Cuban Coffee Bean Roasting Analysis: What Makes Cuban Wild Coffee Beans Special?

Smoke rises slowly, and the cooking smoke becomes indistinguishable from coffee or tobacco, a blend that belongs to that country's one-of-a-kind atmosphere.

Cuban Coffee Profile

Origin: Cuba.

Flavor: A smooth, even mouthfeel, low acidity, a light oatmeal sweetness with rich bitterness.

Aroma: A distinct blackcurrant fragrance with cocoa aroma.

Other: Cuban coffee cultivation dates back to 1748, but its economic returns could not compete with tobacco, so it never spread as widely and never earned the fame of Cuban cigars.

The Crystal Mountains of Cuba

Cuba feels both familiar and distant: familiar because its baseball teams so often win world championships at various levels, distant because it lies on the far side of the Earth in the picturesque Caribbean Sea. Like other Cuban industries, coffee is under state production management. Cuba's best coffee region is the Central Mountain Range (Escambray). Besides coffee, the range also produces precious minerals such as quartz and crystal, which is why it is also known as Crystal Mountain. Cuban Crystal Mountain coffee production is very limited and almost monopolized by Japan's Meiwa and France's Cafe Legal. Cuban Crystal Mountain is a typical island bean: clean and delicate in the mouth, with a slight acidity that is not strong but persistent, and a sweet melon-and-fruit fragrance in the aftertaste.

Cuban Small Crystal Characteristics

Cuban Small Crystal green beans are more yellowish in color, and the bean size is slightly smaller than Caribbean coffee beans. It uses a natural washing method, with sun-drying in the final stage. There are few defective beans and empty shells, and the moisture content is highly consistent from bean to bean.

Roasting Profiles

Light Roast City (Fresh Aroma): When water is added, the coffee powder and hot water produce a strong honey sweetness. The mouthfeel is soft with a hint of minty freshness, and the wheat aroma is never unpleasant. The aftertaste leaves a refreshing sensation on the center of the tongue, like mint gum passing through. This is a good coffee whose acidity is never aggressive.

Because the beans have slightly lower moisture content, between Brazilian beans and East African beans, the bean body is softer, and at deeper roast levels lactone esterification creates a very smooth, gentle mouthfeel.

Dark Roast (General C): Pure wheat sweetness, with a sweet, fruity blueberry-jam acidity found in the subtle details. It may also be masked by an overly strong brown-sugar-water aroma. The aftertaste is a very persistent melon-and-fruit sweetness that lingers in the mouth.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If roasting and balance are what interest you, FrontStreet Coffee's medium-roast lineup follows the same logic of letting a bean's natural sweetness and structure come through. FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Estate is a Yellow Bourbon from Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer; medium-roasted, it shows creamy peanut, chocolate, toast and sugarcane aromas and sweetness, and it works for pour-over as well as a moka pot or home espresso machine.

For a sweeter medium roast, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy is a Geisha blend that combines a honey-processed coffee from Costa Rica with a washed Panama Geisha, roasted medium so the cup shows both orange-blossom honey sweetness and a round, mellow body; it suits cold brew, pour-over and espresso. FrontStreet 2013 Sun-Dried Typica, a Chinese specialty representative, is Yunnan small-bean in style, medium-roasted for a balanced, gentle profile of nuts, brown sugar, black tea and dried apricot, at very good value. And for the classic, FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1 is a Typica from Jamaica's Blue Mountains, medium-roasted to blend acidity, bitterness, sweetness and body into one elegant, chocolate-and-roasted-nut cup.