The Difference Between Mexican Coffee and Mexican Coffee Beans_ Mexican Coffee Beans Are More Expensive Than Mexican Coffee

Mexican Coffee: An Introduction

Geography and climate tie Mexico's coffee belt tightly to Guatemala, so its output is classified as Central American in style. The main growing states are Cordoba, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. Most of the coffee is high-altitude washed bean with excellent aroma and acidity. Grades are sorted by altitude into three categories: Altura (219-1280 meters), Prima Lavado (853-1006 meters), and Punta Lavado (640-762 meters). Mexican beans are exported mainly to the United States. In the cup they are smooth, with high acidity, medium body, and a faintly nutty aftertaste. The balance of sweet, sour, and bitter is neutral, with moderate acidity, giving a distinctive and elegant impression.

Preparing Mexican Coffee

Mexicans are warm and optimistic, and the chocolate in Mexican coffee reflects that character perfectly. There are several ways to prepare it, but the main distinction is whether alcohol is involved. We will start with the non-alcoholic version.

Heat a cup of milk in a pot with one teaspoon of cinnamon powder and one teaspoon of vanilla powder. Keep the heat at medium and avoid high heat, because the milk must not come to a boil. Then add cocoa powder and stir until it dissolves completely and the mixture is even. If you are a serious chocolate lover, you can use chocolate syrup instead of mixing cocoa powder into the milk.

Let the milk cool for about five minutes. Once it has cooled slightly, pour it into the prepared coffee. Decorate the surface with cold cream, garnish with a cinnamon stick, and your Mexican coffee is ready.

The fragrance of chocolate and cinnamon mingles and gives off a desert-like aroma. Drinking a cup like this feels like traveling among the gray-green cacti of the Mexican desert, which is an experience in itself.

Mexican Coffee Beans

Coffee production is concentrated in the southern regions closer to Guatemala, where mountain ranges run down both the eastern and western sides and create the sloped terrain that coffee favors. Planting is quite widespread. By altitude the beans are grouped into Altura, Prima Lavado, and Buen Lavado, three high-yielding types. The beans run medium to large, with generally good appearance and aroma. Mexican coffee is said to have arrived in the late 18th century, when a Spaniard transplanted coffee trees from the West Indies to Mexico. It offers a comfortable mouthfeel, rich flavor, moderate acidity, a touch of bitterness, and a pleasant aroma. Among the premium Mexican coffees are Coatepec, Huatusco, and Orizaba. Coatepec is regarded as one of the best coffees in the world. It belongs to the "mountain coffee" family, growing in the mountains of Puebla. Aside from Coatepec, other Mexican coffees are "fine washed" beans cultivated in humid, jungle-like mountain areas, and these estates sit in low-altitude humid mountain regions. Flavor profile: acidic, aromatic, and smooth, rich and full-bodied, with lively sweet-and-sour notes, a strong fragrance, and relatively large beans.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Mexico's strength lies in that washed, high-grown style, and if that clean acidity and smooth body appeal to you, FrontStreet Coffee's washed offerings follow the same logic. The washed process is a traditional way of handling coffee fruit with water: flotation, depulping, a soak and fermentation to break down the mucilage, washing or further soaking, then drying and hulling. Because the beans spend so long in water, their sugar content drops while organic acids rise, which is why washed coffee keeps more of the bean's own aroma while showing bright fruit acidity and a clean, fresh character.

A good place to begin is FrontStreet Coffee's Gedeb cooperative coffee, a washed lot from the Gedeb area at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe. Traditional washing lets it show jasmine and bright citrus acidity at their fullest, and a medium-light roast draws out green tea and honey notes. It works well as pour-over, cold brew, or espresso.

If you want the acidity pushed further, FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Small Tomato is one of the best-known examples of the washed school, since Kenya is expert at double-washing green coffee: the washing step is repeated, with the beans floated and soaked, the mucilage rinsed away, soaked again, then dried and hulled. All that rinsing and soaking delivers juice to an extreme, with layers of cherry tomato, smoked plum, snow pear, black plum, and yellow sugar, and a sweet-and-sour, mouth-watering body.

And for a washed coffee built on balance rather than brightness, FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 shows why the style endures: washed processing, which strips the skin, pulp, and mucilage before drying to cut moisture and shorten drying time, keeps the aroma intense and the cup even, with pure hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel and no single note shouting over the others.