What Are the Differences Between Typica and Bourbon? Flavor and Taste Characteristics of Bourbon Coffee Varieties

FrontStreet Coffee: Typica vs Bourbon, and Brazil's Fazenda Rainha

Typica

Typica: descended from an Ethiopian native variety. The beans are flatter in shape. The plants resist disease poorly and are susceptible to leaf rust, and yields are low.

Bourbon

Bourbon: discovered on Bourbon Island, hence the name. The beans are rounder and thinner, and yields run about 30% higher than Typica. Flavor develops best at high altitude; disease resistance is stronger than Typica's, though the trees require shade. Famously, they bear heavily one year and rest the next.

Yellow Bourbon

Yellow Bourbon: arose from a Bourbon mutation in São Paulo state, Brazil, with outstanding cup quality — a frequent Cup of Excellence winner.

For a long time, Bourbon has been considered a leader among coffee varieties, prized for low yield and high quality. We have previously discussed Nicaragua's Pointed Bourbon; today the best-known Bourbon variants are Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Orange Bourbon, and Pink Bourbon.

Bourbon is an Arabica variety usually named for the color of its ripe fruit — red, yellow, orange, or pink. Orange Bourbon yields less, and Pink Bourbon yields extremely little.

The name traces back to Réunion Island. The French made three attempts — in 1708, 1715, and 1718 — to introduce coffee from Yemen to Bourbon Island (now Réunion); it was the second and third introductions that survived and thrived.

In 1841, a French missionary established a church on Réunion, then went on to found new churches in Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, St. Augustine, Bula, and elsewhere across Africa, planting Réunion coffee at each one. From then on, "Bourbon coffee" took root on the African continent as well.

Brazil Fazenda Rainha

Origin: Mogiana region, Brazil.

Estate: Fazenda Rainha (Queen Estate)

Owner: Regina Helena Mello de Carvalho Dias, of the Carvalho Dias family

Variety: Yellow Bourbon

Processing: hand-picked, then pulped natural (semi-washed)

Flavor: sweet, clean beans. The pulped natural process gives an acidity that is bright yet balanced by sweetness, with hints of tropical fruit in some lots — and the aroma that floods out during brewing only adds to its appeal.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Bourbon lovers should start with FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Fazenda Rainha Yellow Bourbon. Grown in the Mogiana region near southern Minas — where fertile red volcanic soil feeds the fruit — this rare Yellow Bourbon, a natural mutation of Red Bourbon, offers a cleaner fruit character than its parent: sugarcane sweetness you won't find in other origins, plus notes of creamed peanut, chocolate, and toasted bread. It is equally at home in a pour-over, a moka pot, or an espresso machine, and its low acidity and gentle balance make it a benchmark everyday coffee.

Typica loyalists, meanwhile, should look to FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1. Blue Mountain's Typica arrived from Martinique in the 1820s and, after two centuries of adaptation, cupped with a balance no other origin can quite replicate: cream, caramel, chocolate, nuts, honey, and a light fruit note, with acidity, sweetness, and bitterness in perfect accord. Medium roasted, it is often called the specialty coffee that almost anyone can love — the classic argument for why these two old Arabica varieties have endured for three centuries.