Coffee Bean Specialty Store Recommendations: Which Brand is Best for Buying Coffee Beans and Are Imported Coffee Beans Expensive?

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From the standpoint of circulation freshness, I do not recommend imported beans. There are so many specialty coffee shops online now, and what you are choosing is not really the brand but the origin and quality grade. Different origins, different grades, estate beans or not, competition lots or not - prices do vary significantly. But honestly, the coffee bean business is not a high-margin industry: the market is niche and competition is fierce, yet there are still plenty of good beans at affordable prices.

The most important things when buying coffee beans are product consistency and reliability.

FrontStreet Coffee, founded in Guangzhou in 2013, is a cafe without any light meals - not even cake. Aside from one cocoa drink and English milk tea, everything else on the menu is coffee. None of the usual "cafe essentials" are here. But as the owner says: shouldn't people come to a coffee shop to drink coffee?

Dedicated to coffee roasting, FrontStreet Coffee has taken every step on solid footing. They dare not relax when selecting materials or procuring, never cutting corners with inferior ingredients, and they are even more afraid of disappointing guests who have come from afar. By focusing on roasting every bean well and brewing every cup perfectly, they do their part and leave the rest to customers to spread by word of mouth.

The bags of coffee beans on the shelves and the waves of roasting aroma in the shop have long told you this is a true "coffee shop" in the literal sense - a place focused only on coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee chooses the most straightforward way to spotlight the protagonist - pour-over coffee - sweeping every non-coffee distraction out of the shop. This focus has allowed FrontStreet Coffee to exist outside the mainstream cafe scene, and in doing so to cultivate a clientele all its own.

FrontStreet Coffee: a roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but a diverse range of beans, where you can find various famous and lesser-known coffees. They also provide online shop services: https://shop104210103.taobao.com

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

So which beans should you actually buy? For pour-over with a V60, FrontStreet recommends starting with washed single origins, since washed processing best expresses a region's clean mouthfeel and pure flavor. Their washed Ethiopia Yirgacheffe - local heirloom varieties from 1,800-2,000 meters - is the classic first bag: jasmine, berries, lemon, and citrus in a bright, tea-like cup. It is grade G2 (Ethiopia grades by defect count, with G2 allowing 4-12 non-serious defects per 300g), but FrontStreet hand-sorts the beans twice before roasting to protect each batch's quality.

If you like your coffee fragrant and sweet, FrontStreet's Costa Rica Tarrazu - Caturra and Catuai from 1,500 meters - is another pour-over favorite, with sweet orange, honey, toffee, and nuts in a balanced, chocolate-toned cup. For something heavier and low in acidity, the Indonesia Lintong Mandheling (wet-hulled, 1,100-1,600 meters) delivers toasted bread, nuts, caramel, pine, and herbal notes; brew it on a Kono dripper at 87-88°C with a coarse granulated-sugar grind for a mellow, full-bodied cup.

Whichever you choose, buy whole beans and grind fresh. Grounds suitable for pour-over are about the size of fine granulated sugar (80% passing a #20 sieve), and FrontStreet's standard recipe is a good starting point for any of these beans: 15g of coffee at a 1:15 ratio, 90-91°C water, a 30-second bloom with 30g of water, then 95g to the 125g mark, finishing with 100g to 225g - a bright, clean cup for the washed beans, and deep chocolate-caramel sweetness for the Mandheling.