How to Brew Delicious Guatemalan Tianquan Manor Melly No.8 Pour-Over Coffee - Melly No.8 Coffee Beans Brewing Tutorial

Guatemalan Coffee - Merli No.8

This is a washed Guatemalan coffee from Tianquan Manor's Merli No.8 plot. It offers rich aromas of black plum, berries, Asian pear and other fruits, and if you taste it carefully you will also catch a hint of almond-candy sweetness and a smoky tobacco note - qualities that make it equally suited to hot brewing and iced preparations.

Coffee arrived in Guatemala in 1750 through Jesuit priests. The name Guatemala means "land of dense forests" in the Mayan-Toltec language. Guatemala is an important coffee-producing country in Latin America, where high-quality Arabica grows at the highest altitudes coffee trees can tolerate. Warm days and cool nights slow the ripening of the coffee cherries, and this extended growing period gives the beans more time to develop complex flavor profiles. Coffee from this region is also renowned for its rich fruity aromatics.

How to Brew Guatemalan Coffee [Tianquan Manor Merli No.8] Well?

FrontStreet Coffee pour-over reference: Weigh out 15g of Tianquan Manor Merli No.8 coffee and grind it to a medium consistency; the particles should be slightly coarser than table salt. We use a BG grinder at setting 5R (60% standard sieve pass rate), water at 89°C, and a V60 dripper for extraction.

Pour hot water from the kettle in clockwise circles, centered on the middle of the dripper, and start timing as you begin. Within 15 seconds, bring the brew up to 30g, then stop pouring. At the 1-minute mark, start the second pour, again in clockwise circles centered on the middle of the dripper. Avoid pouring water directly onto the area where the coffee grounds meet the filter paper, to prevent channeling.

When the water reaches the outermost ring of grounds, leave a small margin, then continue pouring in circles back toward the center. By 2 minutes 20 seconds the brew should weigh 220g, and the brewing is complete.

Japanese-Style Iced Pour-Over [Tianquan Manor Merli No.8]

FrontStreet Coffee iced pour-over reference for Tianquan Manor Merli No.8:

Guatemalan coffee [Tianquan Manor Merli No.8], light-medium roast, BG grinder setting 5M (67% standard sieve pass rate).

Use 20g of coffee, 150g of ice cubes and 150g of hot water. The water temperature should be 1°C higher than the 90°C recommended for normal pour-over. For normal brewing we use a Fuji grinder at setting 3.5; for the iced version, grind slightly finer, at Fuji setting 3.

Bloom with 40g of water for 30 seconds.

Then pour in two segments: 60g of water in the first segment and 40g in the second. Use a relatively fine but tall water stream so it stirs and agitates the bed forcefully, letting the grounds tumble fully. Be careful not to let the water level rise too high, and avoid pouring onto the filter paper at the edges.

Total extraction time should be around 2.5 minutes - roughly the same as a normal hot extraction for 20g of coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you enjoy fruit-forward coffees served over ice, FrontStreet Coffee's cold-brew-friendly lineup has some excellent options. The FrontStreet Kenya Cherry Tomato, grown at 1550-1750 meters in Thika on SL28 and SL34 varieties and processed with the local K72 double-washed fermentation, delivers bright cherry-tomato, snow pear, black plum and dried dark plum acidity that stays juicy and low in bitterness under cold extraction; at a medium-light roast it tastes like freshly squeezed juice over ice. For a more floral cup, the sun-dried FrontStreet Hua Kui from Ethiopia - the birthplace of coffee - absorbs abundant sweetness from drying inside its fruit, yielding magnolia, cream strawberry, dried mango, guava and black tea notes that cold brewing brings out beautifully.

For something with a little wine-like flair, the FrontStreet Strawberry Candy Gesha Blend combines Panama Gesha with Costa Rica honey-processed coffee: rose and orange from the Gesha, grape, dried blueberry and strawberry-gummy sweetness from the honey lot. Cold-brewed and allowed to ferment and settle briefly, it takes on a fruit-wine character that pairs wonderfully with the same iced-pour-over spirit as this Guatemalan Merli No.8.