Origins of Single-Origin Coffee Bean Names? How to Distinguish Four Mandheling Coffee Beans?

Introduction

When visiting FrontStreet Coffee, many customers find themselves staring at the extensive coffee bean list, completely captivated. Today, FrontStreet Coffee will introduce why these beans are named as they are.

Named by Region/Origin/Producer

Today, most single-origin coffee beans are named in this manner, which more directly indicates the origin of the coffee beans. For example, Yirgacheffe, which we are very familiar with, is a famous coffee-producing region in Ethiopia. And the common string of names that follows Yirgacheffe, such as Gedeb, Kochere, Biloa, Woka, etc., are the names of more specific production cooperatives and processing plants within the Yirgacheffe region.

Central and South America, on the other hand, use independent estates or major coffee-producing regions as names, such as Colombia's well-known Huila, Cauca, and Narino; Guatemala's Antigua and Huehuetenango; Jamaica's Blue Mountain; and Hawaii's Kona—all are names of coffee-producing regions.

Named After Competition Titles

Every year, famous green bean competitions like TOH, COE, and BOP receive extreme attention from coffee merchants. These award-winning coffee beans are named after their titles, such as the 2020 Ethiopia COE 22nd place that FrontStreet Coffee previously participated in auctioning. There's also the familiar 2017 TOH champion "Hana Asakso."

Named by Coffee Estates for Their Products

Some rare coffee varieties or widely recognized flavorful coffee varieties are named in the form of estate name + bean variety, such as Geisha, Pink Bourbon, and Pacamara.

For coffees with unique flavors created through special processing methods, estates or processors may give them elegant or appropriate names, such as the Musician Series from Hacienda La Carmen, Rose Valley from Das Tree Estate, and Sherry from Finca Moca in Honduras.

There are also product brand positioning classifications, such as Hacienda La Esmeralda dividing its coffee into Esmeralda Special (Geisha Red Label), Private Reserve (Geisha Green Label), Geisha 1500 (Geisha Blue Label), Diamond Mountain (premium Catuai) and Palmira (regular Catuai). Other examples include the Geisha Village Estate product series (named similarly to La Esmeralda), Panama Mariposa, Golden Mandheling (discussed in detail below), and Guatemala Flora, all following this naming approach.

The Name Mandheling

This one is quite special—it's neither a region name nor a coffee variety, but rather the name of a local coffee-growing tribe (and it was even misheard—the tribal name transliterates as "Mandailing"). Today, Arabica coffee beans produced in northern Sumatra can all be called Mandheling coffee.

Mandheling coffee is further subdivided into many types, basically named by origin, such as Lintong Mandheling, Gayo Mandheling, and Lake Toba Mandheling. There are also brand-named ones, such as Golden Mandheling and Tiger Mandheling. Golden Mandheling is a trademark of Pawani Company, characterized by extremely strict bean selection standards, using only coffee beans above 18 mesh, undergoing three manual selections and one machine selection. With few defects and large beans, it's not an exaggeration to call it the highest quality Mandheling.

Tiger Mandheling (official name: Mandheling Sumatra Tiger) uses coffee beans from the Lake Toba area in Aceh and has a traditional Chinese medicine aroma. Only Mandheling beans above 17 mesh with a defect rate below 4% can be called "Tiger."

There's also Aged Mandheling, named after its special processing method. Aged Mandheling involves placing coffee beans that have completed wet-hulling processing in temperature-controlled warehouses for 2-3 years of aging. Through long-term maturation, the fruit acidity of Mandheling not only becomes gentle and mellow, but its body thickness and unique flavors become even more impressively expressed in the mouth.

G1, AA, NO.1, SHB?

Many coffee beans are named with endings like G1, G2, AA, AB—these numbers and letters all represent coffee grades. Different coffee-producing countries have different grading standards. G1 and G2 are generally coffee beans graded by defect rate, with G1 being the highest grade, such as Yirgacheffe G1. AA and AB are graded by coffee bean size, such as Kenya AA, representing the best coffee quality in Kenya. SHB means Strictly Hard Bean and is generally a grading standard in Central and South American countries.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style). For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee's private WeChat: qjcoffeex

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