Costa Rica Musician Series: Beethoven Washed Coffee Bean Flavor Profile

The main coffee varieties in Costa Rica are Caturra and Catuai. While these two carry relatively mild aromas, they offer excellent stability in the cup. Costa Rican beans are often characterized by their honey processing methods — but washed processing typically reflects the fundamental flavors of a region more faithfully, which is exactly what makes today's coffee interesting.

Today, we are evaluating washed coffee beans from this production region at the FrontStreet Coffee workshop:

Costa Rica Musician Series - Beethoven

Region: Tarrazú, Hacienda Cañet

Altitude: 1900m

Variety: Yellow Catuai

Grade: Strictly Hard Bean (SHB)

Processing: Washed

Grown at 1900m in Tarrazú and graded SHB — Costa Rica's strictly hard bean tier reserved for the highest altitudes — this washed Yellow Catuai shows what the region tastes like when nothing is layered on top of the terroir.

Brewing Method:

Grind: VARIO grinder setting 5C

Dripper: V60

Water Temperature: 91°C

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Brewing Time: 2 minutes (including bloom)

Tasting Notes:

Dry Aroma: Sweet fragrance of strawberry and floral notes, with rich toasted nut aromas

Wet Aroma: Strawberry, honey, citrus, almond, and black tea

Flavor: The initial entry reveals lemon-citrus acidity accompanied by honey fragrance. The middle notes transition to honey-fruit-tea sweet-and-sour flavors with black tea character. The aftertaste features brown sugar and toffee sweetness.

Coffee Variety Knowledge:

Yellow Catuai is an artificial hybrid of Caturra and Mundo Novo, cultivated in Brazil in 1949. Yellow Catuai possesses excellent disease resistance, which makes it well suited to high-altitude and windy growing areas. In the cup it features clean, delicate acidity with rich tea aromas and subtle fermented notes in the fragrance — qualities that the washed process here puts on full display.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the clean, tea-like washed style of this Beethoven lot appeals to you, two FrontStreet Coffee Brazilian beans make rewarding comparisons. The FrontStreet Cerrado Red Bourbon, medium roasted, shows cream peanut, toast, caramel, and hazelnut aromas with a rounded, softly bitter cup — a classic expression of Brazil's most famous region. The FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon, a rare mutation of Red Bourbon grown in Mogiana's rich volcanic soil, offers an even cleaner fruity character with distinctive sugarcane sweetness and chocolate notes. Brewing either one on a V60 like the Beethoven above is an easy way to taste how variety and terroir reshape the same method.