What Makes Good Coffee? Coffee Recommendations and Great Coffee Suggestions

What makes a good coffee? Sometimes the answer starts with one well-chosen washed lot. FrontStreet Coffee shares one of its favorites.

FrontStreet Coffee's Honduras Sweet Orange Estate

Origin: Marcala region, Honduras

Estate: Sweet Orange Estate

Processing: Washed

Variety: Catuai

Flavor Profile: Distinct notes of grape and orange peel, with a creamy mouthfeel, caramel finish, and spicy undertones.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Washing is a traditional way of processing coffee cherries using water. The steps generally include flotation, pulping, soaking and fermentation to remove the mucilage, rinsing or further soaking, drying, and hulling. Because washed beans spend a long time in water, chemical changes occur inside them: simple sugars (fructose and glucose) are substantially consumed, lowering the bean's sugar content while increasing various organic acids. As a result, washed coffee tends to preserve more of the bean's own aromas while showing bright fruit acidity and a clean, fresh character.

Many people know Yirgacheffe, but fewer know that local farmers, whose harvests are small, send their cherries to cooperatives for collective processing and sale. FrontStreet Coffee's Idido (Guodingding) Cooperative lot comes from an outstanding processing team in Idido village with polished, practiced technique — so refined and clean in flavor that coffee hunters unearthed it and made its name. Thanks to the washed process, it shows jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity to the fullest; after a medium-light roast, green tea and honey tones emerge as well. It suits pour-over, cold brew, and espresso alike.

When it comes to washed coffee, FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya "Cherry Tomato" is one of the most famous representatives, because Kenya excels at double washed fermentation. The process repeats the washing step — flotation, soaking, rinsing off surface mucilage, soaking again, drying, hulling, storage — and through all that rinsing and soaking, the juiciness is expressed to the extreme: cherry tomato, dried plum (wumei), snow pear, black plum, and yellow sugar aromas, sweet-tart and juicy. A favorite among serious coffee players.

Jamaica, once one of the world's most famous coffee origins, suffered from insufficient sunshine. As an island climate, its sunlight hours are shorter than most origins, so to reduce the chance of beans spoiling during long drying, the washed process was embraced. The biggest difference from natural processing is that the skin, pulp, and mucilage are all removed before drying, cutting the moisture wrapped around the bean and shortening drying time — producing beans with a bright, translucent color and a low defect rate. Washing guarantees Blue Mountain coffee's rich aroma: hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel notes in a balanced cup where no single flavor dominates or falls short.