What are the famous Japanese Blue Mountain coffee brands? Can authentic Blue Mountain coffee beans only be purchased in Japan?

In the past, we often heard rumors like "Blue Mountain coffee is too expensive to drink" or "Only Japanese Blue Mountain coffee is authentic." These misconceptions originated from a coffee contract signed between Jamaica and Japan in the 1970s.

Before the 1960s, Jamaican coffee beans were already highly popular in the specialty coffee market. In 1969, Jamaica was severely affected by hurricane disasters, causing multiple industries to fall into difficulties, and the coffee industry was no exception. At this time, Japan's UCC company provided financial assistance to Jamaica's coffee industry and introduced scientific ecological cultivation methods. The Jamaican government, grateful for the help, signed a 30-year contract with Japan, agreeing to allocate 90% of high-quality Blue Mountain coffee quota to Japan, with the remaining 10% distributed to European and American countries.

After the contract between both parties expired, it coincided with the global economic crisis. Japan's economy was sluggish, purchasing power declined, and Jamaican coffee farmers were unwilling to let Japanese businessmen monopolize the market anymore, so they significantly raised the prices of raw coffee beans. Currently, Japan's purchase of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee has dropped from the previous 90% to less than 60%.

Today, with the flourishing development of coffee culture, we can now directly import Blue Mountain coffee beans from Jamaica. At FrontStreet Coffee, you can enjoy authentic FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain Coffee. FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No.1 is sold at 158 yuan/100g per package, with hand-drip brewing at 60 yuan/cup, which is a relatively affordable price point, suitable for广大 coffee enthusiasts to purchase and try.

Identifying Authentic Blue Mountain Coffee

If we enter "Blue Mountain" as a keyword in search engines, numerous articles about how to identify authentic Blue Mountain coffee will appear. Indeed, due to Blue Mountain coffee's international fame, many unscrupulous merchants use the Blue Mountain banner to sell lower-quality commercial coffee as genuine products, and there are also many fake Blue Mountain products on the market. The most common ones contain terms like "Blue Mountain flavor," "Blue Mountain blend," "Blue Mountain instant," which are actually completely unrelated to genuine Blue Mountain.

Although there are many fake Blue Mountain coffees in China, it doesn't mean genuine Blue Mountain doesn't exist. In fact, China had records of directly importing Blue Mountain coffee from Jamaica as early as April 2011. At that time, Zhejiang DUNN'S RIVER Import and Export Trading Company, representing the "Hangzhou Coffee and Western Restaurant Association," purchased from Jamaica, totaling 1000*70kg, with a total value of two million US dollars. Today, Jamaica also attaches great importance to the Chinese market, and you can find lists of many domestic authorized exporters on the CIB official website.

FrontStreet Coffee's own roasted FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No.1 coffee is produced by Jamaica's Clifton Mountain Estate, equipped with quality certification certificates issued by the Jamaica Coffee Industry Board, authorized sales certificates issued by Blue Mountain coffee manufacturers, and Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee origin certificates. The Dongshankou store also displays oak barrels containing Blue Mountain raw beans.

Blue Mountain Coffee Quality Standards

Compared to other coffee origins, Jamaica was the first country to recognize that coffee has "regional flavor." The local standards for evaluating Blue Mountain raw bean quality cover multiple categories: raw bean size specifications, defect rate, color, uniformity, and cupping performance after roasting (including dry aroma, wet aroma, acidity, flavor, body, cleanliness, etc.)

Bean size specifications use various screens with different hole diameters - coffee beans that don't pass through the holes meet the used standards. Color evaluation includes visual observation and colorimeter readings, with blue-green being the highest grade. Based on these various standards, Blue Mountain coffee is divided into 4 grades, from high to low: NO.1, NO.2, NO.3, PB, and blends. NO.1 is the highest-grade premium Blue Mountain, known in China as "Blue Mountain No.1." FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No.1 must meet specifications of 17 mesh or larger, defect rate below 3%, moisture content around 13%, and present rich coffee aroma in cupping, with smooth, balanced taste, low acidity, and long-lasting aftertaste.

Roasting and Brewing

Regarding roasting, CIB also has recommendations for roasting degrees that bring out Blue Mountain's classic flavor, and FrontStreet Coffee's roasters follow this principle, using medium roast to let FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No.1 coffee present both rich chocolate sweetness while retaining appropriate soft fruity acidity.

FrontStreet Coffee hopes to highlight the rich and rounded texture of FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No.1 coffee, so they use KONO coffee filter cups for extraction. The KONO's ribs are less than half the height of the filter cup - this design is actually to ensure the filter paper tightly adheres to the filter cup walls after wetting, restricting airflow, which increases the water absorption time of coffee powder particles, resulting in more evenly extracted coffee overall, suitable for the mild and rich FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain coffee.

Brewing parameters: 15g coffee powder, powder-to-water ratio 1:15, grind size: EK43s setting 10.5 (75% pass rate on China No.20 standard sieve), water temperature: 87-88℃, brewing method: segmented extraction.

Place the filter paper in the KONO filter cup, pour water to wet the filter paper and make it fit better. Pour in the coffee powder, tap gently to distribute the powder layer evenly. For the first segment, gently pour 30g of water for blooming, with a blooming time of 30 seconds. For the second segment, pour to about 125g of water, moving in smooth, steady outward circles. Then wait for the coffee liquid to drop, and when it drops to half, pour the final segment of water to 225g. Wait for all the coffee to drip through - the total extraction time is generally around 2 minutes.

Hand-dripped FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No.1 coffee presents dark chocolate and nutty notes, very rich, with distinct almond aftertaste. As the temperature decreases, roasted hazelnut and creamy sweet smoothness emerge, accompanied by a hint of soft acidity and caramel sweetness, with aroma lingering in the mouth.

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

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on WeChat (FrontStreet Coffee), WeChat ID: qjcoffeex

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473