What Varieties of Cocoa Chocolate Flavored Coffee Beans Exist? Fazenda Rainha Yellow Bourbon Low-Acidity Coffee Beans - Premium Pour-Over Coffee Flavor Review

For anyone who simply doesn't enjoy acidic coffee, are there non-acidic options out there? Absolutely. This Panama Queen Estate coffee—also known by its Portuguese name Fazenda Rainha—comes from a 280-acre plantation tucked into Vale da Grama, an ancient volcanic valley in Brazil. In 2011, the estate took first place in Brazil's Cup of Excellence.

Fazenda Rainha belongs to the Carvalho Dias family, one of the most renowned and respected coffee dynasties in Brazil. Since the country's first COE competition in 1999, the family's four major estates have collected awards year after year—more than 12 awards in 7 years—and in 2004 they even swept the top of the leaderboard, taking champion, 9th, 11th place, and more. Countless estates across Brazil have long chased a qualification, while this family's farms have carted off trophy after trophy. Even the Fazenda Rainha we carry boasts an impressive record of its own: 2nd place in 2000, 3rd in 2001, and 29th in 2005, making three COE awards to date.

The Carvalho Dias family were also founding members of the Brazil Specialty Coffee Association, and their commitment to both quality and the environment is plain to see. On their family farms, natural waterfalls generate pollution-free hydroelectric power that makes the estates fully self-sufficient in electricity (another award-winning property in the family is literally named after that waterfall—Waterfall Estate). They have built churches, classrooms, nurseries, and medical stations, preserved the original forests and their native wildlife, and kept up ongoing reforestation work. Environmental care at Queen Estate runs deep: because of its higher altitude and non-flat terrain, no harvesting machines can operate there, so every cherry is picked entirely by hand. Combined with the low-yield, high-quality Bourbon varieties they cultivate, it all makes Fazenda Rainha a true standard-bearer for Brazil's finest coffee.

Queen Estate Coffee Details

Country: Brazil
Origin: Fazenda Rainha (Queen Estate)
Variety: Yellow Bourbon
Processing Method: Semi-dry (Pulped Natural)
Altitude: 1400-1950m
Drying Method: Natural (Sun-dried)

The cup is built around rich chocolate notes, with sweet, clean beans—some lots even revealing a tropical fruit aroma.

Queen Estate Award Records:

• 2014 COE Cup of Excellence - 13th Place
• 2013 COE Cup of Excellence - 2nd Place
• 2012 COE Cup of Excellence - 8th Place
• 2011 COE Cup of Excellence - Champion
• 2010 COE Cup of Excellence - 20th Place
• 2009 COE Cup of Excellence - 6th Place
• 2008 COE Cup of Excellence - 14th Place

FrontStreet Coffee's Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon - Green Bean Analysis

This lot is processed with the Brazilian-invented Cereja Descascado method (the de-pulped, or pulped natural, process), a natural-style technique related to honey processing that rounds out the flavor and sits somewhere between washed and full natural processing. A small amount of water is used first to remove the pulp and skin, then the beans go straight onto drying racks for sun-drying with constant turning so that every bean gets even sun exposure. After several days in the sun, mechanical drying finishes the job to reach the target moisture content.

Beans processed this way are quite stable and store well. They carry lower moisture and relatively large sizes—98% pass a 16 screen, and half reach 18. Brazil's grading system is its own, more intricate scheme, evaluating defect counts, size, flavor, and cup quality. Take the designation "Brasil Santos NY 2 SC17/18 SS FC": here NY2 is the defect grade, where a larger number means more defects (the sequence runs 2, 2/3, 3, 3/4...), and NY indicates the New York grading standard.

All told, this is a coffee bean with outstanding value for money.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

As the world's largest coffee producer, Brazil grows an enormous range of coffee, and its beans strike a lovely balance of moderate acidity, sweetness, bitterness, and body. That balance makes them ideal for a medium roast, which coaxes out an inviting nutty aroma, a mellow mouthfeel, and just a whisper of acidity—wonderful either as a single origin or in a blend.

If you'd like a first taste of the classic Brazil profile, FrontStreet Coffee suggests the pulped-natural Cerrado Red Bourbon: a quintessential Brazilian single origin from one of the country's best-known quality regions, showing cream-roasted-peanut, toast, caramel, and hazelnut aromas at a medium roast—round on the palate, not sour, with only a light bitter edge. It works beautifully as a pour-over and equally well in a moka pot, as a single-origin espresso, or in a siphon or French press.

For the same chocolate-forward, low-acid character in an even finer expression, the FrontStreet Coffee Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon is the standout. Yellow Bourbon is a rare mutation of Red Bourbon with a cleaner, fruitier profile, and Mogiana's fertile red volcanic soil gives the cherries everything they need to develop full aroma. Brewed by hand, in a moka pot, or in a home machine, it reveals a sugarcane sweetness you won't find from other origins, alongside fruit and chocolate notes. And thanks to that low acidity, balance, and approachable price, Brazilian beans also anchor many of FrontStreet Coffee's espresso blends—providing chocolate and cream aromas plus gentle sweet-sour-bitter structure and the stable extraction that baristas depend on.