Beethoven Coffee Bean Brewing Guide Costa Rica Musician Series Beethoven Coffee Flavor Characteristics

Beethoven's early compositions span roughly 1792 to 1800, written while the composer was in his prime and still under the influence of the great Haydn and Mozart — which is why the music of that period feels light, lively, and flowing throughout. Canet Estate has a coffee that tastes exactly that way: light, lively, and flowing. So the owner, a lover of classical music, named this bean "Beethoven."

FrontStreet Coffee - Costa Rica Musician Series · Beethoven

Region: Costa Rica, Tarrazú

Estate: Canet Estate

Processing Method: Washed

Variety: Yellow Catuai

Altitude: 1900m

Canet Musician Series - Beethoven

Canet Estate sits in the highest-altitude zone of Costa Rica's premier coffee region, Tarrazú — also the most densely fruit-farmed area of the country. Besides coffee, the estate's main crop is passion fruit. In fact, the estate plants among the fewest coffee trees in all of Tarrazú, because the owner grows coffee only in a designated area, ensuring every tree receives meticulous care.

Small as its coffee operation is, the estate has produced the Musician Series beans renowned throughout the specialty coffee world. Drawing on the character of each coffee, the owner matched it to a classical music style and named four beans after their composers: "Beethoven," "Mozart," "Bach," and "Chopin." FrontStreet Coffee acquired all four of these distinctive beans without hesitation!

Beethoven's early works were chiefly Romantic in style, and tasting this bean stirs similar associations. Ground, it releases a strawberry-like aroma. In brewing, floral notes and the sweet-tart lift of grapes come through. In cupping, FrontStreet Coffee found red-berry sweetness and tartness along with a lively, bright citrus acidity; as the cup cools, the juiciness of red berries slowly emerges, and the aftertaste carries a hint of almond.

Coffee Variety

Yellow Catuai

This Beethoven lot is Yellow Catuai. Catuai is a hybrid of Mundo Novo and Caturra, and like its red counterpart, Yellow Catuai has excellent disease resistance, making it well suited to high-altitude cultivation. High yield, strong disease resistance, tolerance of direct sunlight, and delicate, clean acidity are the variety's greatest strengths.

Coffee Bean Processing Method

Washed

This Beethoven lot is traditionally washed. In this method, selected cherries go into a depulper to strip away the skin and most of the pulp; the beans, still coated in mucilage, are then submerged to ferment for roughly 18-36 hours.

After fermentation, the parchment beans are washed in flowing channels to remove the remaining pulp and mucilage, then dried until moisture drops to about 12%, and finally hulled. In FrontStreet Coffee's view, washed beans offer a cleaner, brighter mouthfeel and especially lively acidity.

FrontStreet Coffee Roasting Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roaster found this bean dense and chose a medium-light roast to preserve its bright acidity while showcasing the fruity notes and adding richness and balance. Preheat the roaster to 170°C before charging, set the heat to 120, open the damper to 3, turning point at 1'36", then hold the heat;

At 140°C, keep the heat unchanged and open the damper to 4. At 5'55", the beans turn yellow, the grassy aroma fades, and the dehydration stage begins. At 151°C, reduce heat to 100, damper stays at 4. At 176°C, adjust heat to 85, damper unchanged. At 8'15", dehydration completes: wrinkles and dark spots appear on the bean surface and the toast aroma turns to coffee aroma — the prelude to first crack. Listen closely for it. At 9'01", first crack begins; open the damper fully to 5, heat unchanged. Development after first crack runs 1'45", dropping the beans at 193°C.

FrontStreet Coffee Cupping Report

Dry Aroma: Strawberry

Wet Aroma: Citrus, white floral notes

Flavor: White floral notes, citrus, strawberry, ripe berries, almond

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Experience

Dripper: Hario V60

Water Temperature: 91°C

Coffee Dose: 15g

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size: Medium-fine (78% pass-through rate on the #20 standard sieve)

FrontStreet Coffee's segmented pour: first, 30g of water to fully saturate the grounds into a "hamburger" shape for a 30s pre-infusion before the second stage. For stage two, a steady medium-fine flow in circular motions brings the water up to 125g at 55 seconds on the timer, then stop and wait for the water level to fall to two-thirds of the coffee bed before starting stage three. In stage three, continue with the same steady medium-fine flow up to 225g at 1'45" on the timer, and wait for the coffee to finish dripping completely. Total extraction time: 1'59".

Beethoven Coffee Bean Brewing Flavor

The overall cup is clean with a rich aroma. The sweet-tart rush of strawberry juice and the lively citrus acidity on entry dance in the mouth like skipping musical notes, while the florals and almond-like finish provide the perfect flourish to this musical movement.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

What washed processing does. Washing is a traditional, water-based way of handling coffee cherries: flotation, depulping, soaking and fermentation to remove the mucilage, rinsing or further soaking, drying, and hulling. The long soak triggers chemical changes inside the bean and consumes much of its simple sugars (fructose and glucose), lowering sugar content while raising organic acids. Washed coffee therefore preserves more of the bean's own character while showing bright fruit acidity, cleanliness, and freshness.

FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Chelbesa (Guodingding) Cooperative. Many people know Yirgacheffe but not why its coffee flows through cooperatives — local farms are too small to process on their own. The Guodingding Cooperative is an outstanding processing team from Guodingding village, famous for exceptionally refined and clean cups. Washing lets it show maximum jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity, and after a medium-light roast the coffee adds green tea and honey tones — lovely as pour-over, cold brew, or espresso.

FrontStreet Kenya Cherry Tomato. When washed coffee is mentioned, this one is a headline act — Kenya excels at double fermentation washing, adding an extra wash-and-soak pass before flotation, rinsing, soaking, drying, hulling, and storage. The repeated rinsing pushes juiciness to the extreme: cherry tomato, dark plum, snow pear, black plum, and yellow sugar aromas in a sweet-tart, juicy cup beloved by coffee enthusiasts.

FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1. Jamaica, one of the world's most famous coffee origins, long struggled with limited sunshine — its island climate brings shorter sun hours than most regions. To reduce the risk of beans spoiling during drying, washing was born: by removing skin, pulp, and mucilage before drying, it cuts the moisture wrapped around the bean and shortens drying time, producing translucent beans with a low defect rate. Washing is what guarantees Blue Mountain's rich aroma — pure hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel notes in a perfectly balanced cup where nothing sticks out and nothing is missing.