Is Pink Bourbon Not Bourbon Coffee? What Is Pink Bourbon Coffee - Flavor Profile and Characteristics

Yesterday a fellow coffee professional dropped by. He had just come back from Colombia and opened his laptop to show us plenty of photos of last year's popular Pink Bourbon. In the pictures, the cherries looked more like winter dates ripening gradually over several days than the Hello Kitty pink we tend to imagine.

Looking at the slender Pink Bourbon green beans, I mentioned offhand that Pink Bourbon always struck me as plump and round, yet this one was quite slim. He laughed. "Ha — did you know? Pink Bourbon isn't actually a Bourbon variety at all!"

What? Then why is it called Pink Bourbon?

On a certain Colombian estate (I'm not deliberately withholding the name — I genuinely couldn't catch it through his Japanese-accented English), Caturra had been grown for many years. After a leaf rust outbreak, almost every tree in the fields was wiped out, leaving only a sparse handful of survivors. Those survivors all shared one trait: their cherries had an orange-ish cast.

(Leaf rust can devastate coffee trees, and it is nothing short of a nightmare for farmers worldwide. It's also why so many producing countries promote rust-resistant varieties.)

Naturally rust-resistant genes. The estate's third-generation owner bred from those surviving cherries. Three years later — roughly four or five years ago — the cupping results astonished everyone: citrus acidity, apricot and peach flavors, and a sugarcane-and-honey sweetness.

"Hey, neighbor! What variety is this? Sell me some to plant back home!"

Well, the third-generation owner had recently heard of a very sweet coffee called Pink Bourbon in El Salvador, and its color was quite close to his own cherries. So he answered, "My friend, this is PINK! BOURBON!!"

"Wow — this bean is so sweet, so citrusy, it really does resemble Bourbon!"

And so farmers around Huila gradually began growing Pink Bourbon. Several of the lots that have reached the domestic market also come from the Huila region in southern Colombia. (El Salvador's Pink Bourbon really is a Bourbon variety, and its cherries carry a peachy pink hue.)

Two or three years ago, these Colombian Pink Bourbons were sent to laboratories for genetic analysis, as research institutions wanted to study the link between remarkable flavor and rust resistance. The rust-resistant varieties we know today generally don't perform well on flavor.

(In recent years, though, many beautiful-tasting rust-resistant varieties have emerged. They appear more and more often on the winner lists of Cup of Excellence competitions in Nicaragua, Mexico, El Salvador, and other Central American countries.)

The identification results shocked everyone...

It is a hybrid of the Colombia and Caturra varieties! Even so, everyone still prefers to call it Pink Bourbon — the name sounds more premium, and it seems to sell better.

Of course, the yield of Colombian Pink Bourbon remains lower than that of the Colombia variety. From the first cherry ripening to the end of harvest, the ripening window is far longer, so the cost of picking ripe cherries is higher too.

As we all know, Colombia and Castillo are both high-yield, rust-resistant varieties developed in Colombia and promoted for large-scale cultivation nationwide. The Colombia variety carries Catimor genes and, despite more than five generations of breeding, still contains Robusta genes.

For Colombia and Caturra — which carry Robusta genes — to evolve into such exceptional coffee, what kind of underdog story is this that we can't believe it?

Related recommendations: FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Yellow Bourbon coffee bean pour-over method and differences from Red Bourbon

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If this story has you curious about Colombian coffee, FrontStreet Coffee has two very different expressions worth trying. For the classic, approachable side, our FrontStreet Huila coffee comes from Huila — the country's most famous specialty region, tucked into the mountains of the southern Central Cordillera at growing elevations above 1,500 meters, where Colombia's most important rivers converge to bring abundant water and humidity. We roast it medium-dark to emphasize dark chocolate and the sweetness of nuts, with moderate oils and a full body; it works beautifully as pour-over or French press, and it also extracts well in a moka pot or espresso machine for Americanos and lattes. For a more modern, fruit-forward cup, our FrontStreet Colombia Frontera Estate Sidra is processed as an anaerobic natural. Anaerobic fermentation — sometimes called carbonic maceration — is a low-oxygen or oxygen-free fermentation carried out in a pressure-resistant stainless steel tank, where temperature, time, pH, and other data can be controlled; the best-known styles are anaerobic natural and anaerobic washed. After fermentation the beans develop more tropical aromatics, and roasted medium-light they deliver passion fruit, grape, apricot, and dried-fruit complexity in pour-over, cold brew, drip bags, or a moka pot. And if you have a home espresso machine or a moka pot, our FrontStreet Specialty Blend is a barista favorite: it pairs the creamy nuttiness of Brazilian coffee with the dark-chocolate bittersweetness of Colombian coffee, pulling a fine golden crema and making a rich, smooth latte that is especially forgiving for beginners, while also serving as an excellent base for Americanos, cappuccinos, and mochas.