Introduction to Brazilian Cerrado Bourbon Coffee Bean Varieties: Characteristics, Flavor, and Taste

Introduction to Bourbon Coffee

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Coffee is one of the world's three great beverages, and it is everywhere in daily life. It is also an agricultural product, and like vegetables and fruit it has a season. Coffee varieties need ongoing care too, and coffee trees continually throw off mutations and variants.

Most varieties on the market today are descendants of Bourbon and Typica, simply because those two are among the oldest varieties in the world and their flavour is excellent. Today FrontStreet Coffee will walk you through the history of how Bourbon coffee spread.

Origin and Varieties of Bourbon Coffee

Bourbon coffee takes its name from where it was cultivated: it was planted on Bourbon Island, and so it was named after the island. Bourbon Island is today's Réunion. The coffee is not native to the island, however — it was carried there from Yemen and planted.

Over long years of evolution, today's Bourbon trees have diverged in flavour. On modern plantations you may see Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon and Pink Bourbon, distinguished by the recessive genes of the yellow and red types and named for their colour. Most Bourbon coffee is Red Bourbon. Red Bourbon is the sweeter of the two, while Yellow Bourbon is rarer and slightly more acidic.

Bourbon Coffee in Brazil and Its Spread

Brazil's Bourbon coffee is particularly famous. Brazil brought round Bourbon in from Bourbon Island after 1860 to replace the lower-yielding Typica. Because South American Typica descended from a single "European mother plant," its genetic uniformity left it vulnerable to being wiped out entirely by pests and disease. This was the first time Bourbon coffee reached Central and South America, and it spread quickly from Brazil northward through the rest of South and Central America. Once Bourbon adapted to the climate there it produced many variants — the Yellow Bourbon, Pink Bourbon, Caturra and Pacas mentioned above among them. FrontStreet Coffee will briefly introduce those Bourbon variants.

Red Bourbon and Its Characteristics

The Red Bourbon variety turns wine-red when the cherries ripen, and its green beans are relatively round. Bourbon planted at high altitude usually has a better aroma and bright acidity, with a flavour reminiscent of red wine. Among the beans FrontStreet Coffee offers, the everyday Brazil Red Fruit is a Bourbon variety; there is also a coffee from the Guatemala Huehuetenango region that is Bourbon, though it is mixed with Caturra and Catuai, both Bourbon descendants.

Catimor and Yunnan Coffee

The increasingly renowned Yunnan region most commonly plants Catimor, a hybrid of Caturra — itself a Bourbon variant — and Timor coffee. Yunnan originally planted Typica, but its yield was so low and the economic return so poor that farmers were reluctant to keep it and preferred the higher-yielding Catimor. Catimor produces well, but its flavour cannot compare with Typica's; it lacks aroma and taste.

Tanzanian Bourbon Coffee

To FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, Bourbon is also planted in southern Tanzania. The varieties commonly grown in Tanzania are Bourbon, Typica and Kent. This coffee from the southern region, like Mount Kilimanjaro coffee, uses the common Central American washed method — but the variety is Bourbon. Bourbon has very high sweetness, bright acidity and a higher yield than Typica, and it is also susceptible to leaf rust disease.

Tasting Notes and Characteristics

FrontStreet Coffee cupped Tanzanian Bourbon, roasted medium-light to bring out the flavours of the southern region. What we found: very rich floral aromas, berry and citrus acidity, and some nuttiness in the finish. Southern-region coffee tends to show rich florals, a wine-like fragrance and gentle acidity, while coffee from the Mount Kilimanjaro area has bright acidity and a mellow mouthfeel thanks to fertile volcanic soil, which gives it a mineral-water sweetness. It is exactly this combination of mellow texture, suitable acidity and rich aroma that led Europeans to call Tanzanian coffee the "gentleman of coffee."

Yellow Bourbon and Its Unique Qualities

Yellow Bourbon is a distinctive Bourbon variant from São Paulo state in Brazil. When the coffee ripens it does not turn red but shows an orange-yellow colour. Yellow Bourbon yields very little, which is why FrontStreet Coffee lists only one — the beans from Brazil's Queen's Estate farm. Low yield or not, planted at high altitude it performs beautifully. Taste this Yellow Bourbon from FrontStreet Coffee and you will find that in addition to the nutty flavours of the Americas and a rich chocolate aroma, it has a very bright, refreshing mouthfeel.

Pink Bourbon from Colombia

On the subject of Pink Bourbon, FrontStreet Coffee would point to Colombia. One Pink Bourbon we acquired comes from the Huila region, which produces very famous, very high-quality coffee. FrontStreet Coffee has cupped a great many beans from Huila, and they show soft fruit acidity up front with good sweetness behind and excellent overall balance — the region's beans feel highly adaptable. FrontStreet Coffee's view is that applying different green bean processing methods to coffee from this region will bring the palate different surprises.

Pink Bourbon was first discovered in the town of Palestine in Colombia's Huila province and is now planted mainly in the Huila region. It is a natural hybrid of Yellow Bourbon and Red Bourbon. FrontStreet Coffee has cupped and brewed this Pink Bourbon, and roasts it medium-light to highlight its distinctive flavour. Our barista uses a standard 200ml cupping bowl, a grind size with a 70%-75% pass rate through a #20 standard sieve, 11.1g of coffee and a water temperature of 94 degrees Celsius.

The process starts with grinding and smelling the dry aroma. This Pink Bourbon's dry aroma is a fresh floral fragrance. Water is then added to fill the bowl to confirm the wet aroma, which here is the fresh fragrance of blueberries. After 4 minutes the crust is broken and the grounds removed for flavour identification. FrontStreet Coffee's cupping results: an overall flavour of fresh floral aroma, blueberry and green grape juice sweetness, cherry through the middle and a brown sugar-like sweetness in the finish. On acidity it presents more of a complex citrus-and-berry expression.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the Bourbon family has you curious about Brazilian coffee, the clearest entry is FrontStreet Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon. Cerrado is one of Brazil's best-known growing regions and this is a classic single-origin Brazilian lot, built on the red Bourbon variety so common across South America. Roasted medium, it shows dense cream, peanut, toasted bread, caramel and hazelnut aromas, with a round body, no real acidity and a light bitter finish. It brews as pour-over and works just as well in a moka pot, as an espresso SOE, in a siphon or in a French press.

For the rare Yellow Bourbon in the cup, FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Estate is the one. It comes from Mogiana, close to South Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil lets the cherries take up abundant nutrients and develop a fuller aroma. Part of the area farms in the traditional way and part has moved to modern, standardized management, which has lifted local quality considerably. The variety is the uncommon Yellow Bourbon, a natural mutation of Red Bourbon whose fruit character is cleaner. Brewed as pour-over, in a moka pot or on a home espresso machine, it shows a sugarcane sweetness no other origin has, alongside fruit and chocolate notes.

Brazil is also the backbone of many espresso recipes. Low acidity, a balanced cup and an accessible price make it the first choice for blending, and FrontStreet's espresso range — the rich-crema Classic Blend, the nutty Specialty Blend, the balanced Black Cocoa Blend recommended by countless baristas, and FrontStreet Coffee's Commercial Blend built for cafés — all contain Brazilian coffee. It contributes chocolate and cream aromas alongside a soft sweet-sour-bitter profile, and that balance is exactly what makes extraction more stable.