Introduction to the Characteristics of Typica Coffee Beans | Flavor and Taste Profile Description of Typica Coffee Varieties

Typica: The Ancient Coffee Variety

Typica is the oldest indigenous variety in Ethiopia. Today, most of the common Arabica coffee varieties are derived from Typica. Typica is recognized in the industry as a high-quality variety with pure aroma, such as the well-known FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling coffee, FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee, Kona coffee, and FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan small bean coffee, all of which are famous for the elegant flavors of Typica.

Characteristics of Typica Coffee Beans

The most distinctive characteristic of the Typica variety is that the top leaves show a reddish-bronze color, which is why it's also called "red-topped coffee." The coffee beans are relatively large, long, with pointed ends that slightly curl upward, somewhat resembling an egg. Typica coffee beans often have citrus acidity with a sweet aftertaste, praised by many as elegant and clear coffee beans. The ancient Typica plants are quite tall, about 5 meters/16.5 feet, making them not very conducive to manual harvesting. Typica trees have a conical shape with slightly inclined branches, where lateral branches form a 50-70° angle with the vertical stem. Its trunk is slender, and the branches are very thin. Due to its height and long branch characteristics, when planting Typica trees, sufficient spacing needs to be maintained between plants.

However, Typica has very poor disease resistance, making it difficult to resist common diseases such as leaf rust and berry rot... and its yield is also very scarce. Leaf rust is the most serious plant disease, first appearing in the coffee-producing areas around Lake Victoria in East Africa in 1861. In 1970, leaf rust broke out in Bahia, Brazil, and since then, coffee-producing regions worldwide have gradually discovered cases of leaf rust. Coffee trees infected with leaf rust are equivalent to having an incurable disease, eventually withering and even dying. As an economic crop, Typica, with its low yield and weak disease resistance, makes it difficult to achieve profitability, so many growers choose to abandon it and switch to other varieties with better disease resistance.

As a high-quality coffee variety with mellow aroma, Typica is still cultivated worldwide today, with the most famous being Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Growing Typica coffee beans with elegant and pure flavors is not simple. Every step from the natural terroir conditions, plant management, fruit harvesting, to post-processing must be fully guaranteed for the coffee beans to develop positive flavors and mouthfeel. This also means that producing high-quality Typica requires more labor costs and research technology, which is why FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee and FrontStreet Coffee's Kona coffee are so precious.

Why is Blue Mountain's Typica Variety More Famous?

For many years, Jamaica has insisted on planting only Arabica varieties, which has allowed the local Typica to remain pure without hybrid variation, maintaining its pure bloodline. Unlike many other coffee-producing regions, Jamaica is a relatively closed island nation with naturally superior microclimate conditions. After more than two hundred years of domestication and adaptation, Blue Mountain Typica has evolved better disease resistance, particularly better resistance to coffee berry disease than typical Typica, with more stable yields and quality.

The Jamaican Blue Mountain range is the highest terrain area in the Caribbean, belonging to a tropical rainforest climate. During the rainy season each year, precipitation reaches as high as 1800-2000 mm. The steep slopes between the mountains have good drainage systems, allowing the local vegetation to receive adequate irrigation. Locals mix coffee trees with banana trees and avocado trees. The Blue Mountain area has beautiful scenery and high-quality air. Fertile volcanic soil encourages coffee to bear full-flavored fruits. The high-altitude Blue Mountains are shrouded in clouds and mist, providing natural shade for the coffee trees, allowing Typica coffee to develop a more stable flavor profile.

According to the region divided by the Coffee Industry Board (CIB) of Jamaica, the forest area where Blue Mountain coffee is grown is at an altitude of approximately 910-1700 meters. The high-altitude Blue Mountains create a unique terroir climate, but the rugged terrain makes management and harvesting quite difficult. During each harvest season, locals arrange for skilled women familiar with the terrain to go up the mountains and manually harvest coffee cherries at optimal ripeness. In recent years, the produced Blue Mountain coffee accounts for less than 15%, making it extremely rare.

In terms of raw bean quality control, the CIB has standardized the planting, production, and sales of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, thereby improving coffee quality, standardizing coffee production and processing procedures, while coordinating the market sales of Blue Mountain coffee. The CIB was one of the earliest institutions to use scientific and objective methods to evaluate coffee quality grades, combining raw bean size, color, uniformity, defect rate, moisture content, and cupping performance for grading.

Before export, Blue Mountain raw beans are packaged and sent for quality testing, graded according to size specifications and defect rate after processing: Blue Mountain No. 1, Blue Mountain No. 2, Blue Mountain No. 3, and Blue Mountain Peaberry. Top-grade FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 raw beans must meet specifications of over 17 mesh, defect rate below 3%, moisture content around 13%, and present rich coffee aroma in cupping, with smooth, balanced taste, low acidity, persistent aftertaste, suitable for enthusiasts pursuing the original flavors of coffee.

Brewing Recommendations for FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee hopes to highlight the mellow and round taste of FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee, so they use a KONO coffee dripper for extraction. The KONO's ribs are less than half the height of the dripper. This design is actually to ensure that after wetting, the filter paper closely adheres to the dripper wall, limiting airflow, which increases the water absorption time of the coffee particles, resulting in a more evenly extracted coffee, suitable for brewing the mellow-flavored Blue Mountain coffee.

Brewing parameters: 15 grams of coffee powder, powder-to-water ratio 1:15, grind size: EK43s setting 10.5 (75% pass rate on China No. 20 standard sieve), water temperature: 87-88°C, brewing method: segmented extraction.

Place the filter paper in the KONO dripper, pour water to wet the filter paper while making them fit better. Pour in the coffee powder, tap gently to distribute the powder layer evenly. For the first segment, gently inject 30 grams of water for blooming, with a blooming time of 30 seconds. For the second segment, inject water to about 125 grams, circling evenly and steadily outward. Then wait for the coffee liquid to drop, and when it drops to half, inject the final segment of water to 225 grams. Wait for all the coffee to finish dripping, with a total extraction time generally around 2 minutes.

Hand-poured Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee has dark chocolate, nuts, and is very mellow, with a distinct almond aftertaste. As the temperature decreases, it reveals roasted hazelnut, creamy sweet and silky smoothness, with a hint of soft acidity and caramel sweetness, with the aroma lingering persistently in the mouth.

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