What is True Blue Mountain Coffee and the Characteristics of Typica Coffee Beans

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FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to True Blue Mountain Coffee and Varieties

The Blue Mountains are located in eastern Jamaica. When the weather is clear, the sunlight reflects directly off the azure Caribbean Sea, creating a brilliant blue glow on the mountain peaks - hence their name. The highest peak of the Blue Mountains reaches 2,256 meters, making it the highest peak in the Caribbean region and a famous tourist destination. This area lies within the coffee belt, featuring fertile volcanic soil, fresh air without pollution, and a humid climate with year-round fog and rainfall (average precipitation of 1,980mm and temperature around 27°C). Such climate conditions have produced the world-renowned Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, as well as the world's highest-priced coffee.

True Blue Mountain coffee is one of the world's most superiorly grown coffees. Jamaica's weather, geological structure, and topography jointly provide an exceptionally ideal growing environment. Designated Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee can only be grown in the Blue Mountain region, located in the eastern northern part of Jamaica near Kingston. The mountain range that extends across Jamaica reaches over 2,100 meters above sea level. The cool, foggy, and frequently rainy weather provides a perfect balance of moisture for this fertile land. Here, people use mixed cultivation methods to grow coffee trees, planting them alongside banana and avocado trees on terraced slopes.

Moreover, the mountains are extremely rugged, making the harvesting process very difficult. All their coffee trees grow on steep mountain slopes, making the picking process extremely challenging - only local skilled female workers can handle this task. Selecting properly ripe coffee beans during harvesting is crucial, as underripe or overripe beans can affect the coffee quality.

Typica plants have bronze-colored young leaves and produce oval or slender, pointed beans. The trees are tall with slightly inclined branches at angles of 50-70 degrees. They feature elegant flavor but have weak constitution and poor disease resistance, resulting in very low fruit yield per tree.

Pure Blue Mountain coffee has four grades: NO.1, NO.2, NO.3, and PB (Peaberry). It is traditionally packaged in 70kg wooden barrels and comes with a quality certification issued by the Jamaican Coffee Industry Board (CIB). Due to limited production and Japan's investment in Jamaica's coffee industry with priority purchasing rights, genuine Blue Mountain coffee remains rare and expensive.

The Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee variety is Typica. The Typica variety has a characteristic feature - reddish-brown colored leaf tips, earning it the name "red-topped coffee." The coffee tree's opposite leaves are long and elliptical with smooth surfaces, and the terminal branches are long with few branches. The flowers are white, blooming at the base where the petiole connects to the branch. Mature coffee cherries resemble cherries in appearance, displaying a bright red color. It is a sub-variety of Arabica coffee.

Little Knowledge Gift: Blue Mountain coffee is produced from imported Arabica coffee beans. The beans are large, high-quality, with rich and mellow flavor. Due to the perfect balance of sweetness, acidity, and bitterness in the coffee, it has no bitter taste at all, only a moderate and perfect acidity.

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