultivation management has created the excellent flavor performance of La Flor del Café coffee and maintained a reputation for consistent quality over the years. Following La Minita's famous gatekeeping procedures, La Flor del Café coffee is strictly supervised throughout the entire process from cultivation to packaging. These complex procedures ensure that the green beans provided by the Pastores processing plant are of the highest quality and strictly adhere to the estate's standard operating procedures.

Coffee Varieties and Roasting

FrontStreet Coffee's Guatemala La Flor del Café is primarily composed of Bourbon and Caturra varieties. The Bourbon variety, alongside Typica, ranks among ancient, high-quality coffee varieties, with beans that are smaller and more rounded compared to Typica.

Caturra offers lemon or citrus-like acidity in flavor, but in terms of sweetness, it doesn't match Typica and Bourbon. Caturra's sweetness depends on the frequency and dosage of fertilization by growers. It has high production capacity, but maintaining yield requires continuous fertilization and pruning, resulting in short trees with many branches. Although yield increases, because the harvest period takes 2 years and care costs are higher, production remains somewhat limited.

When FrontStreet Coffee's roaster received this Guatemala La Flor del Café coffee, they observed that the beans were rounded, greenish-yellow, with good uniformity and medium moisture content. The roasting goal was medium roast—to preserve bright acidity to showcase floral and fruit aromas while enhancing richness and balance.

In FrontStreet Coffee's first batch of roasting, the drop temperature was relatively high, with an entry temperature of 200°C and relatively high heat. During the roasting process, it was discovered that these beans come from high altitude with hard bean density. To preserve more acidic aromas, a high-temperature-rising approach with earlier first crack was adopted. Heat was reduced when the beans entered the yellowing point, after dehydration completion, and before first crack to avoid surface scorching. The beans were dropped 1 minute 50 seconds after first crack ended, shortening the caramelization reaction time to preserve more floral and fruit notes.

Brewing Method

FrontStreet Coffee's barista, when brewing, considering the medium roast level and to extract more floral and fruit aromas, uses higher water temperature and finer grind size. To avoid over-extraction, a faster-flowing V60 dripper is used.

Dripper: Hario V60

Water Temperature: 91°C

Coffee Dose: 15 grams

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size: 80% pass-through through #20 sieve

First, pour 30g of water to completely saturate the coffee grounds and bloom for 30 seconds. Slowly pour in a circular motion for the second pour to reach 125g, segmenting the pour. When the water level in the dripper drops to just above the coffee bed, continue pouring. For the third pour, reach 225g and immediately stop pouring. Wait for all water to completely drip into the server below, then remove the dripper and gently swirl to make the coffee uniform. Total extraction time is approximately 2 minutes.

For more coffee information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat Official Account: cafe_style)

For professional coffee knowledge exchange, please add WeChat ID: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473