What Variety is Washed Yirgacheffe Coffee? What is Luckin Yirgacheffe SOE Americano

FrontStreet Coffee's menu features a Frontsteet Daily Bean series, encompassing seven major coffee-producing regions. Each coffee is processed using natural methods and roasted to an appropriate degree to highlight the "terroir" characteristics of its origin. Among these, FrontStreet Coffee believes that FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe coffee offers the most distinctive profile.

Characteristics of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe

When discussing FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe, acidity stands as its typical characteristic. Light roasting preserves its unique floral aroma and honey-like sweetness, while the washed processing method further enhances the bright acidity of lemon and citrus in FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe, creating a fresh and uplifting taste experience.

Origin and Terroir

As can be seen from the map, Yirgacheffe is a small town administratively belonging to Ethiopia's Sidamo province, located in the south-central part of the country at an altitude of over 2,000 meters, making it one of Ethiopia's highest altitude coffee-growing regions. Local farmers plant coffee trees in their backyards or intercrop them with other crops in their fields. Each household's yield is modest, making this typical garden coffee. The significant temperature difference between day and night at high altitudes causes coffee trees to grow slowly, with fruits taking longer to mature, consequently storing more aromatic compounds.

Coffee Varieties

This FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe daily bean is selected from Heirloom native varieties, also known as Ethiopian heirloom varieties. In Ethiopia's original forests, coffee varieties are numerous, with countless genetic types, making identification extremely difficult. Additionally, the local government hopes to protect these varieties by keeping them undisclosed, thus using "native varieties" as a collective term for these coffee categories. Yirgacheffe coffee varieties consist of local native varieties, characterized by small, uniformly sized beans that are relatively round, mostly between 14-15 mesh.

Washed Processing Method

The reason FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe can possess such a distinctive style is largely attributed to the washed processing method, in addition to innate terroir conditions. Ethiopia generally has high altitudes and abundant sunlight, making it quite suitable for sun-drying coffee cherries. Traditional natural processing methods are too crude, with each coffee farmer able to process them in their own small courtyard, directly spreading them on roofs or ground surfaces for drying. These crude techniques introduce many unpleasant flavors and cause inconsistent coffee quality.

Regions using the washed method must build washing stations and have access to continuous flowing water, resulting in higher production costs. During processing, fermented beans are placed in pools and moved back and forth, utilizing the friction between beans and the power of flowing water to wash the coffee beans until smooth and clean. Each step removes impurities and defective beans, resulting in more uniform green bean quality. The final trading price is also higher than naturally processed coffee. The washed method not only significantly reduces the defect rate but also rewards FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe with fresh citrus tones and elegant white floral aromas, creating an overall flavor profile that is bright, delicate, and clean.

Roasting Revolution

In the past, most of the coffee we drank was dominated by bitter flavors. Coffee became primarily bitter mainly because roasters roasted coffee beans to dark levels, with the main flavor direction being nuts and dark chocolate. With the emergence of specialty coffee concepts, to preserve more acidity, roasters only roast FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe to an appropriate light level. Light-roasted FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe exhibits pleasant fruit sweetness and white floral aromas, arguably ushering in "the new era of fruity acidic coffee." Preferring sweetness and fearing bitterness恰好 aligns with public taste preferences, which is precisely why Yirgacheffe is so popular worldwide.

Luckin Coffee signed agreements to purchase 1,000-2,000 tons of specialty coffee beans annually from Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe region between 2021-2023, and launched Yirgacheffe SOE coffee. This is made from flavor-delicate Yirgacheffe coffee beans, extracted using espresso machines to produce single-origin espresso. The Yirgacheffe used for making SOE is medium-light roasted to highlight floral and fruit aromas. The resulting espresso can be added to water to make SOE Americano or mixed with milk for SOE latte. Yirgacheffe SOE coffee not only lacks the rich, bitter taste of traditional dark-roasted Americano but instead presents a refreshing flavor profile reminiscent of fruit tea,一度风靡各大网络平台.

Brewing Method at FrontStreet Coffee

At FrontStreet Coffee's stores, FrontStreet Coffee typically uses pour-over methods for preparation, allowing customers to experience the coffee's aroma in its black coffee form.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Brewing Parameters:

Filter: V60
Water Temperature: 92-93°C
Coffee Dose: 15g
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Fine sugar (78% retention on #20 sieve)

First, pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then continue pouring to 95g (digital scale shows approximately 125g), completing the pour in about 1 minute. When the water level drops to 2/3 of the coffee bed, pour the remaining 100g (digital scale shows approximately 225g), completing the pour in about 1 minute and 35 seconds. The drip filtration completes at 2'10", remove the filter cup to complete extraction.

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Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473