Where to Buy Pour-Over Coffee Beans? How to Choose the Right Coffee Beans Without Being Scammed?

Finding Quality Coffee Beans for Home Brewing

Over the past couple of years, more and more people have taken up the idea of specialty coffee and started brewing pour-over at home. Which raises the question: where do you find good beans? If money is no object you can fly abroad to buy them or order by post, taxes and shipping included, but most of us need to find good beans closer to home.

If your city has a good self-roasting specialty café, the first choice is simply to visit and buy whatever tastes good. That opportunity is rare, though, and you will always want to try new varieties or another roaster's craft, which makes online shops a solid option too.

So which online shops selling roasted coffee beans are worth your time? Since a lot of friends have asked, let me start with a few from my own experience. Honestly, coffee roasting has an enormous number of variables — different green beans from each estate, different storage times, and even slightly humid weather can change how a roasted bean tastes. What I can say is that, on the whole, these shops are well suited to buying beans online for home brewing, and to small specialty cafés stocking their shelves.

Recommended Coffee Bean Shops

Fisher Coffee

FISHER's owner may be young, but she already counts as a veteran of specialty roasting, and the shop's four-crown rating is thoroughly deserved. Fisher's strengths are deep roasting experience and strong green-bean sourcing, with new beans appearing often. If you like trying new things, this is one to bookmark.

Their service center in downtown Qingdao is now open to visitors — taste first, and buy if you like it.

Oubake Specialty Coffee

The founder is Bill Chiang from Taiwan, runner-up at the first World Coffee Roasting Championship in 2013. An international judge for coffee green beans, he often travels to origin to inspect and buy green coffee directly, so Oubake has an abundant supply of green beans and sells them online as well.

FrontStreet Coffee

This is a specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou. If you want to see the "milk-producing cows" — no, the big roasting machine — you can book ahead with the shop assistant and join a group visit to FrontStreet Coffee for free food and drink (don't tell them I sent you). They also keep an unusually complete collection of coffee beans from regions and varieties around the world. If you are nearby, it is worth grabbing a few.

Minority Café

The owner is China's champion at the 2014 World Cup Tasters Championship. A good tongue and a good nose mean the roasted beans are certainly not bad — otherwise, they would suffer for it too. You can see how seriously the owner takes coffee in the logo and the images alone.

Quality and Considerations

The four shops above not only sell well and enjoy a good reputation online, they also have plenty of offline café supporters. Visiting different shops and trying their beans, I am generally not disappointed. There are exceptions, of course — one shop in Beijing once served me beans two months past roast, no longer fresh, which left me with mixed emotions. That, too, says something: the beans were good to begin with, so they could not bear to throw them out.

This issue covers a few shops to get you started. More online shops and other channels will follow in future articles.

Understanding Coffee Beans

What to Consider When Buying Coffee Beans

For beginners, besides price, the most important thing to understand is roast level. Roast levels divide roughly into light, medium and dark. Remember one principle: the darker the roast, the less acidic the beans, but also the less they retain of the coffee's original character; the lighter the roast, the more likely the beans are to show acidity, and the more they preserve the bean's inherent qualities.

Besides roast level, the choice of beans is closely tied to how you plan to brew. If you want American-style black coffee, I would not recommend buying cheap espresso blend beans or pre-ground, because espresso blends are designed for the high-temperature, high-pressure extraction of an espresso machine or moka pot. Those beans are usually roasted darker, with carbonized notes dominating — perfect with milk, but relatively hard to appreciate as a showcase for what specialty coffee can do.

None of this is absolute, of course; there is nothing wrong with brewing espresso beans as an Americano. Still, single-origin beans are available at the same price as espresso blends. Remember that even a small 25-gram pack of coffee at 25 yuan can help you start learning the fundamentals of specialty coffee, if you use the right method.

Is There a Big Difference Between Online and Café Beans?

Coffee beans are sold mainly through supermarkets, online shops and physical roasting stores. Quality varies, naturally, so it is best to try small quantities first before committing to a long-term order. As for large or small packages, there is no necessary link to quality — it depends on how quickly you drink it. What you do need to watch is the roast date and the optimal flavor window, not the expiration date. Storage after purchase matters too: once the packaging is opened, improper storage can potentially produce ochratoxin, which affects human health. Wherever you buy, the key is to purchase in sensible quantities and drink promptly.

Coffee Bean Prices and Grades

In the commercial world, it comes down mainly to supply and demand. More expensive beans are not necessarily better than cheaper ones — often a particular coffee has such distinct character that demand outruns supply and prices spike abnormally, as with certain "animal" coffees. In many cases, beans selling for 200 yuan will not taste five times better than beans at 40 yuan; it is simply that the origins supplying the 200 yuan beans have limited production, which creates a large price gap.

So my suggestion is to buy mostly everyday beans for daily drinking, keeping the daily cost somewhere around 7-20 yuan (those with deeper pockets can spend as they please), and occasionally try something special for the sake of novelty and a more refined routine. Personally I like buying small packages: each month I pick up three everyday beans from major producing regions — Brazilian, Yirgacheffe, Mandheling — which have stable supply and good value, plus one estate-level specialty bean at a slightly higher price. Even for someone like me who drinks coffee like water, at two large cups of 800ml or more a day, the monthly cost of beans comes in well below ordering coffee out, while also letting me drink a range of better-tasting coffees and explore all kinds of new experiences.

I have never been to Brazil, the great coffee-producing country, or Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, or Panama, the emblem of specialty coffee — but at least I have tasted several different flavored beans from each of them, which is quite something when you think about it. Is that not the charm of brewing coffee by hand?

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Choosing beans gets easier once you know what you want from the cup, and FrontStreet Coffee's roster covers both ends of that decision. On the lighter, floral and fruity side, FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gedingding is the classic first stop: vivid citrus, berry and floral notes with a green tea-like sweetness on the return, and an acidity that is soft and bright rather than sharp. FrontStreet Ethiopia Hua Kui pushes tropical fruit to the front — strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit and lychee — with obvious sweetness and very low bitterness. FrontStreet Panama Esmeralda Red Label Geisha shows the refined end of the spectrum: jasmine florals with citrus, bergamot and black tea, a clean, transparent body and a long, layered finish.

If you prefer a fuller, less acidic cup, the medium-dark side is well represented. FrontStreet PWN Golden Mandheling is deep roasted with very low acidity, a thick, lingering body and plenty of herbal and dark chocolate aroma with a faint earthy note — a favorite among drinkers who like weight over brightness. FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Farm is balanced and smooth, with nut and cocoa aromas, clear caramel sweetness and a gentle, warming finish that suits pour-over, espresso or moka pot. FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 sits between the two camps and is the safest introduction for anyone unsure of their taste: neither the fierce fruit acidity of some African coffees nor the heavy bitterness of a dark roast, but cream, caramel, chocolate, nuts, honey and a light fruit note in near-perfect balance.