A Guide to Bourbon Coffee Characteristics: How Many Colors of Bourbon Coffee Beans Exist and Bourbon Bean Prices

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FrontStreet Coffee Bourbon Coffee Bean Varieties: Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Orange Bourbon, Pink Bourbon, Blue Bourbon... How Many Colors Have You Seen?

Let me briefly explain what bourbon coffee beans are. Bourbon coffee was originally cultivated on Réunion Island, which was also called Bourbon Island before 1789. The bourbon variety is a subspecies that mutated from Typica, and together with Typica, they are among the oldest existing coffee varieties. When the green fruits ripen, they turn bright red. In FrontStreet Coffee's daily bean series, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian semi-washed is a typical bourbon with a sweet aftertaste and nutty notes. We can find similar flavor profiles in another small African producing region, Rwanda. Both are bourbon varieties, and despite being thousands of miles apart, the flavor foundation of the variety cannot be changed. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee believes that the influencing factors of specialty coffee are ranked as follows: variety, altitude, processing method.

Red Bourbon

Generally, after coffee trees flower and bear fruit, the color change of coffee cherries follows: green → light yellow → light orange → mature red → darker ripe red. Therefore, some people call it "Red Bourbon." In fact, Red Bourbon is just what we generally call bourbon. Bourbon varieties grown at high altitudes usually have better aroma, brighter acidity, and may even have wine-like flavors when tasted.

In simpler terms, bourbon coffee beans are a coffee tree variety belonging to a branch of the Arabica species. They generally bear red fruits, called red bourbon. In addition, there are yellow bourbon and orange bourbon. Yellow bourbon has relatively lower yields but better quality.

Bourbon Coffee Bean Story — Spread Route

Because the Typica variety introduced to Brazil in 1727 had low yields and was susceptible to diseases, the bourbon variety was introduced to Brazil around 1860 via Campinas in the south and quickly expanded north to other regions of South and Central America. Today in Latin America, although bourbon has largely been replaced by its variants (especially Caturra, Catuai, and Mundo Novo), bourbon is still grown in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Peru.

In Africa, French missionaries known as Spiritan (from the Holy Spirit congregation) played an important role in spreading the bourbon variety. In 1841, the first church was established in Réunion, and a branch was established in Zanzibar in 1859. From Zanzibar, branches were established in 1862 in Bagamoyo (Tanzania coast, then called Tanganyika) and St. Augustine (Kikuyu, Kenya), and another branch was established in Bura (Taita Hills, Kenya) in 1893. Each branch establishment was accompanied by the planting of coffee seeds brought from Réunion.

In 1899, seedlings cultivated in Bura were taken to another French mission in Santa Cruz (near Nairobi). In 1900, they were introduced to the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania, and seeds were distributed to local residents willing to grow coffee. This is the origin of "Missionary Bourbon." Then the Kent variety was also introduced in 1920. Therefore, to this day, coffee in Tanzania is still dominated by bourbon and Kent.

• —1860: Pointed bourbon to New Caledonia and Yemen
• —1732: Round bourbon to British territory St. Helena Island
• —1860: Round bourbon to Brazil
• —1900: Round bourbon to Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania
• —After 2000: Pointed bourbon to Colombia

Bourbon Coffee Bean Variants

During the propagation process, due to various factors such as natural mutation, intraspecific mating, and artificial breeding, many new varieties have emerged, such as Caturra, Catuai, Pacas, Yellow Bourbon, Pointed Bourbon, SL28, SL34, and many others.

Genetic Mutant — Bourbon Variants

Yellow Bourbon

Yellow bourbon is a hybrid of bourbon with other varieties. Due to its low yield and less resistance to wind and rain, it has not been widely cultivated. However, when grown at high altitudes, it shows excellent flavor performance and has become more common in recent years. Yellow Bourbon, also known as Yellow Bourbon, has yellow fruits when ripe. It was first discovered in Brazil and is now mainly grown in Brazil. It is generally believed to be a mutation from hybridization between red-fruited bourbon and a Typica variant called "Amerelo de Botocatu" that bears yellow fruits.

I once tried FrontStreet Coffee's Queen Manor Yellow Bourbon. With a medium-dark roast, it has a clean and balanced walnut flavor, creamy delicate smooth texture, paired with sweet orange sweetness, and a full mocha chocolate aftertaste lingering in the mouth.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yellow Bourbon characteristics: sweet and smooth fruit sweetness, distinct nutty flavor, balanced and gentle acidity, clean and subtle bitterness, with rich chocolate aroma and nutty flavors, bright and refreshing taste.

Pink Bourbon

Pink Bourbon, as the name suggests, has romantic pink coffee cherries when ripe. It belongs to a very rare new variety, cultivated from crossing red bourbon and yellow bourbon. The reason why pink bourbon is considered a rare variety is mainly because it's very difficult to maintain this beautiful pink color. Sometimes orange bourbon is harvested because the final color of coffee cherries is determined by recessive genes in pollen grains. Among the selected pollen grains for hybridization, there are both yellow genes leaning toward yellow bourbon and red genes leaning toward red bourbon, and these are all recessive genes that easily interfere with each other.

Currently, pink bourbon can be found in Colombia and Guatemala. Taking this batch of FrontStreet Coffee's pink bourbon as an example, there are about 1,800 coffee trees, with each tree producing about 1.8kg of fresh cherries per harvest season. After pulping processing, about 0.36kg of coffee beans are obtained. In a normal harvest season, the total yield of this coffee is less than 650kg.

FrontStreet Coffee's Pink Bourbon characteristics: sweet orange, sugarcane sweetness, pleasant juiciness, cherry tomato.

Pointed Bourbon

Pointed Bourbon (Bourbon Pointu): Discovered on Bourbon Island in 1810, the bean shape changed from round to pointed, with only half the caffeine content. However, it has low yield and weak plants, making it extremely precious (mostly cultivated in laboratories).

Pointed Bourbon (Bourbon Pointu) also has two other names, Laurina and Leroy, but neither is as famous as Pointed Bourbon. It's called Pointed Bourbon because the bean shape is long and narrow with pointed ends, while the native bourbon (some call it round bourbon) has shorter beans with slightly oval outlines.

Due to its good flavor and low caffeine content (less affecting sleep), Pointed Bourbon was loved by people as early as the 18th century. Many celebrities, such as French King Louis XV and novelist Balzac, were its "fans." During the two hundred years from the 18th to 19th centuries, Pointed Bourbon was widely cultivated on Bourbon Island, reaching a peak of 4,000 metric tons annual production in 1800. However, a series of disasters followed—hurricanes, fire ants, leaf rust disease—leading to gradual reduction in cultivation. Finally, in 1942, the last batch of Pointed Bourbon shipped back to France was only a pitiful 200 kilograms. Since then, Pointed Bourbon disappeared without a trace, and even official documents no longer mentioned it. After the 1950s, Réunion Island no longer cultivated coffee, and the island's agriculture completely转向 other crops like sugarcane. Coffee and Réunion Island were no longer connected, and Pointed Bourbon was recognized by the coffee world as "extinct."

Given that this bean disappeared for half a century until it reappeared 8 years ago, in the international market, bourbon pointed from the original producing area La Reunion Island sells for over 500 yuan per 100 grams. Afterward, Colombia also began to cultivate this bean, and only Camilo Merizalde, the source of beans for multiple WBC champions, dared to take on the transplantation of this bean. Therefore, this coffee bean, with a global annual production of only a few tons, commands a high price.

Flavor description from archives: bright acidity, blueberry and vanilla notes, velvety smoothness.

Pacas

Pacas is a natural mutation of bourbon, similar to Brazil's Caturra and Costa Rica's Villa Sarchi. Like other widely cultivated bourbon mutations, Pacas is a new variety formed by single-gene mutation, which gives Pacas a crucial characteristic: plants can be planted more densely, ultimately resulting in higher yields per unit area.

Pacas was first discovered in 1949 by the Pacas family from the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. Fernando Alberto Pacas Figueroa found some plants with different morphological characteristics on their family's Finca San Rafael estate. He then began collecting seeds and conducting selection breeding, later developing about 3/4 hectare of Pacas "pioneer nursery."

The discoverer of Pacas: Fernando Alberto Pacas Figueroa

By 1956, Francisco de Sola and Fernando's son Fernando Alberto Pacas Trujillo began researching the Pacas variety with the help of Florida professor William Cogwill. They compared San Ramon bourbon with an "unknown" new variety. This "unknown" variety showed completely different characteristics, with plant morphology different from bourbon, having shorter internodal spacing and larger fruiting areas. Finally, they named this variety "Pacas."

FrontStreet Coffee's recommended brewing parameters: BG-6M/86-88℃/KONO filter or V60 filter/1:15/15g coffee powder/30 seconds pre-infusion, brew 225g water, total extraction time 2 minutes.

FrontStreet Coffee compared the taste of FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian Queen Manor Yellow Bourbon brewed with V60 filter versus KONO filter. They found that the V60 filter produced a slightly thinner body with soft fruit acidity, overall more refreshing; while the KONO filter produced a rich body with stronger sweetness.

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