What are the Varieties of Yunnan Coffee? Flavor Characteristics of Yunnan Typica and Catimor Small-Bean Coffee

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When it comes to Asian coffee, FrontStreet Coffee believes that Yunnan coffee from China definitely deserves a place. Coffee enthusiasts who have tried Yunnan coffee at FrontStreet Coffee have also been full of praise.

Today, FrontStreet Coffee would like to chat with all coffee enthusiast friends about Yunnan coffee.

In fact, the vast majority of coffee available on the Chinese market today comes from Yunnan. Yunnan coffee accounts for 98% of the country's total, basically representing China's coffee cultivation industry.

Characteristics of Yunnan Coffee Production Regions

Yunnan is located in southwestern China, with the Tropic of Cancer crossing through its southern part. It features a mountainous plateau terrain, where the medium-altitude area of 1000-3500m accounts for nearly 90% of the province's total land area. Yunnan's climate belongs to the subtropical plateau monsoon type, with large daily temperature differences and abundant rainfall. As FrontStreet Coffee mentioned before, coffee's growing environment requires high altitude areas with suitable temperature and precipitation to cultivate high-quality coffee cherries. Yunnan perfectly meets these conditions, so coffee cherries produced in Yunnan are destined to be of good quality.

According to FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, the main cultivation areas for Yunnan's small-grain coffee are in the southern and western regions, with Pu'er, Baoshan, Dehong, and Lincang being particularly famous. FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan coffee mainly comes from Baoshan, Yunnan, with rich but not bitter flavor, fragrant but not intense, and very distinctive regional characteristics.

Dehong

The birthplace of Chinese coffee, this region has an altitude of 1,000 to 1,600 meters and coffee plantations covering 2,000 hectares. More importantly, most coffee here is grown organically, making it one of the world's highest-quality coffees.

Pu'er

FrontStreet Coffee believes that most people have only heard of Pu'er tea but not Pu'er coffee. In fact, it is our country's coffee capital. In 2012, Pu'er had a cultivation area of 43,433 hectares and a coffee harvest area of 18,000 hectares, with an annual coffee production of 36,500 tons, of which 24,700 tons were exported. The Pu'er coffee industry has 70 registered enterprises, 30,000 households, and about 1 million people. Pu'er tea is known as the "City of Tea for a Thousand Years" and is an important Chinese coffee production area with the largest cultivation area, highest output, and best quality, as well as an important distribution center for international coffee business.

In 2013, the China Fruit Marketing Association (CFMA) officially declared Pu'er as the "Coffee Capital of China" and held local barista competitions to select national representatives for the World Barista Championship. This declaration marked a new era in Pu'er's coffee history.

Baoshan

According to FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, the history of coffee cultivation in Baoshan began in the mid-1950s. The first coffee seedlings were introduced from Southeast Asia by patriotic overseas Chinese Mr. Liang Jinshan. As early as the late 1950s, it was rated as first-grade in London, England, which is sufficient proof of the high quality of Baoshan coffee cherries.

In recent years, with the expansion of international trade, Yunnan Baoshan coffee has been regarded as premium coffee in many European and American countries, making the product supply insufficient to meet demand. In December 2010, the China National Quality Inspection Administration reviewed and determined that this coffee is a product that reflects China's national geographical indication.

According to FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, coffee cultivation in Yunnan actually has a long history, mainly divided into four periods. Next, FrontStreet Coffee will talk about the cultivation history of Yunnan coffee beans!

History of Yunnan Coffee Cultivation

First Phase: 1880s

The Qing government was forced to sign a treaty with France to end the Sino-French War and opened Mengzi (Mengzi County, Honghe Prefecture) as a trading port. In 1889, the Mengzi Customs House opened, marking the beginning of exchanges between the southwestern frontier and foreign countries. Foreign merchants flocked in, and foreign companies followed one after another.

Second Phase: 1902

A French missionary named Tian Deneng brought coffee from Vietnam to a mountain village called Zhukula in Binchuan County, Dali, Yunnan Province for cultivation. To this day, descendants of those coffee plants still survive, with ancient coffee trees telling stories of a century of history in the morning dew and evening glow.

Third Phase: 1952

Experts from the Yunnan Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences distributed 80kg of coffee seeds to farmers in the Lujiang Basin of Baoshan. Several years later, they provided large-scale guidance for cultivation, which led to the swaying coffee trees along the Yunnan-Myanmar Road. Due to the huge demand for supply to the Soviet Union, Yunnan's coffee cultivation experienced rapid development.

Fourth Phase: 1988

Nestlé established a joint venture in China and began supporting local coffee industry development in Yunnan through initiating coffee cultivation projects. Yunnan coffee rose again. From 1992 onwards, Nestlé established a Coffee Agriculture Department specifically to guide and research the improvement and cultivation of Yunnan coffee, and purchased coffee at prices based on the US spot market. To date, not only Nestlé, Maxwell House, Kraft, Starbucks, and other coffee giants are engaged in coffee business in Yunnan, but local coffee enterprises have also gradually developed and grown.

Yunnan Coffee Grading

FrontStreet Coffee has previously mentioned the grading systems of Kenya and Ethiopia. In fact, Yunnan coffee also has its own grading system, but because it is generally not yet mature enough, the grading system is also rather chaotic.

The following are the commonly used domestic coffee grading standards (divided into five levels according to sieve sizes 6.5, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0 mm):

Grade 1:

Above 6.5mm, full and complete grains.

Grade 2:

6.0-6.4mm, full, relatively uniform.

Grade 3:

5.3-5.9mm, relatively full, slightly lacking uniformity.

Grade 4:

5.0-5.4mm, with incomplete grains, complete ones accounting for more than 75%.

Grade 5:

Below 5.0mm, with incomplete grains, complete ones accounting for more than 30%.

Next, FrontStreet Coffee would like to recommend to all coffee enthusiast friends the current Yunnan coffee varieties available at FrontStreet Coffee and their flavor characteristics.

FrontStreet Coffee Yunnan Natural Catimor Coffee Beans

Country: China

Region: Baoshan, Yunnan

Altitude: 1450-1550m

Variety: Catimor

Processing: Red Cherry Natural Processing

Flavor: Caramel, cocoa, aged Pu'er tea, herbal, dried fruit, mellow fruit acidity

Catimor Variety

The variety of this coffee bean from FrontStreet Coffee is its name - Catimor. Catimor is not a pure Arabica variety as we commonly know, but rather a hybrid between the Timor hybrid from Robusta and the Caturra variety of Bourbon. It was originally developed in 1959 and began to be promoted in Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. With its disease resistance and high yield, it occupies a place among Central and South American coffee varieties. The occasional coffee leaf rust crises in Central and South America have also promoted the application of Catimor variety coffee beans.

Its characteristics are high yield, short plants that can be densely planted, and new leaves that are reddish-brown. However, due to fast maturation speed and high yield, it requires sufficient fertilizer supply and shade. But according to FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, its lifespan is very short, averaging only ten years.

Moreover, when planted at low altitudes, the cupping performance of Catimor coffee beans shows no significant difference from other commercial varieties. However, when planted above 1200 meters altitude, Catimor's cup flavor is明显 inferior to Bourbon, Caturra, and Catuai.

Red Cherry Natural Processing

The process of red cherry natural processing is actually very simple, requiring minimal investment in tools and equipment. Besides the step of removing floating beans, it hardly requires water, making it low-cost. According to FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, it is widely used in areas with limited water resources and less affluent regions.

The processing process is as follows:

1. Harvest mature coffee fruits

2. Preliminary removal of impurities and defective beans

3. Screen floating beans: Pour coffee fruits into a water tank. Mature and full fruits will sink to the bottom, while immature or damaged fruits will float on the surface.

4. Sun drying: Remove the mature coffee fruits that sank to the bottom and spread them on a drying field for sun drying, reducing moisture from 70% to about 10-12%. They need to be turned several times daily for even drying, and covered at night to avoid moisture.

5. Remove outer shell: After about two to four weeks of exposure, the outer layer of the coffee seeds has dried and hardened. At this point, a hulling machine is used to remove the outer shell to complete the process.

FrontStreet Coffee Yunnan Small Bean Coffee (Daily Bean)

Country: China

Region: Baoshan, Yunnan

Altitude: 1200m

Variety: Catimor

Processing: Washed Processing

Flavor: Herbal, nutty aroma, chocolate, caramel

FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan small bean coffee also comes from Baoshan, Yunnan, and is of the Catimor variety. However, unlike the natural processed Yunnan Catimor mentioned earlier, this one uses washed processing. So what are the differences between natural processed and washed processed coffee beans?

Through cupping and brewing, FrontStreet Coffee believes the main difference is in flavor. Natural processed coffee beans mainly carry tropical fruit's sweet and sour taste, retaining the coffee's natural richness with rich flavor layers, sometimes with a hint of wine aroma! Washed coffee beans, due to better control of the fermentation process, do not have impurity flavors like natural processed beans, with better acidic aroma and brightness! Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee's seven daily beans are mainly washed processed coffee beans because they better reflect the original flavor of a production region.

Washed Processing Process

1. Harvest mature coffee fruits

2. Preliminary removal of impurities and defective beans

3. Screen floating beans: Pour coffee fruits into a water tank. Mature and full fruits will sink to the bottom, while immature or damaged fruits will float on the surface.

4. Remove peel and pulp: The selected good coffee fruits are put into a pulp separator to remove the outer peel and pulp, leaving the seeds (coffee beans).

5. Ferment to remove mucilage: The coffee seeds with a layer of mucilage are placed in fermentation tanks, using biological treatment methods where fermentation bacteria dissolve the mucilage.

6. Wash to remove impurities: Since fermentation bacteria remain on the coffee beans, the beans need to be sent to washing pools for cleaning and a second screening (defective beans will float on the surface). This step requires large amounts of clean water for thorough cleaning.

7. Coffee bean drying: Usually, machines are used to dry the coffee fruits or they are artificially sun-dried, reducing moisture content to 10-14%.

8. Remove inner parchment and silver skin: Finally, a hulling machine is used to remove the remaining inner parchment and silver skin, completing the processing for green bean packaging and transportation.

FrontStreet Coffee Yunnan Flower Fruit Mountain Coffee Beans

Country: China

Region: Baoshan, Yunnan

Altitude: 1450-1550m

Variety: Typica

Processing: Washed Processing

Flavor: Citrus, nuts, plums, melon aroma, brown sugar, black tea sensation

Compared to the two coffee beans mentioned earlier, FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Flower Fruit Mountain coffee beans have a sweeter and more fragrant flavor, which benefits from being of the Typica variety.

Typica Variety

Typica is actually one of the oldest original coffee varieties. Its top leaves are bronze-colored, and the beans are oval or slender-pointed; it has elegant flavor but weak constitution, poor disease resistance, and low fruit yield, so the price is also more expensive than FrontStreet Coffee's other two coffee beans.

FrontStreet Coffee's Flower Fruit Mountain coffee beans are actually cultivated by FrontStreet Coffee in Yunnan plantations. The following are pictures of Typica variety from FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan plantation. Therefore, the quality of these Yunnan Flower Fruit Mountain coffee beans is definitely the most superior coffee beans that coffee enthusiasts can drink domestically.

The above is some relevant knowledge about FrontStreet Coffee's current Yunnan coffee offerings. FrontStreet Coffee believes that coffee enthusiast friends now have a further understanding of Yunnan coffee. FrontStreet Coffee also hopes that this relevant information will benefit coffee enthusiast friends who love coffee.

For more specialty coffee beans, please add the private WeChat of FrontStreet Coffee, WeChat ID: 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