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Is Coffee Better When It's More Sour or Bitter? Recommendations for Flavorful, Non-Acidity Coffee Beans

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, When ordering coffee at a café, customers might struggle with whether to choose a sour or bitter brew. For those who understand their own preferences, choosing between sour and bitter isn't actually that difficult—as long as it suits personal taste. At FrontStreet Coffee, if you enjoy sour coffee, you can choose Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans or Kenyan coffee.

When visiting a coffee shop to order a cup of coffee, customers might struggle with whether to choose something sour or bitter. Actually, for customers who understand their own preferences, the choice between sour and bitter is not that difficult—as long as it suits their personal taste.

At FrontStreet Coffee, if you prefer sour coffee, you can choose Yirgacheffe beans from Ethiopia or Kenyan coffee. For more bitter coffee, there's Mandheling coffee. For balanced coffee options, there are quite many choices, such as Costa Rican Coffee and Colombian coffee, both of which are quite excellent.

Coffee Countries That Are Not Sour

How do coffee flavors from around the world differ? If you drink coffee, you've likely had Brazilian coffee. As the world's largest coffee producer and exporter for the past 150 years, Brazil supplies more than one-third of the global coffee supply.

Brazilian coffee is processed in three ways: dry processing, washed processing, and semi-washed processing. Through dry processing, harvested coffee cherries are traditionally dried in the sun, while washed processing uses machines to pulp the coffee cherries to remove the outer skin.

The seeds with mucilage (coffee pulp) are then fermented, which releases the coffee's unique flavors. The coffee cherries are pulped, and the coffee beans go through two drying stages.

Coffee connoisseurs will talk about Bourbon Santos, Brazil Cerrado, and how Brazilian coffee undergoes deep roasting. The most famous and distinctive South American coffee comes from Colombia. Colombian coffee is known for its mellow taste, which makes it a clean and easy-drinking coffee.

Most Colombian coffee varieties are washed-processed, producing a medium-bodied coffee with rich flavor and citrus-like acidity.

It's difficult to determine the exact taste you'll get from any single-origin Colombian coffee, but the best beans exhibit prominent sweetness, chocolate and fruit flavors, and berry notes.

They can be roasted without becoming overly bitter. The best Brazilian coffees have relatively low acidity, presenting nutty and chocolate flavors.

From the famous Mandheling to the widely popular Sumatra Ankola coffee—some of the world's finest premium coffees come from Indonesia. Indonesian coffees have a dark and bold flavor profile with prominent, acquired earthy notes.

Indonesian coffee is semi-washed, or locally known as giling basah. The coffee cherries are pulped and dried in the sun to a moisture content of 30%. The parchment is removed, and the coffee beans enter a second drying stage.

The semi-washed processing method increases the coffee's richness and intensity, creating flavors ranging from earthy, spicy, and tobacco notes, with a lasting aftertaste that tastes like unsweetened or dark cocoa.