What is Bourbon Coffee? An Introduction to the Flavor and Profile of Bourbon Coffee Beans

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

FrontStreet Coffee Introduces: Bourbon Coffee

Bourbon is a coffee variety belonging to a branch of the Arabica species. It takes its name from the color of the ripe cherry, which gives us red, yellow, orange, and pink Bourbon. Among these, orange Bourbon yields relatively little, while pink Bourbon is extremely rare.

The name "Bourbon" comes from Réunion Island. The French made three attempts, in 1708, 1715, and 1718, to bring coffee from Yemen to Bourbon Island, now Réunion. Only the coffee from the second and third transplantings survived and multiplied.

In 1841, a French missionary established a church on Réunion, then a French territory. After leaving the island he founded new churches in several African countries, including Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, St. Augustine, and Bula. At each church he planted coffee from Réunion, and from that point on the African continent had its own "Bourbon coffee."

Red Bourbon

After the Red Bourbon tree flowers and fruits, the cherries shift color in a fixed sequence: green, light yellow, light orange, mature red, and finally a deeper red at full ripeness. This is the Bourbon variety as most people mean it. Grown at high altitude, Bourbon typically develops a superior aroma and bright acidity, with flavors that can even echo red wine.

Yellow Bourbon

Yellow Bourbon is a distinctive Bourbon found exclusively in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Its cherries do not turn red when ripe; instead they show an orange-yellow color, which gives the variety its name. Yellow Bourbon grown at high altitude delivers excellent flavor and once swept Brazil's Cup of Excellence competition for two consecutive years, nearly taking all three top prizes and creating a sensation in the specialty coffee industry.

Pink Bourbon

Pink Bourbon is a hybrid of Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon. As the name suggests, its cherries ripen to a romantic pink, making it an exceptionally rare variety. Because cherry color is governed by recessive genes in the pollen, fruit color in coffee trees is not stable. The yellow genes leaning toward Yellow Bourbon and the red genes leaning toward Red Bourbon interfere with each other, making that beautiful pink hard to hold on to, and sometimes the harvest comes out as orange Bourbon instead. Even so, Pink Bourbon is worth noting for its excellent disease resistance and its unique flavor profile.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you want to taste Bourbon in the cup, Brazil is the easiest place to start. The FrontStreet Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic single-origin Brazilian coffee, medium roasted to a rounded, low-acid cup of creamy peanut, toasted bread, caramel, and hazelnut with a faint bittersweet edge; it works beautifully as a pour-over and is just as happy in a moka pot, siphon, French press, or as an espresso SOE. To explore the yellow side of the family, the FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate, a rare Yellow Bourbon grown in Mogiana on fertile red volcanic soil, adds a sugarcane sweetness with fruit and chocolate notes you will not find in other origins. Bourbon also anchors many of FrontStreet's espresso blends, where it brings chocolate and cream notes and a balanced sweetness-acidity-bitterness that keeps extraction stable.