Brazilian Pour-Over Coffee Brewing Guide: Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon Coffee Brewing Method

When it comes to the country of Brazil, most people immediately think of football. However, for coffee professionals, FrontStreet Coffee's first thought is coffee beans. Brazilian coffee belongs to the classic mellow flavor category, renowned for its exceptionally balanced taste. Today, FrontStreet Coffee will discuss how to brew that "Brazilian flavor."

Brazilian Yellow Bourbon Variety

Through research, FrontStreet Coffee learned that the world's Arabica coffee varieties are composed of Typica and Bourbon, along with their derived descendants. Among them, Bourbon and its descendants, popular in Central and South American countries, are spread worldwide and remain the main cultivated varieties in many nations, such as excellent varieties like Caturra.

The name Bourbon originates from Bourbon Island, which is Réunion Island located off the eastern coast of Africa. In the 17th century, as a French territory, it was named Bourbon Island and wasn't renamed until the late 18th century. In the 18th century, the French introduced round coffee beans from Yemen to Bourbon Island, where they began to take root and grow. It wasn't until 1860 that Brazil brought round Bourbon back to their country for cultivation, subsequently spreading it to various countries in Central and South America, making it the oldest Latin American coffee parent variety.

Bourbon variety fruits are small and round, with high-density coffee beans. When grown at high altitudes, Bourbon has high sweetness and bright acidity. Like Typica, both are ancient excellent varieties. Bourbon's resistance to leaf rust is superior to Typica, and its flavor is no less impressive than Typica. The greatest commonality between Bourbon and Typica is that both require shade trees to block sunlight to facilitate growth and flavor development, thus having certain requirements for the growing environment.

Common Bourbon varieties gradually change color from green to light yellow, then red, and finally to deep red when fully mature, hence the name Red Bourbon. Additionally, there are Bourbon varieties that don't turn red when mature, instead becoming the rarer yellow or pink colors—Yellow Bourbon and Pink Bourbon. Yellow Bourbon produced at high altitudes carries delicate flavors and has won top honors in Brazil's Cup of Excellence competition consecutively. FrontStreet Coffee's Queen Estate coffee is made from Yellow Bourbon coffee, produced in Brazil's Mogiana region.

Brazil Queen Estate Coffee

Traditionally, Brazilian coffee production areas, which prioritize mass production, mostly plant in flat areas at relatively low altitudes, resulting in coffee flavors that are relatively mild and not outstanding. Queen Estate (Fazenda Rainha) is a rare high-altitude farm in the region. The ideal hilly terrain combined with suitable climate conditions allows the Yellow Bourbon coffee produced here to have a rich pectin layer, resulting in higher sweetness in the coffee.

Traditional dry processing involves pouring coffee cherries directly onto concrete floors to dry in the sun. Due to the rough handling methods, the resulting coffee can easily carry earthy and other off-flavors, along with unpleasant over-fermentation notes. Queen Estate pours the cherries into water tanks before drying, using flotation to remove underripe fruits. To avoid earthy and fermentation flavors, Queen Estate spreads the coffee cherries on African raised beds throughout the process, arranging personnel to turn them regularly to reduce uneven heating, maintaining the coffee's cleanliness as much as possible.

Queen Estate Coffee Pour-Over Reference

FrontStreet Coffee hopes to highlight the classic regional flavor of Queen Estate, which is the rich chocolate aroma, so FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-dark roasting. Through cupping, FrontStreet Coffee tasted that this Queen Estate coffee has very obvious sweetness, so FrontStreet Coffee adopts a three-stage water injection in brewing, hoping to present more layers in the coffee.

Since coffee beans enter their optimal tasting period 4-7 days after roasting, and after this time (approximately one and a half months after roasting), the coffee's aroma may have dissipated, and some woody flavors may have developed. To avoid this situation, FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned it in many articles—most importantly, FrontStreet Coffee only ships coffee beans freshly roasted within 5 days, so everyone can taste coffee with excellent flavor.

Dripper: Medium-dark roasted coffee beans mainly present a mellow and round mouthfeel. Targeting this characteristic, FrontStreet Coffee will use the slower-flowing KONO dripper for extraction. The upper part of the KONO is a smooth curved surface, while the lower part has one-third length diversion ribs. This allows the filter paper to fit more closely with the dripper, restricting upward airflow and forcing hot water to flow downward, creating a siphon-like extraction effect that allows the aromatic substances in the coffee grounds to be released more fully.

Grind Size: Considering the increased roast level, the texture of coffee beans becomes looser. When ground into powder, they easily absorb more moisture and release more soluble substances, which can bring out unpleasant woody and bitter off-flavors. FrontStreet Coffee's barista will adjust the grind to be coarser, making the coffee particles larger to reduce over-extraction. Here, medium grind is used (70-75% pass rate through Chinese standard #20 sieve).

Water Temperature: When brewing light to medium roasted coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee uses higher water temperatures to extract aromatic substances from high-density coffee beans. However, medium-dark roasted Brazilian coffee, having undergone longer caramelization reactions, if the same high-temperature hot water is used, the coffee can easily present thick and burnt bitterness. Appropriately lowering the water temperature helps reduce some bitterness, so FrontStreet Coffee uses 87-88°C water temperature.

Coffee grounds will absorb about twice their weight in water. FrontStreet Coffee generally uses 15 grams of coffee grounds, extracting at a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, finally extracting nearly 200ml of coffee liquid, which is 1-2 servings.

Dripper: KONO dripper
Water Temperature: 87-88°C
Coffee Amount: 15 grams
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Medium grind (70% pass rate through Chinese standard #20 sieve)

Use twice the weight of coffee grounds in water to wet the coffee bed, forming a dome and let it bloom for 30 seconds. Then use a small water flow to pour in circles from inside to outside to 125g, then pause. Wait until the coffee bed drops to half the height of the dripper, then continue with the same fine water flow to inject the third stage to 225g, until all the coffee liquid has filtered through, then remove the dripper. The total time is about 2 minutes.

Hand-poured Brazilian Queen Estate coffee smells of lemon, nuts, and peanuts. On the palate, it has very mellow nutty, dark chocolate, and caramel flavors with distinct sweetness. The mouthfeel is as smooth as cream, with an overall rounded character.

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