Essential Guide to Arabica Coffee Bean Categories & Price Reports

Common Coffee Species

The main coffee species fall into two broad categories, Arabica and Robusta, and within those categories there are countless smaller varieties. That is why we rarely talk about coffee as simply "Arabica beans" or "Robusta beans," and instead introduce it by its more specific subspecies.

Arabica

Every high-quality coffee in the world comes from the Arabica species, which accounts for about 70% of global production. Its flavor is rich, with excellent acidity and floral notes, but it is demanding to grow: it must be cultivated at high altitude, it grows relatively slowly, and it is highly susceptible to disease and pests.

Robusta

Robusta is grown mainly at low altitudes and is far less particular about its environment. Its yield is twice that of Arabica trees, it is easy to cultivate and it resists disease and pests well. Robusta's chlorogenic acid and trigonelline content — the source of coffee's bitterness — are both twice that of Arabica, and its caffeine is higher too, so it naturally tastes bitter. It is rarely drunk on its own and is the main raw material for instant coffee. Some espresso blends also include a proportion of Robusta to build a better crema.

Arabica Coffee Varieties You Must Remember

(The varieties introduced below all belong to the Arabica category and will be indicated on the packaging of the coffee beans you buy.)

Typica

Someone once said, "All delicious and noble coffees are Typica." The claim may be exaggerated, but the world-renowned "King of Coffee," Jamaican Blue Mountain, is indeed a Typica variety, and the so-called "Queen of Coffee," Hawaiian Kona, is a Typica variety as well.

Typica is one of the oldest coffee varieties and is grown at high altitude. Over the centuries it has given rise to many other varieties, including Bourbon, Java and Maragogipe. Typica yields relatively little and is highly susceptible to leaf rust. When it is cultivated well, this delicate variety produces high sweetness, a clean cup and pleasant acidity.

Bourbon

Bourbon arose from a natural mutation of Typica and is the other ancient coffee variety besides Typica itself. It offers high quality with medium yield. Like its parent, Bourbon has weak resistance to leaf rust. Its high sweetness also makes it a favorite of the coffee borer. It is grown most widely in Brazil and is also found in Burundi and Rwanda. Bourbon fruits are small and round, with high density in both pulp and seed, and they typically taste sweet with bright acidity. Bourbon divides into Yellow Bourbon and Red Bourbon, and in recent years Pink Bourbon has appeared on the market as well.

Ethiopian Heirloom

"Rose, fresh strawberry aroma, with passion fruit, pineapple and white wine flavors" — that is the description used for "Huang Guan," the flower champion that became enormously popular this summer. Huang Guan, however, is not the name of a coffee variety; its actual variety is Ethiopian Heirloom. If you see "Heirloom" on a bag of coffee, it refers to Ethiopian native varieties. Ethiopia's Kaffa Forest is the gene pool of coffee and a rich treasure of the specialty coffee world, and most Ethiopian coffee varieties originate there. Ethiopian Heirloom beans may not look as uniform as Bourbon — they are smaller and inconsistent in size — but their floral and fruity aromas are always stunning.

Mundo Novo

Mundo Novo is a natural hybrid of Red Bourbon and Sumatran Typica, especially popular in Brazil and elsewhere, and it accounts for 40% of Brazil's total Arabica cultivation. Mundo Novo is a high-yielding variety, 30%-40% more productive than regular Bourbon, with strong disease resistance. Because the yield per plant is higher, it typically has lower sweetness.

Caturra

Caturra is a single-gene mutation of Bourbon, discovered in Brazil in the 1950s. Both its yield and its disease resistance are better than Bourbon's. Caturra is most common in Central America. The plant is relatively short, which makes harvesting convenient. Unfortunately, like Bourbon, it suffers from biennial production cycles. Its flavor is comparable to or slightly below Bourbon. More importantly, it is extremely adaptable — it does not need shade trees and thrives in direct sunlight, which is why it is commonly known as Sun Coffee. Caturra also tolerates high-density planting, though it demands more fertilizer, which raises costs. Some scholars call Caturra the intensive, sun-tolerant version of Bourbon, which is a fair description.

Catuai

Catuai is a hybrid of Mundo Novo and Caturra.

The plant is relatively small, with a narrow angle between the lateral branches and the main trunk. Besides its high yield, another outstanding advantage is that the cherries do not fall off easily once ripe, giving it strong resistance to wind and rain. It is favored in regions where wind and rain are frequent.

Catuai adapts well to a range of altitudes and performs exceptionally when planted above 800m. Its fruits are commonly red and yellow, known separately as Red Catuai and Yellow Catuai.

Catuai is widely grown throughout Central and South America, including Brazil. It too has red and yellow fruit varieties, and the red fruit type wins awards more often than the yellow. Mundo Novo, Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai are the four main coffee varieties in Brazil.

Timor

Timor is a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta. Its flavor is not excellent, but it has strong disease resistance and has been used to breed many other varieties, including the Catimor introduced below. For growers, Arabica trees are highly susceptible to leaf rust, especially at low altitude. Such varieties may score lower in cupping and cannot command top prices, but many growers consider it worthwhile to plant highly resistant hybrids and reduce their disease risk.

Catimor

Most of the Yunnan coffee beans sold in coffee shops are actually this variety, which is not considered a pure "Arabica bean." In 1959, the Portuguese moved the Bourbon mutation Caturra to East Timor and crossed it with Timor, which carries Robusta blood, cultivating the highly disease-resistant and productive hybrid Catimor.

It inherited Robusta's vigor along with the genes for poor flavor. To improve Catimor's poor cupping reputation, botanists in various countries have repeatedly crossed Arabica with Catimor in recent years, attempting to lift its flavor.

Gesha/Geisha

"I finally saw God's face in a coffee cup!" exclaimed the well-known American coffee reviewer Don Holly after first tasting Gesha's citrus aroma, honey sweetness and floral notes.

With its beautiful English name and its translation into other languages, Gesha has surpassed established coffee powers such as Jamaican Blue Mountain and Hawaiian Kona. It actually belongs to the Ethiopian native varieties, first discovered in Ethiopia and later brought to Panama. Perhaps the local climate and soil nurtured it: the La Esmeralda family noticed during cupping that one batch tasted brighter and richer, with plant florals, than the others. They traced the lot back and found Gesha trees whose appearance differed from the surrounding coffee trees, harvested and processed those beans separately, and went on to win first place in competition after entering. Its popularity has not faded since. In 2017, the natural-processed Gesha at the Best of Panama specialty coffee auction fetched an ultra-high price of $601 per pound.

(In 2017, natural-processed Gesha at Best of Panama fetched a high auction price of $601 per pound.)

SL28/SL34

They may lack the history or the beautiful names of other varieties, but SL28 and SL34 — Kenya's ace varieties, developed by British and French researchers in the laboratory and direct descendants of Bourbon — can make acid-loving coffee drinkers reach for their wallets at first sight. Kenya's distinctive soil, higher in phosphorus, is said to be the secret behind the bright berry acidity that defines Kenyan coffee.

(Kenya's 1963 stamps even feature scenes of farmers harvesting red coffee cherries.)

Pacamara

"Rich flavor, diverse and complex, with both fruit acidity and intense sweetness, featuring notes of apricot, vanilla, tropical fruit, chocolate and spice sweetness." — the aroma and flavor of Pacamara.

Pacamara is a hybrid of the large-bean Maragogipe and the Pacas variety. Its road has not been entirely smooth. Around 1990, Eduardo, owner of Pacamara Estate in El Salvador, decided to plant the newly developed Pacamara from the country's agricultural technology unit. Because of its huge size, however, local processing plants had no suitable peeling and separating machines, and most were unwilling to handle the troublesome new variety.

It was not until it won second place in El Salvador's COE in 2007, and later came under cultivation at neighboring Guatemala's Finca El Injerto, that Pacamara gradually secured its position. People began to recognize it as another variety able to stand alongside Ethiopian native varieties and Typica, following in the footsteps of Gesha.

(Size comparison between Pacamara and other coffee varieties.)

Conclusion

By now you should have a deeper sense of coffee varieties. Beyond the ones above, more delicious varieties are surely waiting in the Kaffa Forest and in coffee genetics laboratories for us to discover and cultivate. Let's look forward to more wonderful flavors in our cups.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Among all of these varieties, no name carries more weight than the Typica the article begins with — Jamaica Blue Mountain. What makes it so valued is scarcity as much as flavor: genuine Blue Mountain can only be grown in the defined parts of Jamaica's Blue Mountains and must be certified, and the entire region produces less than 2,500 tons a year, a tiny fraction of world supply. Japan has historically bought more than 70% of that output, so the volume reaching the rest of the world is smaller still. Since 2003, Jamaican Blue Mountain green beans have been formally exported to the Chinese market, and buyers can now source certified lots through regular channels.

FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 is one of the highest grades of Jamaican Blue Mountain, sourced from the long-established Clifton estate, which has been growing and processing coffee since around 1750. Its fields and processing facilities sit at an average of 4,300 feet (1,310.64 meters), where adequate altitude, mild afternoon cloud that shades the slopes, ample sunlight and mineral-rich soil combine to give the trees ideal growing conditions and to lengthen the ripening of the cherry. The coffee is roasted medium-dark to bring out Blue Mountain's classic balance: cream, caramel, chocolate, nuts and honey with a light fruit note, a smooth, rounded entry, generous mid-palate sweetness and a clean, long finish. It is subtle rather than showy, which is exactly why so many in the trade call it the easiest specialty coffee for almost anyone to like.

Blue Mountain is versatile enough for pour-over, moka pot or espresso, but if you want to taste the detail and sweetness most fully, FrontStreet suggests a Kono dripper. Use 15g of coffee, ideally rested 4-7 days from the roast date, ground slightly coarser than you would for a light roast — about the texture of granulated sugar — with water at 87-88°C and a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio. Pour in three stages: 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then to 120g with a slow, vertical, small-flow circle, then to 225g with a slightly faster flow and circle to keep the bed from clogging the dripper and over-extracting.