Specialty Coffee Bourbon Varieties: Classifications and Elite Coffee Bean Representatives

Professional coffee knowledge exchange. This piece is part of an ongoing series on coffee varieties.

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Bourbon Coffee Variety

Bourbon shares Typica's tall stature and conical shape, but it has more secondary branches and therefore looks denser. The main trunk and branches are thicker, which makes it sturdier than Typica though relatively less flexible. Because the branches are more compact and the plant is denser, Bourbon can produce roughly 30% more coffee cherries than Typica.

Bourbon leaves are wider than Typica's, with a rougher texture and wavy edges. Young leaves are usually green but sometimes have bronze tips. The coffee cherries are round and ripen to a range of colors, such as red, orange, or yellow, though the color is consistent on any single plant.

The name Bourbon coffee comes from the island where it was cultivated. In 1715, France transplanted round coffee beans from Mocha, Yemen to Bourbon Island off the east coast of Africa, which was renamed Reunion Island after the French Revolution, and the variety took the island's name. Then in 1717 the French brought another batch of round Bourbon seedlings from Yemen, and these became the forerunner of Bourbon coffee.

In 1732, the British East India Company took Bourbon seedlings from Yemen to St. Helena Island for cultivation. By the 1860s and 1870s, Brazil in South America was the first to introduce the Bourbon variety, gradually replacing Typica. Bourbon then spread rapidly northward to other regions of South and Central America.

Red Bourbon

Red Bourbon is a coffee variety introduced to Brazil around 1860 through Campinas in the south. It is a classic variety still widely cultivated in Central and South American countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Peru.

Yellow Bourbon

Yellow Bourbon is a unique Bourbon variant exclusive to Sao Paulo state in Brazil. Its coffee fruits do not turn red when ripe but instead show an orange-yellow color, hence the name "Yellow Bourbon." Because of its lower yield and relatively poor resistance to wind and rain, it has not been widely cultivated. Yellow Bourbon grown at high altitude shows excellent flavor characteristics.

Laurina

Laurina is a variant of Bourbon discovered on the French island of Bourbon in 1810. The plant is a dwarf type, and its coffee beans are pointed and slender, resembling underdeveloped defective beans. It has the lowest yield among dwarf Bourbon varieties and is weak and disease-prone. Its flavor, however, is very distinctive, with special citrus and lychee notes. Its caffeine content is half that of other Arabica varieties, which makes it a naturally low-caffeine coffee.

Pink Bourbon

Pink Bourbon is a hybrid cross between Yellow Bourbon and Red Bourbon. It has particularly strong disease resistance and is extremely delicious. Compared with other varieties, its beans have higher density, and its yield is very low. It grows at altitudes between 1,500-2,000 meters. Cultivating Pink Bourbon is not easy, since it requires careful attention throughout the plant's growth period and has higher environmental requirements.

Another challenge lies in harvesting, because workers find it difficult to judge whether the cherries are ripe when picking. The main reason is that the yellow gene from Yellow Bourbon and the red gene from Red Bourbon are both recessive and easily interfere with each other, which makes Pink Bourbon hard to produce consistently. Pink Bourbon is also very similar to unripe Red Bourbon, so the two are difficult to tell apart and are often mixed together. That is another reason Pink Bourbon is rare.

Knowledge Point

For a long time, Bourbon coffee has been considered among the finest coffees because of its low yield and high quality.

In Brief

FrontStreet Coffee is a research-focused cafe dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. We share our knowledge without reservation because we want more friends to fall in love with coffee. We hold three discounted coffee activities every month, because FrontStreet Coffee wants to offer the best coffee at the lowest prices to more friends. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for six years!

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Among Brazil's many varieties, two FrontStreet single-origin lots let you taste the classic Bourbon family directly. FrontStreet Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a very classic Brazilian single origin; Cerrado is a well-known local growing region noted for high-quality beans. This lot is the red Bourbon variety common across South America, and at a medium roast it shows dense aromas of cream peanut, toast, caramel, and hazelnut, with a rounded body, no acidity, and a slight bitter note. It works for pour-over and also for the moka pot, espresso SOE, siphon, and French press.

FrontStreet Brazil Queen Farm is the other single origin, from Mogiana near South Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil lets the coffee fruit take up abundant nutrients and develop a full aroma; part of the area still follows traditional farm practices while another part has adopted modern, standardized management, and local quality has improved considerably as a result. The variety is the rare Yellow Bourbon, which arose as a mutation of Red Bourbon and has a cleaner fruit character. Brewed by pour-over, moka pot, or home espresso machine, FrontStreet Brazil Queen Farm shows a sugar-cane sweetness found in few other origins, along with fruit and chocolate notes.