Which Ethiopian Coffee is Best? What Variety? Is Heirloom the Finest Ethiopian Variety?

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Introduction to FrontStreet Coffee's Heirloom Coffee

When I first started drinking coffee, I learned about Typica and Bourbon, two major coffee varieties. Over time, these gradually mutated and hybridized to produce Caturra, Catuai, and various other varieties. However, in recent years, the term "Heirloom" frequently appears, yet I had never encountered it in coffee variety pedigrees. So, what exactly is the "Heirloom" variety?

The term "Heirloom" is sometimes used for coffee beans introduced to the Americas and Asia over a century ago, but it's more commonly used for African coffees, especially those from Ethiopia. The emergence of Heirloom occurred during the specialty coffee boom when green bean buyers visited origins (particularly Ethiopia) but couldn't identify the varieties of the green beans they were purchasing, so they classified them all as Heirloom.

Therefore, the Heirloom coffees we typically drink might not actually be the same variety.

However, according to local green bean buyers in Ethiopia, locals can actually distinguish between varieties—they just don't name them using scientific names or those familiar to the specialty coffee community. Instead, they use local languages and identification standards. Nowadays, when more green bean buyers purchase Ethiopian coffee beans, they distinguish them by location, altitude, and cupping scores rather than by variety. I suspect this is also due to the complexity of varieties.

Here, I must mention the Jimma Agricultural Research Centre (JARC). This is a local government-established agricultural research institution dedicated to classifying and archiving Ethiopia's numerous and complex coffee varieties to better conserve them.

Although there has been some success so far, promoting these standards to numerous coffee farmers and having them classify according to unified standards still has a long way to go. However, this undoubtedly meets the demands of the increasingly developing specialty coffee industry and is beneficial for increasing coffee farmers' income.

Knowledge point: Arabica and Robusta species are divided into single-origin coffee and espresso based on coffee bean combinations.

In summary: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research hall dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation only to help more friends fall in love with coffee. Additionally, we hold three discounted coffee events every month because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends enjoy the best coffee at the lowest price—this has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past six years!

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473