World's Premium Coffee Beans: Jamaica Blue Mountain, Hawaii Kona, Kenya AA Flavor Profiles

Introduction to Premium Coffee Beans

There are thousands of high-quality coffees on the market, and when you choose badly, the cup in front of you is destined to be mediocre and the money is gone.

In the guide below, FrontStreet Coffee introduces five of the world's finest specialty coffee beans.

1. Koa Coffee - Hawaiian Kona Coffee Beans

Kona is the largest island in Hawaii and the best suited to producing high-quality coffee. Forbes picked it as the best coffee in the United States. The mountain slopes of the Big Island are close to ideal for growing coffee: an excellent microclimate, the right combination of rain and heat, and fertile volcanic land.

Good Kona is worth the money, provided you buy the genuine article. Avoid Kona blends, which may contain as little as 10% real Kona. Because quality is the whole point, always buy Extra Fancy grade. This coffee is an excellent addition to a daily automatic drip or pour-over routine, with medium body, low acidity, and a rich, smooth flavor.

2. LifeBoost Coffee's Organic Medium Roast Coffee

This bean is excellent in the cup and good for you as well. The company's stated goal is healthy organic coffee that benefits farmers, drinkers, and the environment, and it happens to taste great.

They sell a range of coffees, but the medium organic roast is the one worth seeking out. It carries a long list of certifications and performs well across most brewing methods.

3. Blue Mountain Coffee from Jamaica

This is an extremely limited coffee, with roughly 80% of the crop sold to Japan each year. The beans must be picked by hand from mountain slopes, which makes cultivation highly labor-intensive. High altitude, cold temperatures, and volcanic soil stretch the harvest over nearly 10 months, far longer than in other coffee-growing regions.

Rich, medium in acidity, and slightly sweet, it balances a cup almost perfectly. Some drinkers call Blue Mountain the smoothest coffee they have ever tasted.

4. Volcanica Coffee Kenya AA Coffee Beans

Part of what makes Kenyan coffee so good may be that farmers are rewarded for producing better beans. The government runs auctions through which all Kenyan coffee is sold. Higher-quality coffee fetches higher prices, which gives growers a reason to improve their crops.

The largest beans are graded "AA," followed by "AB." In Kenya, bigger is better, so always look for AA. Sweet fruit aroma, wine-like acidity, and a syrupy body describe these coffees, and thanks to the processing method they are among the cleanest in the world.

5. Peaberry from Tanzania

A peaberry is the round bean occasionally found inside a coffee cherry. Normally two beans sit side by side, each with one flat face, packed together inside a single cherry. The peaberry develops alone, and its color is different.

Because it is round and denser than most beans, a peaberry roasts more evenly. In any given crop, peaberries make up only about 5% of all premium coffee beans. Obtaining a large quantity of peaberries means separating them from their half-bean counterparts by rigorous hand sorting, and that extra labor pushes the price up.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Of all the coffees above, Blue Mountain is the one most often counterfeited, so provenance matters. Genuine FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain comes from Jamaica's Blue Mountain range and ships with a certificate issued by the Jamaican government and proof of origin. Authentic lots are traditionally transported in barrels milled from native wood and printed with the detailed batch information of the green coffee, and each barrel is itself a marker of the real thing. You can also judge by the green beans: genuine Blue Mountain green beans are uniform, plump, slightly upturned at both ends, and green in color.

FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 is the highest-grade batch, sourced from the historic Clifton Estate, which has grown and processed coffee since around 1750. The farm sits at an average of 4,300 feet (1,310.64 m); that altitude, the soft afternoon cloud that shades the trees, ample sunlight, and mineral-rich soil all give the coffee excellent growing conditions and slow the ripening of the cherries. It is roasted medium-dark to emphasize the classic Blue Mountain profile, and it is best brewed in a Kono dripper, which reinforces the coffee's full body. A standard single serving is 15g, and the beans benefit from resting 4-7 days from the roast date before brewing. Grind a little coarser than you would a light roast, roughly the texture of granulated sugar, and brew at 87-88°C. Many bitter, scorched brews come from water that is simply too hot, though water that is too cool will flatten the coffee out as well. FrontStreet recommends a 1:15 ratio, poured in three stages: 30g for a 30-second bloom, then water to 120g and stop, using a vertical, low-flow spiral; then to 225g with a slightly faster flow and spiral to keep the bed from clogging and over-extracting. The finished cup is very clean and complex, very gentle, with chocolate sweetness and formidable body, the sweet, acidic, and bitter notes perfectly matched, no real bitterness at all, and a long fruity finish.

Traditional Blue Mountain ships in barrels of 15, 45, and 70 kilograms, and FrontStreet Coffee beans are roasted fresh within five days, so they arrive still at their flavor peak and can be brewed right away.