Non-Bitter Coffee Drink Recommendations | Starbucks Non-Bitter Coffee Varieties & Flavor Profiles

Nowadays, the number of people with coffee-drinking habits is growing larger. However, when walking into Starbucks and looking at the dazzling menu, many friends with decision paralysis start to feel overwhelmed: Which coffees are not bitter? Which coffee tastes the best? How should they be ranked by sweetness?

It's quite simple—the more syrup added to a coffee, the sweeter it becomes, such as Frappuccinos. Meanwhile, the more milk added, the more diluted the coffee flavor becomes, making the bitterness less noticeable. Examples include espresso, mocha coffee with chocolate sauce, and caramel macchiato with caramel.

FrontStreet Coffee has found that most customers who visit Starbucks prefer coffees with added milk and sugar. For pour-over coffee without sugar or milk, most people find they cannot accept its bitterness. However, through years of experience, FrontStreet Coffee can easily determine that besides various factors such as coffee bean variety, growing environment, brewing water temperature, brewing time, and coffee bean grind size, the most important factor contributing to the obvious bitterness in pour-over coffee is the roast level of the coffee beans. If coffee beans are roasted darker, as the body increases, so does the bitterness.

Understanding Coffee Roast Levels

As we all know, raw coffee beans are light green in color. With roasting, the color of coffee beans gradually changes from light green to brown and even dark brown. As the roast level deepens, the Maillard reaction continues, with proteins and polysaccharides transforming into huge dark brown pigment molecules. These pigments are precisely what constitute the source of coffee's bitterness. The larger the pigment molecules, the stronger the bitterness, the weaker the acidity, and the fuller the body.

Coffee Bean Examples from FrontStreet Coffee

The more than thirty coffee beans on FrontStreet Coffee's shop menu can all attest to this knowledge point. Let's use two beans with the most extreme flavor profiles as comparison:

FrontStreet Coffee Kenya Asalia Coffee Beans
Region: Thika, Kenya
Processing Station: Asali Honey Processing Station
Altitude: 1550m-1750m
Varieties: SL28, SL34
Processing Method: K72 Washed

FrontStreet Coffee PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans
Country: Indonesia
Region: Gayo Mountain, Aceh, Sumatra
Altitude: 1100m-1600m
Variety: Ateng
Processing Method: Wet Hulling

Brewing Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee recommends using the following brewing parameters:

Filter: Kono dripper [Golden Mandheling]; V60 dripper [Kenya]
Water Temperature: 86°C [Golden Mandheling]; 93°C [Kenya]
Coffee Dose: 15 grams
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: EK43s #11 (70-75% pass-through rate on China standard #20 sieve) [Golden Mandheling]; EK43s #10 (80% pass-through rate on China standard #20 sieve) [Kenya]

FrontStreet Coffee uses a multi-stage extraction method: bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds, then pour in a small circular motion to 125g and segment. When the water level drops to just before exposing the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225g and stop. Wait until the water level drops to just before exposing the coffee bed, then remove the dripper. Total extraction time (starting from bloom) is 2'00".

Flavor Descriptions

[Kenya] The aroma has ripe tomato and floral notes. The entry reveals cherry tomato and black plum flavors, with bright acidity and a clean, rich mouthfeel. The middle section highlights prominent sweetness with a juicy sensation. The aftertaste features berry fragrance and brown sugar sweetness, along with green tea aroma.

[Golden Mandheling] Multi-layered, full-bodied and clean, with high balance. Rich nut and caramel aromas, with chocolate notes, and a persistent aftertaste.

Kenya Asalia

The reason FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Asalia coffee beans can achieve bright, clean acidity is not only because of their light roast level but also because of the phosphorus-rich red soil in Kenya and their K72 processing method.

What is K72 Processing?

The K72 processing method, also known as the Kenyan 72-hour fermented washed processing method. Kenyan coffee beans undergo a repeated processing method of fermentation followed by washing. Processing begins on the day of harvest, selecting the highest quality cherries for pulping and fermentation, with a fermentation time of 24 hours. After 24 hours, they are washed with clean river water, repeating this process 3 times to achieve 72 hours total.

Golden Mandheling

The reason Mandheling became known to the world is largely due to its excellent body. There's quite a story behind this.

Mandheling was originally the name of a tribe in Indonesia, and it becoming a coffee bean name was quite accidental. When Japanese soldiers returned to Japan after the colonial period in Indonesia, they couldn't forget the delicious local coffee. Through trade friends, they asked locals to help collect high-quality coffee beans, including this Mandheling variety. The Japanese people loved this coffee bean and asked for its name. Since the commercial source couldn't be disclosed, the locals casually said "Mandheling," and thus Mandheling accidentally became the name of a coffee bean variety.

The friend who helped was actually the owner of Indonesia's PWN company (Pwani Coffee Company). Later, PWN company registered Golden Mandheling as their trademark. FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling is precisely the Golden Mandheling from PWN company.

Special Wet Hulling Processing Method

Most Mandheling coffee uses Sumatra's unique coffee bean processing method—wet hulling. Wet hulling creates the special flavor of Mandheling, and it can be said that Mandheling and wet hulling have a bound relationship.

Due to the local weather being predominantly rainy with constant typhoons, making it impossible to achieve the good weather required for sun-drying, and because the local economy was not prosperous enough to use the more expensive washed processing method, the locally characteristic wet hulling method was developed. Now Indonesian coffee development is no longer the poverty-stricken scene of the past, and there are many estates and companies with conditions to use washed processing. However, FrontStreet Coffee believes that wet hulling is the factor that made Mandheling coffee known to the world. When mentioning Mandheling coffee, people think of wet hulling, so they have become complementary to each other.

The specific steps of wet hulling can be divided into the following two stages:

Stage One: Use a wooden pulper to remove the skin and pulp, ferment for 3 hours, then sun-dry to reduce moisture content to semi-dry, semi-wet 30-50%.

Stage Two: Remove the mucilage and parchment, continue with the final drying process, which takes 2-4 days, reducing moisture content to 12-13%.

In addition to regular wet hulling, there is also aged wet hulling. Coffee beans are first processed through regular wet hulling, then sealed in warehouses for 2-3 years. The warehouse environment must be cool and ventilated, with regular turning of the beans to prevent mold and spoilage. During this period, the acidity of the coffee beans gradually diminishes and converts to sugars, and the color becomes deeper, mostly yellow-brown or dark brown. The Mandheling coffee beans on FrontStreet Coffee's menu that use this processing method are called Aged Mandheling coffee beans.

Panama Geisha

If you ask whether there are sweet pour-over coffees, there really are! For example, in FrontStreet Coffee's view, the Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda washed green label Geisha offers excellent value for money.

When talking about Geisha, we must mention Hacienda La Esmeralda. La Esmeralda is both the discoverer of Geisha flavor and the promoter of Geisha coffee. The Geisha variety was introduced to Panama in the 1960s and remained relatively unknown. However, after more than 40 years of quiet development, it won first place in the 2004 BOP competition and became famous overnight, known to the world.

Geisha coffee beans are considered the brightest, most complex, and intensely aromatic coffee variety. Geisha coffee trees grow at very high altitudes and have beautiful long, narrow leaves. Geisha coffee cherries and raw Geisha beans are also slightly more elongated compared to other top-quality high-altitude coffees. Geisha has full sweetness, an extremely clean mouthfeel, and rich aromas that range from berries and citrus to mango, papaya, and peach. A very distinct bergamot-like aftertaste is also one of its typical cupping characteristics. Geisha coffee beans are often champions among coffee varieties. Geisha coffee beans have medium body in cupping evaluations.

La Esmeralda classifies its Geisha coffee varieties into three grades: Red Label, Green Label, and Blue Label. To maintain the estate's brand image, starting from 2021, they eliminated the Blue Label under the Geisha brand.

Green Label Geisha

Green Label is not a separate competition batch—these are Geisha varieties from different plots that don't participate in bidding but still have excellent quality. Selected from Geisha varieties grown at altitudes of 1600-1800 meters, produced as micro-lot blends from different plots such as Jaramillo and Canas Verdes. People often ask about the difference between Red Label and Green Label. FrontStreet Coffee's most straightforward answer is that Red Label can be traced back to specific small plots, while Green Label is a blend that cannot be traced to specific plots. Because it uses a blending model without detailed plot specifications, sometimes Green Label and Red Label may have very similar flavor profiles, but the next batch might differ. FrontStreet Coffee feels that drinking Green Label is like the excitement of buying a lottery ticket—perhaps this batch you taste has the flavor of Red Label. Green Label Geisha is processed using natural/washed methods.

FrontStreet Coffee's La Esmeralda washed green label Geisha has fresh jasmine and ginger flower aromas, citrus-like bright acidity, and a thick, juicy mouthfeel.

FrontStreet Coffee La Esmeralda Green Label Geisha Coffee Beans
Region: Boquete Region, Panama
Estate: Hacienda La Esmeralda
Altitude: 1600m-1800m
Variety: Geisha
Processing Method: Washed

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations for La Esmeralda Green Label Geisha

Filter: V60 #01
Coffee Dose: 15g
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:16
Grind Size: EK43s #10.2
Water Temperature: 91°C

FrontStreet Coffee considers that these Geisha coffee beans are all lightly roasted. Light-roasted beans have lower solubility than dark-roasted ones, so to ensure full extraction of Geisha flavors, Frontsteet uses higher water temperature for brewing while also choosing a finer grind size. Some friends may have noticed that Frontsteet has always recommended a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, but for La Esmeralda's Geisha, it's 1:16. This is because slightly increasing the water ratio helps better experience the complexity and flavors of Geisha.

FrontStreet Coffee uses multi-stage extraction, also called three-stage brewing: bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds, then pour in a small circular motion to 125g and segment. When the water level drops to just before exposing the coffee bed, continue pouring to 240g and stop. Wait until the water level drops to just before exposing the coffee bed, then remove the dripper. Total extraction time (starting from bloom) is 2'00" to 2'05".

Flavor Description: Rich jasmine flower aroma, high sweetness, citrus, berries, juice sensation, cream, green tea, orange peel, cantaloupe, with overall rich flavor layers and persistent floral and citrus aftertaste.

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat: 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