Pour-over Caturra Coffee Bean Variety Introduction | Balanced Chocolate Flavor Profile

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FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to the Caturra Variety

Coffee has countless origins and varieties, and different varieties show very different flavors depending on how they are processed and roasted. All of them, however, trace back to three main categories: Arabica, Robusta and Liberica, known together as the "three primary coffee species."

Caturra is a natural hybrid of Bourbon that was further developed and widely cultivated by the Alcides Carvalho Coffee Center at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC) in São Paulo, Brazil. This variety has brought profound change to the coffee industry worldwide.

In 1937, the IAC received seed samples from northeastern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Among a group of Bourbon coffee trees, one plant caught the attention of local farmers for its shorter height and shorter internodal distance. Research revealed that Caturra is a natural hybrid of Bourbon, originating from a single gene mutation of that variety.

That single gene mutation controls both the internodal distance between branches and the plant's height. Compared with Bourbon, therefore, Caturra plants are shorter, with shorter distances between branches. The shorter height makes harvesting easier for farmers, and the shorter internodal distance allows more fruit to be produced, so Caturra out-yields Bourbon on both counts.

Caturra typically matures faster and resists disease better than traditional Arabica varieties, which makes it something like a high-yielding, disease-resistant version of Bourbon.

Like Bourbon, Caturra adapts well to most coffee-growing environments but performs best between 1,200 and 2,000 meters of elevation with 2,500 to 3,500 millimeters of annual rainfall. The higher the altitude, the better the quality — and the lower the yield.

Caturra is not the only variety to emerge from mutation; similar mutants include the Pacas variety from El Salvador and Villa Sarchi from Costa Rica. Genetically, in every case the mutation is very similar to Bourbon.

Caturra planted in different growing regions shows different flavors. FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica natural Caturra displays chocolate flavors.

Key Points

Typica is an old variety with excellent flavor, good sweetness and a distinct aroma, but weak disease resistance.

In short, FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research establishment dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. Our unconditional sharing is aimed at helping more friends fall in love with coffee. We also hold three coffee discount events monthly, because FrontStreet Coffee wants to provide the best coffee at the lowest prices for more friends. That has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past six years.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Caturra's gentle, rounded sweetness has a natural counterpart in Brazil, and FrontStreet Coffee's Cerrado semi-washed single origin is a classic place to start. Cerrado is a well-known Brazilian region prized for high-quality beans, and this lot is the red Bourbon common to South America. Roasted medium, it delivers creamy peanut, toast, caramel and hazelnut with a round body, low acidity and a light bitterness — good as a pour-over and just as good in a moka pot, espresso, siphon or French press.

If you would like to taste the kind of clean fruit character that makes the Caturra family so useful, FrontStreet Coffee's Queen Estate is the rarer Yellow Bourbon, a natural mutation of Red Bourbon. Grown in Mogiana near South Minas on fertile red volcanic soil, it is unusually clean for a Brazilian coffee and shows a sugarcane-like sweetness alongside fruit and chocolate, whether brewed as a pour-over, in a moka pot or on a home espresso machine. And for anyone building espresso drinks, FrontStreet Coffee's Classic Blend — a traditional Mamba recipe — turns these low-acid, balanced Brazilian components into a thick, sweet, crema-rich base for lattes, cappuccinos and Dirty coffees.