An Introduction to Bourbon Coffee Variety: Characteristics of Bourbon Coffee Beans with Low Caffeine Content but Delicate Nature

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Bourbon Coffee

Let's start with Bourbon coffee itself. Bourbon is one of the two main branches of Arabica coffee, the other being Typica. Bourbon takes its name from a small island — Réunion — located in the ocean waters near Madagascar, as shown in the figure below:

In 1513, the Portuguese navigator Mascarenhas first discovered this archipelago and named it the Mascarene Islands, with Réunion among them. By 1642, France formally announced its occupation of the island, during the reign of Louis XIV of the famous Bourbon Dynasty. To honor Louis XIV, the island was officially named Bourbon Island in 1649.

The island held a strategically important position as a transit station for French Indian Ocean traffic. At that time, the Yemeni government gave coffee beans as a gift to Louis XIV, and the French later succeeded in transporting coffee from Yemeni ports to Bourbon Island and cultivating it there. From then on, Bourbon coffee flourished and spread along two routes — one around the Cape of Good Hope into Brazil, and another eastward to Kenya, Tanzania, and the rest of East Africa.

The Bourbon variety ultimately traces back to Ethiopia, arising as a natural mutation of Typica and first appearing on Réunion Island, with the first formal record dating to 1947. Burundi, Rwanda, and parts of South America are now the main Bourbon growing regions. Though similar to Typica, Bourbon is stronger than Typica, with higher yields and lower caffeine content, shorter plants — but very low disease resistance, making it especially susceptible to leaf rust.

Bourbon is thus a subspecies that mutated from Typica and belongs, like Typica, among the surviving ancient coffee varieties. When the green fruits mature, they turn bright red.

Red Bourbon: after coffee trees flower and set fruit, the cherries normally change color following this pattern: green > light yellow > light orange > mature red > darker red when fully ripe. That is why some people speak of the "Red Bourbon variety" — in fact, Red Bourbon is simply the Bourbon we generally mean. Bourbon grown at high altitudes typically shows better aroma, brighter acidity, and can even carry red-wine-like flavors in the cup.

To put it simply, Bourbon is a coffee tree variety within the Arabica species. It generally bears red fruit — the Red Bourbon above — but Yellow Bourbon and Orange Bourbon exist too. Yellow Bourbon yields less yet cup better.

In Summary

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Want to taste Bourbon for yourself? Brazil is the natural place to start — as the world's largest coffee producer it grows a huge range of varieties, and its beans show moderate acidity with a fine balance of sweetness, bitterness, and body that suits medium roasting perfectly. Roasted that way, the nuts aroma pours out of the bag and the cup is mellow and smooth with a gentle acidity, at home as a single origin or in a blend.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic example: a Red Bourbon — the very variety described above — from the Cerrado, one of Brazil's best-known quality regions, processed pulped natural. At medium roast it offers creamy peanut, toasted bread, caramel, and hazelnut aromas, a round palate with no sourness and only light bitterness, and it brews happily as pour-over, moka pot, espresso SOE, siphon, or French press. For something rarer, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Fazenda Queen Yellow Bourbon comes from Mogiana, near southern Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil builds dense aromatics; Yellow Bourbon — the lower-yield, better-cupping mutation described above — gives a cleaner fruit character, with a sugarcane sweetness unique to this origin plus fruit and chocolate notes through pour-over, moka pot, or home espresso machine.

Bourbon also anchors FrontStreet Coffee's espresso blends: the rich-crema Classic Blend, the nut-forward Premium Blend, the balanced Black Cocoa Blend beloved by baristas, and the cafe-oriented Commercial Blend all include Brazilian components — delivering chocolate and cream aromas, gentle sweetness and acidity, and the stable extraction that balance brings.