How Alluring is the Tempting 90+ Danch Meng? What's Its Flavor Profile?

Danch Meng | Ninety Plus Danch Meng Coffee

Origin of the Name: Danch Meng is actually the secondary brand "Level up" of the NINETY PLUS company, an Ethiopian green coffee bean launched jointly by the company and the green bean trader Bodhi Leaf in 2013. Danch Meng is locally translated as "Perfect approach," and it is grown by small farmers from Yirgacheffe Kilenina Abayudamense. It is a product launched with the professional flavour-processing background of the NINETY PLUS company, using 90+ natural processing technology to give Danch Meng a very distinctive Yirgacheffe character.

Taking Danch Meng beans as an example, they smell similar to cocoa. After extraction, Danch Meng beans distinctly exhibit blackberry flavours, combined with notes of cocoa and plum.

Who is "Ninety Plus"?

Ninety Plus coffee comes from the American specialty coffee creators and suppliers NinetyPlus Coffee. NinetyPlus, or 90+, are both coffee growers and flavour artists. Since 2007 they have been at the forefront of driving change in the coffee market. In Ethiopia and Panama they have assembled top-tier flavour creation teams, treating coffee with sustainable practices, and they grow rare, slow-growing, low-yield coffee varieties that coexist with the forest.

"Ninety Plus" does not refer to all coffees scoring above 90 points. Good coffee appears one year and disappears the next; sometimes it emerges from different estates and possesses various flavour characteristics. "Ninety Plus" refers to a premium coffee series of 13 flavour profiles, with taste quality and standards far surpassing any other precious coffee.

90+ Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

Another 90+ bean roasted by FrontStreet Coffee, Zhū Máng (Candle Light), offers full assurance in both brand and quality. More importantly, it provides exceptional value for money. A half-pound (227g) package costs only around 90 yuan. Calculating at 15g per pour-over coffee, one package can make 15 cups, with each single-origin cup costing only about 6 yuan. Compared with cafe prices that often reach dozens of yuan per cup, this represents extremely high value.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Danch Meng is a Yirgacheffe natural built on the 90+ approach, and FrontStreet Coffee's own Yirgacheffe range lets you explore the same origin at several levels of intensity. The FrontStreet washed Yirgacheffe is the classic introduction, known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a tea-like body, and its accessible price has made it the first specialty bean for a great many drinkers.

The FrontStreet Gotiti Cooperative comes from the Worka area at the south-eastern edge of Yirgacheffe, once part of the YCFCU Worka cooperative before being recognised as a single-origin site, and it keeps the traditional washed method; it carries no heavy bitterness at all, with fresh, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a jasmine fragrance. For the fruitier, natural side of Yirgacheffe that Danch Meng represents, the FrontStreet Red Cherry uses fully ripe red cherries dried whole on raised beds, turned every two to three hours at first and finished over three to five weeks, then hulled and rested in the warehouse. Because the cherries dry with the fruit still on them, the coffee keeps the typical Yirgacheffe character while adding tropical fruit from the natural process, with citrus acidity, a berry-juice body, honey sweetness and a creamy smoothness.

For brewing, FrontStreet suggests a V60 with water at 90 to 91 degrees Celsius, a 15g dose and a 1:15 ratio, grinding to EK43s setting 10, about the texture of caster sugar with 80% passing a No. 20 sieve. Bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds, pour to about 125g within a minute, then add the remaining 100g to reach about 225g, finishing the drip in 2 to 2 minutes 10 seconds.