Affordable and Delicious Coffee Introduction: What are the High-Quality Daily Beans from Premium Coffee Regions?

FrontStreet Coffee regularly offers promotions on its staple bean series, and many long-time customers have come to know FrontStreet Coffee through these staple beans. FrontStreet Coffee currently has seven staple bean varieties, covering major coffee producing regions including Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, Brazil Red Cherry, Colombia Huilan, Indonesia Mandheling, Costa Rica Tarrazú, Guatemala Huehuetenango, and Yunnan Peaberry.

FrontStreet Coffee Staple Beans

Many friends who are not familiar with FrontStreet Coffee may have some misunderstandings about the staple bean series, wondering if they are called "staple beans" or sometimes offered at promotional prices as low as 9.9 because the coffee bean quality is not good.

FrontStreet Coffee's staple beans are the "flagship representatives" of regional coffee beans, as they offer higher recognition of basic regional flavors while being low-cost, high-value coffee beans.

When selecting a "staple bean" to feature, FrontStreet Coffee carefully selects beans that best represent the original local flavors of major producing regions. FrontStreet Coffee packages these in 100g sample sizes to introduce them to everyone. The significance of FrontStreet Coffee's staple beans is that everyone can identify the basic flavors of major regions at low prices, such as the lemon acidity of Yirgacheffe, the herbal notes of Mandheling, the nutty chocolate flavors of Brazil and Colombia, and so on.

Many friends who are new to coffee are often confused when choosing coffee beans, not knowing what flavors they prefer and worrying about making poor choices. FrontStreet Coffee believes that choosing "staple beans" at this time is most appropriate, starting with the most classic flavors from major regions without spending too much "wasted money" on trial and error - achieving two goals with one effort.

Additionally, most of FrontStreet Coffee's staple beans use the washed processing method, as washed processing represents the basic flavor profile of a region and is the starting point for understanding regional flavors. As everyone knows, the authentic FrontStreet Coffee Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans uniformly use washed processing to ensure the most typical Blue Mountain flavors are presented. However, soon FrontStreet Coffee will also offer a natural-processed FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain coffee bean, also certified authentic Blue Mountain coffee by the Jamaican Coffee Industry Board. The change in processing method is in response to coffee market developments, allowing everyone to experience a different side of Blue Mountain coffee, which is quite nice.

How Should Coffee Beginners Choose Coffee Beans?

FrontStreet Coffee often encounters customers asking: "What coffee beans do you have that are suitable for coffee beginners?"

If customers don't have specific preferences for regional coffee flavors, FrontStreet Coffee will mostly decisively recommend "FrontStreet Coffee staple beans." Only when customers have a need for "more specific coffee flavors" will FrontStreet Coffee introduce corresponding specific beans.

For coffee enthusiasts who are newly exposed to coffee or are unsure what flavors they prefer, FrontStreet Coffee's daily staple beans allow everyone to taste the main bean flavors from regions at low prices, thereby better choosing which region's coffee suits them best. At the same time, they are also an excellent choice for studying regional flavor types.

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will详细介绍下, 我们这7款风味经典的「FrontStreet Coffee staple beans」各有什么特色。

FrontStreet Coffee Washed Yirgacheffe Staple Bean

Country: Ethiopia

Region: Yirgacheffe

Altitude: 1800-2000 meters

Variety: Local Landrace

Processing: Washed

Flavor: Jasmine, Berry, Lemon, Citrus

Yirgacheffe is located in the Gedeo region of southern Ethiopia. Due to the unique style and widely loved flavor of coffee produced in Yirgacheffe, it has formed its own category in product classification and occupies a place in the global specialty coffee market. Yirgacheffe itself is a small town, with three neighboring small regions: Wenago, Kochere, and Gelena Abaya. Because the coffee flavors produced in these areas share significant commonalities with Yirgacheffe, these small regions are also classified under the Yirgacheffe region.

Initially, the Yirgacheffe coffee trees in Ethiopia were cultivated by European monks, later taken over by farmers or cooperatives. Coffee trees are mostly planted in farmers' own backyards or mixed with other crops in farmland. Each household's production is not large, making it typical garden coffee. Garden coffee is one of Ethiopia's four cultivation systems, indicating that farmers plant coffee trees in their own backyards or farmland mixed with other crops, with only 1000-1800 plants per hectare. This mixed cultivation method accounts for 50% of Ethiopia's total coffee production.

The so-called Yirgacheffe flavor refers to rich citrus and lemon fruit acidity, intense jasmine fragrance, light and elegant mouthfeel with tea-like notes, drinking like refreshing and clean lemon tea.

Especially in summer, FrontStreet Coffee's FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopia Yirgacheffe cold brew bags are very popular. Under long-term low-temperature extraction, the richness of the coffee's mouthfeel is enhanced, while the juiciness and tea-like notes become more integrated.

Traditionally, Yirgacheffe used the oldest natural processing method. However, because early natural-processed coffee beans were mostly dried flat on the ground, they inevitably picked up earthy, dusty, and other miscellaneous flavors. Additionally, due to lack of proper screening, the quality of natural-processed beans was generally average. In 1972, to improve coffee quality, Ethiopia introduced the washing technology from Central and South America, making the jasmine fragrance and citrus-lemon aroma of Yirgacheffe coffee beans clearer and brighter, quickly becoming one of the representatives of world specialty coffee.

Compared to natural processing, the washed method better controls coffee bean quality, mainly because it washes the coffee to slow down the "fermentation" process. Also, because it requires large amounts of water, countries lacking water resources generally use less of this processing method.

FrontStreet Coffee specifically considers that washed processing can better reflect the cleanliness of coffee mouthfeel and the purity of flavor presentation. Therefore, when analyzing the specific flavors of a coffee-producing region, FrontStreet Coffee will use washed beans from that region as reference. If customers haven't tried FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe before, FrontStreet Coffee will also prioritize recommending FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe, which helps form recognition of regional flavors. Later, when trying Yirgacheffe coffee processed by natural, honey, and other methods, they can have a direction for comparison.

The Washed Processing Method Workflow

1. Bean Selection: Place harvested fruits in large water tanks. Mature fruits will sink, while unripe or overripe fruits will float on the surface.

2. Pulp Removal: Use machines to remove the skin and pulp, leaving only coffee beans covered in mucilage. The washing process is meant to clean this mucilage layer.

3. Fermentation: The mucilage adheres strongly and is not easy to remove. It must be placed in tanks for about 18-36 hours, using microorganisms to ferment and decompose the mucilage.

4. Washing: Place the fermented beans in water pools, washing them back and forth, using the friction between beans and water flow to clean the coffee beans.

5. Drying: After washing, the coffee beans' moisture content reaches 50%. They must be dried to reduce moisture content to 12%, otherwise they will become moldy and spoiled due to excessive moisture. The best method is sun-drying, although it takes 1-3 weeks, the flavor is excellent. Some places use machine drying, which significantly reduces processing time, but the flavor is relatively not as good as sun-dried coffee beans.

6. Hulling: After drying, the coffee beans are stored in a warehouse for a week (to stabilize moisture content), then sent to the factory for hulling to remove the parchment layer.

7. Selection and Grading: Remove defective beans and ensure better quality, then hand them to exporters to sell worldwide.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe coffee variety is local landrace, small bean type, with relatively round shape. The beans are very small, mostly between 14-15 screen size. The term "landrace" emerged after the specialty coffee movement began. At that time, specialty coffee buyers who couldn't distinguish between Typica and Bourbon differences would collectively call all unknown varieties "landrace." Additionally, Ethiopia has too many coffee varieties, like a natural gene bank for Arabica. On one hand, there are numerous varieties with difficult identification and classification; on the other hand, the Ethiopian government,出于保护的考虑也不愿意也不能公开这些品种信息.

FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Pulped Natural Red Bourbon

Country: Brazil

Region: South Minas

Altitude: 1000 meters

Variety: Red Bourbon

Processing: Pulped Natural

Flavor: Nuts, Chocolate, Cream, Peanut, Caramel

Brazilian coffee beans were introduced in 1720 from French Guiana (a country in northern South America). Brazil was a Portuguese colony at that time, while many other South American countries were Spanish colonies, which is why most South American countries speak Spanish, while Brazil speaks Portuguese.

The Portuguese officer stationed in Brazil, in order to bring Guiana's coffee beans to Brazil (when exporting coffee to other countries was strictly prohibited), captured the heart of the Guiana governor's wife, successfully bringing coffee seeds into Brazil. Since then, coffee quickly adapted in Brazil, spreading from the north to the southeastern state of São Paulo. By 1845, Brazilian coffee beans already accounted for 45% of the world's total coffee beans. Currently, Brazil is the world's largest coffee exporter.

FrontStreet Coffee not only includes Brazil in its staple bean series but also features Brazilian coffee in its seasonal drip bag coffee series. This shows that Brazil, as a coffee-producing country, is indispensable in classic coffee flavors.

Brazil grows both Arabica and Robusta coffee beans. Among them, specialty Arabica coffee beans are mainly planted in São Paulo and Minas Gerais states. Robusta coffee beans are mainly distributed in Espírito Santo, Bahia, Rondônia, and other states.

FrontStreet Coffee's "FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Pulped Natural Staple Bean" comes from Minas Gerais state. Representative coffee regions in Minas Gerais include Cerrado and South Minas, both of which are high-altitude areas. Cerrado is located in the western part of Minas Gerais state, a flat plateau with altitudes of 750m-1200m. South Minas is hilly terrain with altitudes of 700m-1200m. Since 1999, farms that have won the Brazil Cup of Excellence competition are mostly from South Minas.

The Bourbon coffee variety is a subspecies that mutated from the Typica coffee variety. Generally speaking, when referring to the Bourbon coffee variety, it defaults to the Red Bourbon variety, named for its red color when ripe.

Before 1990, Brazil almost exclusively used crude natural processing methods. This was the culprit behind Brazilian beans easily picking up earthy and rotten wood flavors, because during the 2-3 week sun-drying process of coffee fruits, if they encountered rain and became damp or the fruits had cracks, they would mold and produce off-flavors. This problem was long criticized, severely damaging Brazil's coffee image. After 1990, Brazilian research institutions, considering Brazil's relatively dry climate, developed the pulped natural method to shorten processing time. In the pulped natural processing method, after selecting suitable coffee fruits, the skin and pulp are removed along with some mucilage, leaving a small amount of mucilage for sun-drying for 1-3 days, then machine-dried until moisture content reaches 12%, at which point they can be placed in storage containers for aging. This processing method reduces the previous off-flavors of Brazilian beans while enhancing fruit fragrance and sweetness.

FrontStreet Coffee Colombia Huilan

Country: Colombia

Region: Huilan

Altitude: 1500-1800 meters

Variety: Caturra

Processing: Washed

Flavor: Nuts, Dark Chocolate, Caramel, Gentle Fruit Acidity

Today, Colombia is the world's third-largest coffee producer and exporter. The Colombian coffee produced is world-renowned for its smooth mouthfeel and rich nutty chocolate mellow flavor.

The Huilan region has mountainous terrain, and coffee is planted on the slopes of valleys, thus enjoying the high altitudes suitable for growing quality Arabica beans and appropriate temperatures. The climate of the valley slopes not only keeps cold winds out but also sends cool mountain breezes without high temperatures, and rainfall is quite sufficient, making it a uniquely blessed coffee cultivation area. Colombian coffee workers all manually harvest coffee bean fruits on mountains, and the vast majority of coffee beans use washed processing.

FrontStreet Coffee's Colombia Huilan coffee beans have a full mouthfeel with a relatively heavy texture. They possess nutty, chocolate, caramel aromas and smooth, pleasant fruit acidity.

Caturra is a natural variant of the Arabica Bourbon variety, discovered in Brazil in 1937. Its tree is not as tall as Bourbon, being more compact. Because it inherited Bourbon's bloodline, its disease resistance is relatively weak, but its yield is higher than Bourbon. Although discovered in Brazil, Caturra is not suitable for growing in Brazil, so it was not cultivated on a large scale there, but became widely popular in Central and South America, with large-scale cultivation in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.

FrontStreet Coffee Indonesia Mandheling

Country: Indonesia

Region: Sumatra, Lintong

Altitude: 1100-1600 meters

Variety: Typica, Caturra

Processing: Wet-Hulled

Flavor: Toasted Bread, Nuts, Caramel, Pine, Herbs

Mandheling originally refers to the name of a tribe in Indonesia. When Japanese soldiers returned to Japan after colonizing Indonesia, they couldn't forget the local delicious coffee, so through trade friends, they asked locals to help collect quality coffee beans, including this Mandheling. The Japanese loved this coffee bean and asked for its name. Since the business source was inconvenient to disclose, the locals casually said "Mandheling," and thus "Mandheling" accidentally became the name of a coffee bean.

Most Mandheling uses Sumatra's unique coffee bean processing method - wet-hulled processing. Due to the local weather often being rainy with constant typhoons, it's impossible to achieve the good weather required for natural processing. Additionally, the local economy is not good, making it impossible to use the more expensive washed processing method. This led to the development of the highly local wet-hulled method.

First Stage: Use wooden hulling machines to remove the skin and pulp. After 3 hours of fermentation, dry them until moisture content reaches semi-dry 30-50%.

Second Stage: Remove the mucilage and parchment layer, continue with the final drying process. The drying process takes 2-4 days until moisture content reaches 12-13%.

Because the hulling machine uses greater friction to tear off the parchment layer tightly attached to the green beans, white or green mucus usually flows out during this stage. Due to long-term mucus soaking and humid environments, the green beans eventually become soft, whitened, swollen, and form a gray-green color. Through friction stirring, the green beans are also more easily crushed or squeezed, especially at the ends, forming small gaps and creating "horse hoof beans." The "naked beans" without parchment dry very quickly and are directly exposed to humid environments, where various bacteria grow. This gives the coffee unique woody, spicy, and herbal plant aromas - what we call the "Mandheling flavor."

FrontStreet Coffee Costa Rica Tarrazú

Country: Costa Rica

Region: Tarrazú

Altitude: 1500 meters

Variety: Caturra, Catuai

Processing: Washed

Flavor: Sweet Orange, Honey, Toffee, Nuts

Costa Rican coffee has always been famous for its balanced flavor, rich chocolate, and smooth mouthfeel. Tarrazú is located south of the capital San José and is one of Costa Rica's most valued coffee-growing areas. FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica Tarrazú coffee beans are full-bodied with rich body, smooth mouthfeel, rich chocolate and nut aromas, moderate acidity, and attractive fragrance.

Caturra is a natural variant of the Arabica Bourbon variety, discovered in Brazil in 1937. Its tree is not as tall as Bourbon, being more compact. Because it inherited Bourbon's bloodline, its disease resistance is relatively weak, but its yield is higher than Bourbon. Although discovered in Brazil, Caturra is not suitable for growing in Brazil, so it was not cultivated on a large scale there, but became widely popular in Central and South America, with large-scale cultivation in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.

Catuai is a hybrid of Mundo Novo and Caturra,可以说是混二代. It inherits Caturra's advantage of low tree height and also compensates for Caturra's weakness of fruit that is easily blown off by strong winds. The fruit sets firmly and doesn't easily fall when encountering strong winds. The biggest regret is that its overall flavor is somewhat monotonous compared to Caturra. Catuai also has red and yellow fruit varieties, with red fruit having better flavor than yellow fruit. Catuai, Caturra, Mundo Novo, and Bourbon are listed as Brazil's four main coffee varieties.

FrontStreet Coffee Guatemala Huehuetenango

Country: Guatemala

Region: Huehuetenango

Altitude: 1500-2000 meters

Variety: Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai

Processing: Washed

Flavor: Nuts, Lemon Peel, Berries, Citrus

Guatemala has a high average altitude, with coffee belts distributed above 1500 meters, making it easy to grow extremely hard beans. Coffee produced in Guatemala has special smoky flavors and rich juice mouthfeel. Guatemala has eight major producing regions, divided into five volcanic regions and three non-volcanic regions. The Huehuetenango region belongs to one of the three non-volcanic regions.

Guatemala's processing methods are mainly washed, with a small amount being natural. FrontStreet Coffee often encounters customers asking such questions: what's the difference between washed and natural? You should know that even coffee beans from the same region and same estate can be divided into washed and natural. In fact, friends who often buy FrontStreet Coffee's staple beans will find that FrontStreet Coffee's staple beans mostly use washed processing, because washed processing can present the basic flavor of a region and is the starting point for understanding regional flavors. Natural processing, on the other hand, adds sweet fragrance and fermentation notes to this basic flavor.

FrontStreet Coffee Yunnan Peaberry

Country: China

Region: Yunnan, Baoshan

Altitude: 1200 meters

Variety: Catimor

Processing: Washed

Flavor: Melon Fruit Aroma, Sweet Melon, Brown Sugar, Plum Acidity, Black Tea Sensation

At FrontStreet Coffee, you can find two types of Yunnan coffee beans: one is washed Typica, and one is Catimor. At FrontStreet Coffee, Yunnan Typica is labeled as Yunnan specialty coffee, while Yunnan Catimor is labeled as Yunnan Peaberry coffee according to market conventions.

FrontStreet Coffee roasts both of these Yunnan coffee beans to medium roast, because Yunnan is not an acidic region - their flavors are relatively balanced, with nut and brown sugar base notes. FrontStreet Coffee chooses medium roast to showcase Yunnan coffee's balance, nutty and brown sugar sweetness, and gentle fruit acidity.

When talking about Yunnan coffee beans, there are often two phrases that can terminate discussions about varieties: one is "through the efforts of coffee farmers and improvements in technical levels, today's Yunnan coffee beans are also quite good," and the other is "Yunnan beans are quite good." These two phrases have become classic comments about Yunnan coffee. Yunnan Peaberry was originally named for Typica, because Typica is the Arabica small bean variety, but as times have changed, Typica variety degenerated with low yield and was replaced by Catimor, and the name Peaberry was inherited by Catimor.

In 1959, Portuguese people moved Brazil's Bourbon mutant Caturra to East Timor and hybridized it with Timor Hybrid which has Robusta bloodline, successfully cultivating Catimor with super strong disease resistance and productivity. As leaf rust affected coffee-producing countries worldwide, with the assistance of international organizations, various producing countries vigorously promoted Catimor to resist leaf rust and increase productivity.

From this, it can be seen that Catimor contains Robusta bloodline, and compared with pure Arabica Typica, differences can be distinguished in flavor. In domestic Yunnan green bean competitions, Catimor has consistently taken top ten spots, while undisputed quality Arabica varieties are nowhere to be seen because too few people grow them. This gives people the impression that Yunnan Catimor should not be underestimated.

In FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan plantations, Typica and a small amount of Bourbon are mainly planted. Catimor and Typica are not originally in conflict - one is for mass production, one is for specialty. The significance of specialty is to improve quality, while the significance of mass production is to increase yield. Yunnan's choice to focus on Catimor also reveals the underlying purpose.

For more specialty coffee beans, please add the private WeChat of FrontStreet Coffee, WeChat ID: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473