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Professional Coffee Knowledge Exchange

A Peaceful City and Warm Hospitality

Baoshan is a very quiet city, as Xiao Zheng described it. People here like to take a walk after dinner, then go home, wash up and sleep. By nightfall it grows even more silent. My first night in Baoshan was wonderfully peaceful. My thanks to Brother Weng and Xiao Zheng for the arrangements — the hotel was very comfortable.

After breakfast the next morning we agreed to meet in the lobby. A German once told me that to understand a person's character, first look at whether they are punctual. Wanting to make a good first impression, I went downstairs ten minutes early. Little did I know that Brother Weng and Xiao Zheng had arrived even earlier than I had. Their sincerity moved me, and I wondered what I had done to deserve everyone going to such trouble. I only hoped to see the Typica seedlings grow happily into trees in Baoshan, bearing fine native varieties that belong to our own people.

Meeting the Team

Xiao Yang, Xiao Zheng's assistant, is a lovely young woman from Tengchong. If you didn't know her, her appearance alone might make you think she came from Jiangnan — soft-spoken, kind and diligent, serious about her work, and truly an able assistant to Mr. Guo.

Her undergraduate major was tea culture. On the way to the production area, Xiao Zheng and Brother Weng teased her that she hadn't come from one of those quick tea-ceremony classes that con people, but had studied tea properly for four years and mastered it. The young woman's face flushed instantly. I told her that Confucius asked: what is a true career? A true career is when a person spends a whole lifetime doing one thing well.

Journey to Baoshan

Leaving the Baoshan urban area, the road winds through rolling hills with dense green vegetation and a strong atmosphere of the region's ethnic minorities. The mountain roads are rugged and twisting, with sandy uphill buffer zones every few kilometers. Truck tires there must be sprayed with water; otherwise the sharp curves and steep gradients can easily cause blowouts or even brake failure, which is extremely dangerous.

Baoshan sits in western Yunnan Province, near the famous tourist city of Dali. The renowned Tengchong County belongs to Baoshan City and borders Myanmar, with a border line of 167.78 kilometers. The land area is 19,637 square kilometers, home to numerous ethnic minorities, and it is a major overseas-Chinese hometown in Yunnan Province. Baoshan has a long history and culture, beautiful natural scenery, and was a crucial point on the ancient Southern Silk Road.

First Stop: Xinzhai Coffee Company

After more than an hour we arrived first at Xinzhai Coffee Company. There I saw a familiar sight — the same PROBATONE 5 roaster as at the Berry Shop. After returning to Hangzhou from Baoshan, Sister Zheng Hui told me that the PROBATONE at Baoshan Xinzhai Coffee was the first roaster imported from Germany's Probat in all of China. I should have bowed to it while I had the chance.

Director Xie was warm and hospitable and let me operate it. Although the model and capacity matched Berry's Probat, the heat source was different. Xinzhai Coffee's Probat uses a gas flame beneath the drum boiler for heating, while the newer PROBATONE injects oxygen into the combustion chamber to drive hot air into the furnace. In other words, the older PROBATONE is a semi-direct-flame, semi-hot-air roaster that heats the beans through conduction, radiation and convection, while the newer PROBATONE is a full hot-air roaster. Even so, the main heat-transfer method remains conduction — after all, the beans spend little time suspended in air during roasting and take up most of their heat through the drum wall and the stirring arms.

Learning to Roast

Like someone with a C2 automatic-transmission licence trying to drive a manual, I stumbled through my first batch. It was my first time on this machine, I was already clumsy, and I was nervous. A young man beside me kept asking questions, which was extremely annoying. Little did I know that this annoying young man has since become a good friend and brother. His name is Zhang Ying, and he is the coffee department manager for Mr. Guo Xiaozheng.

During these days in Baoshan I am grateful to Xiao Yang and Zhang Ying for their care. Your detailed explanations and your company made me feel very warm, but I have one request: please stop calling me "teacher." I have only been in this profession for just over three years, and my coffee knowledge and practice are particularly lacking. I need more energy, more learning, and a better understanding of myself and my own perspective. When I reach 50, if I am still persistently learning about coffee, then you can call me teacher.

Roasting Challenges and Discoveries

Afterwards I roasted another batch of the Yellow Catuai I had brought myself and a batch of the freshest processed Baoshan Typica. I have to admit there are far too many variables in roasting. When roasting beans in Baoshan, the temperature rises very slowly; following the curves I get in Hangzhou would leave the beans under-roasted.

On top of that, many external factors mean that even with the same beans, the same roaster and the same operator, the result will differ. Yunnan and Hangzhou, for instance, sit at different altitudes. Baoshan's high altitude means stronger atmospheric pressure, which delays first crack but cannot hold back second crack — and so shortens the gap between the two, complicating control of the roast and of the final degree.

To solve this, the initial heat (flame power) and drum temperature need to be raised, the turning point needs relative adjustment, and once caramelization begins, sustained heat is needed to accelerate first crack. When first crack becomes intense, however, the heat must be reduced, or the Maillard reaction will be pushed forward prematurely.

The Excellence of Baoshan Typica

For good food, fresh ingredients matter most, and the same is true for coffee. Freshly processed Baoshan Typica beans are crystal clear, showing a deep green that can stand beside Yellow Catuai. Its Typica variety has already mutated, though — after all, it is living in a foreign land, just as Chinese Americans look different from mainland Chinese. Same principle.

Freshly roasted medium-roast Baoshan Typica has jasmine fragrance and elegant citrus and osmanthus aromas, fresh and delicate. Taste it carefully and you find a mellow, full-bodied, rich and smooth texture with a persistent sweet aftertaste. Although a medium roast leaves some alkaline organic acids on the inner side of the cell walls that the tongue perceives as sour, Baoshan Typica's acidity is not sharp but a light, captivating fruity one.

Overall, Baoshan Typica is rich without bitterness, fragrant without intensity, with abundant oils — the key to a coffee bean's quality lies in its oil content — and a lasting sweet aftertaste. Truly a superior product.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

A medium-roast highland Typica like this Baoshan lot is a fine bridge between the fresh, floral side of coffee and the deeper, sweeter side. FrontStreet Coffee keeps a deliberately broad entry-level range for drinkers who are just finding their footing, and a few of them echo this cup particularly well.

At the brighter end sit FrontStreet's Ethiopia offerings: the naturally processed Hunkute, with its berry, floral and tropical-fruit lift, and the washed Gutingding cooperative, a classic Yirgacheffe of jasmine, lemon and berry notes. From Brazil, the Cerrado Red Bourbon and the Queen Estate are easy daily drinkers, soft in acidity with cream, peanut and cocoa flavors, and rounded, gentle sweetness.

For the fuller, low-acid style that Baoshan Typica gestures toward, FrontStreet recommends the Indonesia Lintong Mandheling and the higher-grade PWN Golden Mandheling, both wet-hulled and roasted dark for herbal, spice and dark chocolate depth, alongside the Colombia Huila and Granada, which show soft florals and gentle fruit acidity. Completing the set are FrontStreet's own Yunnan beans from Baoshan — nut, chocolate and gentle balance — and the entry-level Panama Boquete Geisha, which offers a taste of the celebrated Geisha profile without the estate price.