Coffee Bean Selection Guide | How to Choose Premium Specialty Coffee Beans and Top Brand Recommendations

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Coffee Bean Brands: Is There No Reliable Lightning Rod?

Some friends always ask me if they can buy coffee beans by "recognizing this label." In reality, such options do exist, but first, please give up on selecting coffee beans from large supermarkets. Whether for espresso or single-origin coffee, there is only one fundamental principle for choosing coffee beans: fresh roasting. Whether it's Starbucks or supermarkets, as long as you pay attention to the roasting date, most products are from months ago. Coffee is made from coffee beans through roasting—the longer the time after roasting, the more its 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 bean brands also roast their beans darker to enable longer storage times, which means even more flavor loss.

Besides freshness, regardless of which country the coffee comes from, if you can find three pieces of information about the beans: variety, altitude, and processing method. If sellers can emphasize these three elements of coffee beans, the resulting beans will generally not be bad. On the other hand, the more specifically confirmed the origin region, the naturally better it will be. For example, coffee beans from Hambela in the Sidamo province of Ethiopia—under most circumstances, their quality will be higher than that of generic Ethiopian coffee beans.

Recommended Fresh Roasted Specialty Coffee Bean Brands

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small storefront 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've visited them. Mingqian's standout feature is their excellent branding. But as for their coffee—well, let's talk about something else. The plain tin packaging plays a significant role here. In China, finding people who can design, love coffee, and are willing to work with you is truly not easy, so I still admire Zhongshun for this. https://shop36409483.taobao.com

Kalita: Said to be opened by Japanese people, but Japanese people always do things differently from people of other countries—they always create their own style, not following internationally recognized evaluation standards, so their roasting methods are not mainstream.

Quality Cafe: I'm not familiar with them, but I just searched and was speechless seeing a screen full of barista qualifications... Honey, can we have some coffee shop vibe? https://zhiguansp.tmall.com

Black Mage: Haven't 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 one.

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

Fisher Coffee: This one is decent, though slightly more expensive. https://shop33121581.taobao.com

17 Degrees Coffee: Recommended for friends just starting out—affordable price with high cost-performance ratio.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473