What Makes 90+ Coffee Beans Unique: Brand Recommendations and Geisha Coffee Pricing

When it comes to "90+", many people immediately think of scores, but in the coffee world, when you mention 90+, you'll find it always sparks heated discussions right away! The focus of these discussions has always been around: What new beans has 90+ released now? What novel processing methods did they use this time? So today, FrontStreet Coffee will share with you all what exactly this 90+ is!

What is 90+?

90+ (Ninety Plus) is the name of an American green coffee bean company. When placed in coffee cupping, it represents a score of 90 or above, and generally only beans of exceptional quality can achieve such high scores. Therefore, people often interpret the meaning of the 90+ company as producing only beans that score above 90.

Of course, it's not without reason that people interpret it this way—the beans produced by the 90+ company are indeed exceptional. For example, the Eleta with longan and spice flavors, or Juliette with grape and champagne flavors, both currently sold by FrontStreet Coffee, are beans produced by the 90+ company. When they are tasted alongside other beans, people can easily identify that they belong to the 90+ series of coffee beans. After all, their uniqueness cannot be replicated elsewhere! And this uniqueness is all thanks to 90+'s own established production system: Profile Processing.

90+ Profile Processing

As mentioned earlier, 90+ is the name of a green coffee bean company, and here "green coffee beans" refers to unprocessed coffee beans. In simple terms, they are green bean merchants, and what distinguishes 90+ from other green bean merchants is the Profile Processing established by 90+ founder Joseph Brodsky at the company's inception.

Conventional green bean merchants, when purchasing beans, generally do so just like us—they first taste the beans' flavor through cupping (drinking), and then purchase the high-quality coffee beans that taste good. This method involves directly acquiring high-quality green beans produced by others for resale. However, what makes 90+ unique is that they didn't intend to be just responsible for the purchasing process; they wanted to handle everything from bean selection and breeding to processing themselves—in other words, to produce their own high-quality green coffee beans! Thus, after the company was founded in 2006, this plan began!

Initially, the 90+ company wasn't large-scale and had insufficient funds to cover all aspects of green coffee bean production. Therefore, they could only start with coffee processing, after all, they held the technology to control flavor expression. The specific operation was to purchase freshly picked coffee cherries from nearby coffee farmers, bring them back to the processing plant for refined post-processing, and under such circumstances, Aricha and Beloya were born.

These two beans possess extremely rich fruit flavors and caused a huge sensation upon release, which made 90+ achieve tremendous fame in their very first battle! Moreover, along with gaining fame came substantial income, which now allowed them to venture into other aspects of green coffee bean production! So, riding this momentum, 90+ began selecting promising coffee farmers and gradually entering every aspect of green coffee bean production. Eventually, 90+ could provide coffee farmers and processing plants with varying degrees of suggestions based on the desired bean flavors, enabling them to better assist and gradually adjust the 90+ beans to match the originally set flavor profiles.

But 90+ wasn't satisfied with this. They would also reselect the produced beans until they found those that best matched their new vision before releasing them for sale! Therefore, it can be said that the reason 90+ company's bean quality can be maintained at an upstream level relies not on luck or opportunism, but on the results brought by their diligent maintenance of standards, and this has always been their core value.

90+ Estates

By 2009, 90+, having achieved great success in Ethiopia, returned to Panama with years of accumulated technology and experience and established the "90+ Geisha Estate" (Ninety Plus Geisha Estate). Because during their time in Ethiopia, they didn't find coffee varieties comparable to Geisha, they decided to directly use Geisha and apply their years of technology to it, making Geisha surpass Geisha! Five years later, in 2014, this estate was finally able to produce coffee beans, and thus the 90+ series was born! The Eleta Geisha and Juliette Geisha mentioned earlier by FrontStreet Coffee both come from this 90+ series!

Introduction to 90+ Estate Geisha Coffee Beans

On FrontStreet Coffee's bean list, there are two beautifully named 90+ Geisha coffee beans: Juliette and Eleta. Medium roasting perfectly interprets their full juice body and rich floral notes. FrontStreet Coffee dares to say that the performance of these two coffee beans lives up to the 90+ reputation.

FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee): Panama Ninety Plus 90+ Geisha · Eleta Coffee Beans

Country: Panama
Grade: SHG
Region: Volcán Region
Estate: Ninety Plus
Variety: Geisha
Altitude: 1400-1800 meters
Processing Method: 90+ Special Processing
Flavor: Bergamot, Sweet Orange, Pineapple, Longan, Preserved Fruit, Apple

FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee): Panama Ninety Plus 90+ Geisha · Juliette Coffee Beans

Country: Panama
Grade: SHG
Region: Volcán Region
Estate: Ninety Plus
Variety: Geisha
Altitude: 1400-1800 meters
Processing Method: 90+ Special Processing
Flavor: Muscat Grape, Champagne, Perfumed Lemon, Full and Rounded Body, Long and Pleasant Sweet Aftertaste

Brewing Suggestions for 90+ Geisha Coffee

Coffee Beans: 90+ Eleta Geisha, 90+ Juliette Geisha
Dripper: V60
Water Temperature: 92°C
Coffee Amount: 15g
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Fine sugar size (80% passes through #20 sieve)

Since these two beans both belong to 90+ special processing, FrontStreet Coffee guesses after tasting that they should be anaerobic natural processing, so we recommend using a finer grind, which allows them to achieve proper extraction despite their faster water flow!

Fold the filter paper to fit the dripper, wet it with a small amount of water to make it adhere better, and pour out the water from the lower pot. Then pour in the coffee grounds and tap gently to distribute the powder layer evenly. For the first pour, gently inject 30 grams of water for blooming, with a blooming time of 30 seconds. For the second pour, inject water to about 135 grams, circling evenly and steadily outward. Then wait for the coffee liquid to drop, and when it drops to halfway, inject the final water to 225 grams. Wait for all the coffee to finish dripping. The total extraction time is generally around 2 minutes, and a cup of 90+ Geisha coffee is ready!

Fast forward to 2019, following the Geisha Estate, 90+ company acquired another plot of land to establish a new 90+ estate. This plot is located near the Barú Volcano, so 90+ named it "90+ Barú Estates" (Ninety Plus Barú Estates). With the nourishment of volcanic soil, we believe 90+ will be able to produce even more delicious coffee beans! FrontStreet Coffee calculates that with its establishment in 2019 and 5 years of cultivation, we now only need to wait a little longer to taste the new delicacies from the 90+ Barú Estate. Let's look forward to it!

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)
For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) on WeChat: qjcoffeex

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473