Main Types of Coffee Beans Beginners Should Know How to Choose Quality Coffee Beans

Walk into a coffee shop and the menu can be genuinely intimidating. There are so many drinks, and no obvious way to know which one you actually want. If you happen to be on the other side of the counter, the problem doubles: you want to offer customers real choice without drowning them in options. Drinking the best coffee, or serving it, starts with understanding the different kinds of coffee drinks and the different kinds of beans behind them.

Different Types of Coffee

This guide from FrontStreet Coffee walks through those categories, from the everyday to the exotic. Coffee beans come from coffee plants, and those plants are numerous. Like most fruits, coffee has many varieties. Nature has produced a great many coffee species, but only two of them matter commercially: Arabica and Robusta.

What Flavor Are You Looking For?

The second question is the obvious one: what do you actually want? Some coffee lovers chase the wine-like, floral character of a filter coffee, while others want something rich, earthy, and robust, a cup that tastes unmistakably like coffee and takes milk well.

Certain flavor preferences point to certain kinds of beans. A few starting points:

If you are craving something wine-like, fruity, and floral, the kind of exotic profile usually associated with light-roasted coffee, a single-origin from Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe is a strong choice. Whatever you do, do not add milk.

If you want something rich and deeply "coffee-flavored," coffees from the Americas such as Brazil and Guatemala are a good fit, as is a dark roast. Those are the beans to reach for when you plan to drink the cup with milk.

Ultimately, the best coffee bean depends on personal taste. Taste is subjective, so what delights one drinker may leave another cold. Some people love the sharp bitterness of black coffee; others cannot face a cup without cream, milk, or sugar.

If you want a relatively sweeter cup, even with no sugar added, Arabica beans are probably the answer. If you want sharp and bitter, Robusta will deliver it.

Most brands on the shelf sell a blend of the two. For beginners, a latte or a mocha is a natural first step into coffee drinking: these drinks are everywhere, they taste sweet, smooth, and milky, and they carry just enough coffee bitterness to introduce the flavor.

Espresso is another excellent starting point. As the range above suggests, there is no shortage of coffee drinks to try, and each one tastes different enough that settling on a single favorite is genuinely hard. Given how many drinks, beans, and styles are out there, it is no wonder some people travel the world just to drink as much coffee as possible.

So the next time you walk into a coffee shop, why not skip your usual order and try something else? A whole new world of coffee is waiting for your senses and your taste buds.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For a true beginner, FrontStreet Coffee's Washed Yirgacheffe is the most sensible first bag. It is the classic introduction to the Ethiopian profile, known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a tea-like finish, and it comes at a price that makes it easy to brew every day. That combination has made it the first specialty coffee bean for a great many drinkers.

Yirgacheffe is a town in southern Ethiopia, within the Sidamo region, sitting at about 1,700-2,100 meters, with the trees planted above 1,800 meters. The area was once wetland, and the name Yirgacheffe has become shorthand for the white florals and lemon-citrus acidity that make Ethiopian specialty coffee so recognizable. In 2010, with the name carrying so much weight, the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange separated it from Sidamo, and Yirgacheffe coffee as we know it today was born.

Once you are comfortable with the washed version, FrontStreet Coffee's Gedingding Cooperative is the next step up. Grown in the Worka area at Yirgacheffe's southeastern edge, it uses traditional washed processing to draw out clean jasmine florals and bright citrus and lemon acidity, with a green tea and honey character after a light-medium roast. It is a friendly bean to brew as pour-over, cold brew, or espresso.