Nav: Home > Coffee >

Island Coffee - Recommended Roasting Degree and Parameters for Jamaican Coffee Beans _ Jamaican Coffee Brand Recommendations

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, For more professional coffee knowledge and coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style). The regional flavor of island coffee is defined as delicate and elegant. The body is slightly lighter, not as rich as Indonesian Mandheling, and lacks the varied acidity of Kenyan coffee, yet island beans are extremely expensive. Among the top ten most expensive globally...

Professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style)

The Regional Flavor of "Island-Type" Coffee

The regional flavor of "island-type" coffee is defined as delicate and elegant. It has a slightly lighter body than the rich Indonesian Mandheling, and lacks the complex acidity of Kenyan coffee, yet island beans are exceptionally expensive. Island coffees occupy half of the world's top ten most expensive coffees list, including: FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, Hawaiian Kona and Ka'u, Bourbon Island's semi-decaffeinated coffee, and St. Helena.

FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaican Blue Mountain: A Typica Variety Classic

Currently, there are over a thousand discovered or artificially bred Arabica coffee varieties worldwide. Typica is one of the most famous among them. Many world-renowned coffees are Typica varieties, including not only Blue Mountain but also Hawaiian Kona, Papua New Guinea, and Turtle Island coffees.

Typica is the oldest variety originating from Ethiopia. Except for the native Typica in Ethiopia, Typica beans from other regions have relatively larger, pointed oval shapes with flat surfaces and symmetrical central lines. Washed green beans have distinct fresh fruit or grassy aromas. After roasting, they display elegant and balanced flavors, but they have weak disease resistance, low yield, and are susceptible to pests, making them expensive.

Jamaica's Unique Coffee Industry Management

Jamaica is the only country in the world with a government coffee management agency - the Coffee Industry Board (CIB), which is affiliated with Jamaica's Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. The CIB's functions include cultivation technical guidance, processing training, fair trade, quality supervision, and other matters related to Jamaican Blue Mountain quality and branding. CIB board members are all plantation owners with substantial Jamaican Blue Mountain plantations (due to industry shifts, newly certified Jamaican Blue Mountain estates now require an area of over 50 hectares). The CIB stipulates that only Blue Mountain coffee beans produced in regions above 2,200 feet in Jamaica can be called Jamaican Blue Mountain. Their grades are classified by bean size as NO.1, NO.2, NO.3, and hand-selected PB. The basic standards for NO.1 Blue Mountain green beans include beans above 17 mesh size, defect rate below 3%, moisture content around 13%, etc. Additionally, to date, the only processing method for Blue Mountain green beans is washed processing, with no natural or other processing methods.

Visiting Jamaican Blue Mountain Estates

I have twice visited the main production area of Jamaican Blue Mountain in the Blue Mountain range. The estate at the highest mountain peak is called Amber, covering about 30 hectares. It is owned by Dr. Lyn (Guangdong), a fourth-generation Chinese-Canadian registered pediatrician. The current estate owner is his second son, Michael Lyn. The brothers visited Hangzhou in 2011. This estate has high international recognition, and its company name is Gold Cup. It is said that previously, the estate's beans were directly supplied to the British royal family and Wall Street tycoons. This is mainly because the company's requirements for products reach a stringent level - not only requiring NO.1 beans in appearance to be above 18 mesh size, but also demanding that both roasted and green beans be completely flawless. Therefore, their market price is 20% higher than Blue Mountain from other estates.

The two other most famous Blue Mountain coffee companies in Jamaica are Wallenford and Mavis Bank. Both companies were originally state-owned enterprises. Wallenford's production exceeds 60% of Jamaica's total Blue Mountain output, while Mavis Bank's production exceeds 20%. Moreover, they are one of the few Jamaican Blue Mountain companies that handle all three grades of Jamaican coffee: Blue Mountain, High Mountain, and Premium. After 2011, due to Jamaica's tight national finances, these two companies began privatization reforms. During my first visit to Jamaica, my colleagues from the Hangzhou team and I separately visited the coffee processing plants of these two companies and shot many valuable videos and photos of Jamaican Blue Mountain green bean processing. After returning to China, we edited them into a 30-minute Blue Mountain coffee cultural exploration video and uploaded it to video websites like Youku.

Another company worth mentioning is Coffee Trades, with the estate named CLYDESDALE. The company's coffee factory is located in the backyard of the CIB office building, and the estate is situated on the Blue Mountain mountainside at around 1,200 meters, with a beautiful European-style mountain villa with over 300 years of history. The Sharp brothers, the estate owners, were friendly and talkative. When we visited, the older brother was already 83 years old and the younger brother was 81. They passed away a few years later. Currently, Jason Sharp has taken over this business. Due to Japanese investment, the green beans from this estate that we could see in China were previously handled by a certain company agent. The company also actually controls another company, Clifton, among the CIB-registered Blue Mountain coffee certification companies, whose actual controller is also Jason Sharp.

Jamaican Blue Mountain Green Bean Storage and Parameters

In previous years, Jamaican Blue Mountain green beans were packed in jute bags after drying and stored in warehouses that were light-proof, cool, well-ventilated, and moisture-proof. Before sale, they were packed in wooden barrels, with beans placed directly in the barrels without grain preservation bag liners. In recent years, Blue Mountain green beans have started using grain preservation bags, which is a significant improvement for maintaining coffee moisture, preventing insect damage, and isolating other potential contamination sources. Under normal circumstances, after Blue Mountain green beans enter China, if an entire barrel cannot be used up at once after opening, they should be vacuum-packed according to the possible roasting amount each time (for example, 1 kilogram), and then stored in a stable environment with 55% humidity and 18°C temperature. If conditions permit, storing vacuum-packed beans at around 4°C would be even better, but storage costs would be higher.

A few years ago, we stored Blue Mountain green beans wrapped in plastic wrap in a -22°C freezer. At the time, we thought it was foolproof. However, extremely low-temperature storage damages the moisture structure stored in the woody fibers of coffee green beans. After being taken out of the freezer, the beans' moisture loss accelerates (generally starting to turn white sharply after about a week). Through roasting comparison, the flavor loss is significant.

FrontStreet Coffee's Recommended Roasting Degree and Parameters for Jamaican Blue Mountain

In Jamaica, Blue Mountain coffee is often roasted to city level or even higher. Experts from the Jamaican Coffee Industry Board believe that if Blue Mountain coffee is roasted too lightly, it tends to highlight acidity, lose body, and result in a thinner flavor, failing to embody the balance and elegant flavor of Jamaican Blue Mountain.

In recent years, with the influence of SCA on roasting professionalism, the previous practice of dark roasted single-origin coffees is changing the perceptions of many coffee enthusiasts or consumers. However, I firmly believe that the Jamaican CIB's interpretation of coffee should be the most authoritative and perfect. In nearly 7 years of repeated research and testing on Jamaican Blue Mountain, the performance of highly roasted Blue Mountain coffee is what makes people feel most perfect.

FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaican Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee offers full guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, it provides exceptional value for money - a half-pound (100g) package costs only about 158 yuan. Calculating at 15g of coffee per cup, one package can make 6 cups of coffee, with each cup costing only about 25 yuan. Compared to café prices that often exceed a hundred yuan per cup, this is truly a conscientious recommendation.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find both famous and lesser-known beans, and they also provide online service. https://shop104210103.taobao.com