The Story of Flower Queen Coffee: Exploring the New Season Ethiopian Sidamo Hambella Flower Queen 6.0 Characteristics

The Origin of Guanhua Coffee: FrontStreet Coffee's Guide to This Ethiopian Gem

When it comes to Ethiopian coffee, most people immediately think of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe coffee beans. However, a few years ago, an Ethiopian Sidamo coffee bean gained worldwide recognition among coffee enthusiasts for its distinctive strawberry cream flavor—this is Guanhua coffee. So why is FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee called "Guanhua"? In this article, FrontStreet Coffee will explain the story and flavor characteristics of Guanhua coffee.

Why is FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua Coffee Called "Guanhua"?

At first glance, "Guanhua" (花魁) suggests a coffee bean overflowing with floral aromas. In reality, FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee beans don't have intense floral notes; instead, they feature more prominent fruit aromas such as passion fruit, strawberry, mango, jackfruit, and citrus. In February 2017, a natural processed coffee from the Buku Abel processing station in Hambella won the Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest Competition. Strictly speaking, only the 2017 natural processed coffee from Buku Abel processing station can be called "Guanhua," which is why Buku Abel processing station is also known as the "Guanhua Estate."

Four months later, at the China regional finals of the World Brewers Cup, Li Jianfei used this Ethiopian natural processed coffee to become the runner-up. The competition results caused a sensation because it broke Geisha's monopoly in brewing competitions, becoming the only coffee capable of competing with it. Guanhua coffee thus formed a connection with Geisha, but after their 2017 encounter, Guanhua and Geisha coffee never faced each other again in direct competition.

Why Are There So Many Versions of Guanhua Coffee?

However, FrontStreet Coffee wants to emphasize one point: if we interpret Guanhua coffee narrowly, then only the TOH natural process champion that entered China in 2017 can be called Guanhua coffee. Of course, it would be a pity if such a wonderful name was just a flash in the pan. Therefore, Beijing Hongshun Company continued to import coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing station in the Hambella region, naming them Guanhua 2.0, Guanhua 3.0, Guanhua 3.1, and so on, to distinguish them from the original Guanhua coffee and represent different batches or harvest seasons.

The Guanhua from the 2020 harvest season was named Guanhua 4.0, while the 2021 harvest season's Guanhua is called Guanhua 5.0. As 2020 marked the fourth year since FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee beans debuted, the production area had expanded to several times its original size, making it difficult to identify which batch of Guanhua came from the Buku processing station. Therefore, starting with Guanhua 5.0 in 2021, these details are no longer emphasized.

At least for now, FrontStreet Coffee believes that identifying Guanhua coffee should be based on whether it was imported by green bean trader Hongshun. Therefore, if you pay attention to foreign coffee roasters, you'll notice that internationally, Guanhua is unknown—only Hambella is recognized.

FrontStreet Coffee · Ethiopia Guanhua 4.0

Origin: Ethiopia

Region: Sidamo, Guji, Hambella

Processing Station: Buku

Altitude: 2350m

Variety: Dega

Processing Method: Natural

This year's FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee still comes from the Buku processing station. "Buku Abel" means "NEW" in the local Ethiopian language, referring to a new place. In this ancient country with over two thousand years of history and a population of 100 million, blocked from Asia by the Great Rift Valley, new virgin lands are still being discovered on this plateau. Compared to millennia of culture, this is quite newly developed land.

Buku Abel is located in southeastern Ethiopia, in the high-altitude primitive tribal area of Hambella within the Guji region, with a population of about 30,000 people. This small village, like most Ethiopian coffee gardens, grows in wild primitive forests. Coffee farmers have passed down their traditions through generations, cultivating native bananas and interspersing local native coffee varieties among the banana trees.

Dega Coffee Bean Variety

This year, Ethiopia hosted its first Cup of Excellence (CoE), and the detailed classification of coffee varieties among the top 28 finalists surprised everyone. The 21st-ranked Dega has two very different versions regarding the origin of its name. One version suggests that Dega's name comes from a type of kindling wood, and the aroma of Dega during roasting is similar to the burning aroma of this kindling wood. Another version explains that "dega" is the root word for "highland and shady places" in Ethiopian, and Dega often grows in high-altitude areas. Unfortunately, since Dega didn't make the top 14 in this COE competition, no flavor descriptions were collected for it. The FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua 4.0 that FrontStreet Coffee acquired this time is precisely Dega variety coffee beans.

FrontStreet Coffee · Ethiopia Sidamo Guanhua 5.0 Coffee Beans

Region: Sidamo, Guji, Hambella

Processing Station: Buku

Altitude: 2350 meters

Variety: Local Landraces

Processing Method: Natural

FrontStreet Coffee Roasting Analysis

FrontStreet Coffee reviews the flavor descriptions provided by green bean suppliers and checks the bean moisture content. The freshly received green beans have a fermented wine aroma of coffee flowers, completely different from the grassy aroma of typical green beans. For new harvest FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee beans, due to higher moisture content, FrontStreet Coffee extends the dehydration time in the early stages of roasting, entering first crack with rising temperature to preserve the loss of aromatic substances like floral notes as much as possible.

FrontStreet Coffee uses a Taiwan Yang Jia 800N machine, introducing beans at 190°C, completing dehydration and turning yellow in nearly 6 minutes (yellowing point around 150-153°C). First crack begins around 9 minutes and 50 seconds (Guanhua's first crack occurs later than typical beans and has a weak cracking sound). The development time after first crack should be controlled not to exceed 1 minute 30 seconds, but not less than 1 minute (it's recommended to open the air damper and reduce heat to control speed). When smelling with the sampling spoon, you should detect strawberry jam aroma around 193°C, at which point you can discharge the beans. The total time should ideally be controlled within 11 minutes.

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Guide

To fully extract the rich layers of Guanhua coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee uses higher water temperature and finer grind size for extraction. However, to avoid over-extraction due to high temperatures, a faster flow-rate dripper like the V60 is used. The V60 dripper has a 60-degree conical shape, allowing coffee grounds to concentrate in the center. During pouring, water flow automatically converges toward the center of the dripper, ensuring sufficient contact time between water and coffee grounds, thus extracting appropriate coffee liquid. Additionally, the spiral ribs on the inside of the V60 dripper extend from bottom to top in a clockwise pattern, creating enough space between filter paper and dripper for good water flow. Combined with the large hole at the bottom, the water flow rate is relatively faster than many other drippers.

The optimal drinking time for FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee beans is 7-30 days after roasting. FrontStreet Coffee deeply understands that coffee bean freshness greatly affects flavor. FrontStreet Coffee's roasting philosophy is "freshly roasted good coffee," ensuring that every customer who places an order receives the freshest coffee possible. The coffee beans shipped by FrontStreet Coffee are all roasted within 5 days, so when customers receive them, they are at their peak flavor.

Brewing Parameters: V60 dripper, water temperature 90°C, water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, coffee dose 15g, grind size (China #20 standard sieve 80% pass-through)

FrontStreet Coffee uses a three-stage brewing method for FrontStreet Coffee's Guanhua coffee. First, preheat the coffee pot and dripper, pour in 15g of coffee powder, and tap gently to level. Inject 30g of water for a 30-second bloom—longer bloom times are not recommended as they can easily cause astringency.

For the second stage, inject 120g of water in concentric circles from the center outward, completing the injection in about 1 minute. When you're about to see the coffee bed, inject the final stage using the same pouring method with 90g of water. Remove the dripper after all water has flowed into the lower pot to complete extraction. Total brewing time is 2 minutes and 5 seconds.

FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo Guanhua 4.0 Coffee Flavor Profile: Citrus acidity, full-bodied strawberry juice sensation, lemon black tea character, persistent sweetness.

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