What Grade Are Blue Mountain Coffee Beans? Introduction to Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 Coffee Grade Characteristics and Pour-Over Taste

Is Blue Mountain Coffee the Highest Grade Coffee Bean?

Most people's introduction to coffee begins with hearing about FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain Coffee. Although FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain Coffee is quite famous, it is not the most expensive in terms of price, nor is it the most refined in terms of flavor. However, FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain Coffee, with its balanced sweet, sour, and bitter flavors, has become the "ancestor" that defines good coffee.

Since my family members are also coffee enthusiasts, ever since FrontStreet Coffee can remember, the daily beverages they talk about most are inseparable from coffee, among which the term "FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain Coffee" appears with the highest frequency. Whenever they taste a coffee, they habitually use Blue Mountain Coffee as a benchmark to measure and compare the flavor of the new coffee. This also shows that Blue Mountain Coffee holds a special place in the hearts of older generation coffee professionals, or perhaps in an era when coffee was not yet widely accepted by Chinese people, Blue Mountain Coffee was the best coffee at that time.

FrontStreet Coffee's first encounter with coffee was also captivated by the aroma when Blue Mountain Coffee was being brewed! More than twenty years ago, there weren't many places in Guangzhou where you could drink coffee. At that time, as a small child, I followed my family to the coffee lounge of a relatively famous hotel in Guangzhou, watching the barista brew Blue Mountain Coffee using the flannel method. That aroma is still memorable to this day.

Due to being too young, I didn't seriously taste that cup of coffee, but I did have a small spoonful. In the impression of Guangdong children, black liquids can be associated with herbal tea and considered to be very bitter liquids. However, that spoonful of coffee fascinated me! Unlike the long-lasting bitterness of herbal tea, Blue Mountain Coffee shows a strong sweet aftertaste after entering the mouth. Although it was strong, it didn't have a burnt bitter taste, very fragrant and very mellow.

This mellow and sweet aftertaste coffee flavor was not experienced again in the following dozen years until I tried FrontStreet Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) Frontsteet Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee beans! In an instant, it resolved the long-lasting craving. FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee beans come from the Clifton Manor in Jamaica's Blue Mountain region, which is the oldest coffee manor in the Blue Mountains.

The Origin of Clifton Manor

Clifton Farm began planting and producing coffee as early as the mid-18th century (around 1750). The coffee cultivation and processing areas here are located at an average altitude of 1,310.64 meters. Sufficient altitude, gentle afternoon clouds and mist surrounding the mountain forests for shade, abundant sunlight, and mineral-rich planting soil provide excellent growing conditions for coffee trees and also extend the ripening of coffee fruits.

More than two hundred years of coffee cultivation history have made this manor the oldest coffee producing area in Jamaica that is still in normal operation today. This manor is also the only coffee manor in Jamaica with Rainforest Alliance certification. This certification aims to protect the ecological environment, ensure sustainable agricultural development, develop and produce safe and high-quality tea, enhance market competitiveness, and is of great significance for increasing export earnings and the income of tea farmers and laborers. At the same time, Clifton Manor is also the only coffee manor with Rainforest Alliance certification.

The Tropical Rainforest Alliance is a worldwide non-governmental organization (NGO) established in New York in 1987. It focuses on preventing over-development through traditional agricultural methods, protecting natural ecosystems on one hand, and maintaining the lives of farmers in excellent agricultural gardens on the other. It protects ecosystems and the humans and wildlife that depend on them by changing land use methods, business practices, and consumer behavior, achieving biodiversity conservation and providing sustainable development.

Cultivation and Processing

To ensure the high quality of Blue Mountain, local farms including Clifton have insisted on planting only the ancient high-quality variety Typica for many years and use washed processing for production.

The quality of FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee largely comes from its growing environment. The Blue Mountains are located in the coffee belt between 25 degrees north and south latitude. Here, volcanic activity brings nutrient-rich mineral soil, abundant rainfall year-round, lingering clouds and mist, large temperature differences between day and night at high altitudes, and Blue Mountain also belongs to a relatively closed island-type microclimate with minimal air pollution. The Typica variety introduced for planting many years ago has gradually adapted to the local terroir, not only maintaining its pure lineage but also developing strong disease resistance.

Whenever Typica coffee fruits ripen, the owner of Clifton Farm arranges for employees to manually pick the fresh coffee fruits and place them in water, using flotation to remove impurities and unripe fruits. Next, the peel and pulp are removed, and they are fermented in the pool for 12-18 hours, then spread out in the sun for dehydration and drying, and finally packed and left in the warehouse for quality inspection before export. The washed processing steps not only reduce the defect rate but also restore the natural aroma of Blue Mountain coffee beans, resulting in higher cleanliness in taste.

How to Identify Authentic Blue Mountain Coffee

With so many Blue Mountain coffees on the market, how do you distinguish authentic ones? To buy authentic FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee, you need to recognize that the coffee green beans are packed in wooden barrels - Jamaica is the only producing area that uses wooden barrels for green beans, and when exporting, the Jamaican government will issue relevant certification documents. The Blue Mountain Coffee provided by FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) has certificates issued by the Jamaica Coffee Board. In addition, the wooden barrels packaging Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans will have a green frog, which is the symbol of the Tropical Rainforest Alliance.

To present the classic Blue Mountain flavor to the greatest extent, highlighting chocolate and nut aromas while retaining soft acidity and sweetness, making the overall taste tend toward balance, FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-dark roasting. After fresh roasting, FrontStreet Coffee immediately conducted cupping on FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee beans. The dry aroma has nuts, sweet melon, and chocolate. After adding hot water, you can smell oolong tea, caramel, honey, and dark chocolate. The taste is rich dark chocolate, roasted hazelnuts, cream, and brown sugar, with clean and clear flavor, mellow taste, and lasting aroma.

Brewing Recommendations

After you place an order on Taobao, FrontStreet Coffee will ship Blue Mountain coffee beans within 5 days of roasting. Due to structural changes in the coffee beans during the roasting process, a large amount of carbon dioxide will be stored inside the coffee beans, which will affect even extraction during the brewing process. Therefore, when you receive the coffee beans, they are still in a relatively fresh state. If you're not in a hurry to drink them, FrontStreet Coffee suggests keeping the original packaging sealed and letting it sit for 2-3 days. After some carbon dioxide is expelled through the one-way exhaust valve (only out, not in), the brewing flavor will be even better~

To allow FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain Coffee to exhibit more mellowness, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using a Kono dripper for brewing. The feature of this dripper is its shorter ribs. When the filter paper fits with the dripper, it can form a semi-sealed state, which will slow down the speed of water flow and achieve a segmented immersion effect, suitable for brewing medium-dark roasted, mellow-flavored FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain Coffee. FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) baristas use the following brewing parameters and techniques for daily Blue Mountain pour-over: 88°C water temperature, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, 15g coffee dose, grind size (70-75% pass rate through #20 standard sieve).

Adopting a three-stage extraction technique: First stage, inject 30g of water for blooming, with a blooming time of 30 seconds. Second stage, inject water to about 125g, then wait for the coffee liquid to drop. When it drops to half, inject the final stage of water to 225g. Wait until all the coffee has dripped through before ending extraction. The total extraction time is generally around 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

The FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee brewed this way has a full aroma. When hot, the coffee entry shows dark chocolate and caramel aromas, very mellow, with obvious almond aftertaste, accompanied by a light pine fragrance. As the temperature decreases, the creamy hazelnut-like sweetness becomes apparent, with silky texture, carrying toffee-like aromas, with distinct layers. There are almost no uncomfortable flavors throughout. Even after drinking, the aroma still persists in the mouth. Perhaps this is the Blue Mountain flavor that FrontStreet Coffee has always been unable to forget.

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Important Notice :

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