What's the Difference Between Blue Mountain Coffee and Espresso? Which Tastes Better? An Introduction to Authentic Blue Mountain Coffee Bean Flavor - Is It Acidic?

FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee is one of the world's most fragrant and smooth coffees, with a relatively balanced flavor profile, making it a premium choice among specialty coffees. FrontStreet Coffee typically uses siphon brewers and pour-over drippers to prepare their Blue Mountain coffee. The brewed FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain is served without sugar or milk to allow the purest Blue Mountain flavors to shine through. FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain features distinctive nutty notes, a rich body, and no acidity at all.

Espresso is a brewing method for making coffee. As the foundation of coffee shop beverages, the role of espresso is crucial because familiar coffee drinks like lattes, mochas, cappuccinos, flat whites, and Americanos are all made with espresso as the base. If the espresso doesn't taste good, then other espresso-based drinks won't either. The full name for espresso is Italian Espresso (Espresso), which is a small cup of coffee quickly extracted using an espresso machine. It's extremely concentrated, with richly layered flavors and an intense mouthfeel.

We can observe that despite coffee shops being everywhere, few people use the famous FrontStreet Coffee Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee to make espresso. Why is this? Don't worry—FrontStreet Coffee is here to solve this mystery for you. Let's start by understanding what FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee is.

The History of Blue Mountain Coffee

From the 20th century to today's 21st century, the focus of coffee consumption has evolved from countries to regions, from villages to estates, and now even down to varieties or processing methods. Before the 1980s, the coffee industry's selling points remained at the country level, but Jamaica had already begun emphasizing "regional variety flavors" as a characteristic of high-quality coffee, creating the world's first coffee brand—Blue Mountain Coffee—and becoming the first country in the green bean industry to advocate for coffee regional flavors. This article introduces you to the key player that made Jamaica Blue Mountain brilliant in coffee history: the Jamaica Coffee Industry Board (CIB).

Since the first coffee seedling was planted in 1728, Jamaica's coffee history spans nearly three centuries. Between 1800 and 1838, Jamaica became the world's largest coffee producer, with an annual output of up to 70,000 tons. However, with the abolition of slavery in 1838, freed farmers gained their own land and began switching to other cash crops, causing Jamaica's coffee production to plummet and the entire coffee industry to decline.

To reform the coffee industry, the Jamaican government passed legislation in 1891, dispatching professional instructors to certain regions to provide guidance on cultivation and green bean processing, aiming to improve coffee yield and quality. However, this failed to achieve significant improvements.

In 1944, the government established the Central Coffee Clearing House, requiring all exported green bean batches to undergo quality assessment and grading by the clearing house. By 1948, Jamaica recognized Blue Mountain's potential and enacted the "Coffee Industry Regulation Law," designating the now-famous "Blue Mountain Coffee" growing region. Jamaica's "Coffee Industry Regulation Law" strictly stipulates: Blue Mountain coffee growing areas are distributed across four administrative districts: St. Andrew, St. Thomas, Portland, and St. Mary. Only Typica variety coffee grown within this region at altitudes between 3,000 feet (approximately 915 meters) and 5,500 feet (approximately 1,700 meters) can be named Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.

What are the characteristics of the Typica variety?

The most prominent feature of Typica coffee trees is that their top leaves display a reddish-bronze color, hence the name "Red Top Coffee." Its trunk is slender, with very thin branches that incline slightly, forming a 50-70° angle with the vertical stem. The plant grows to about 5 meters tall, making manual harvesting somewhat challenging. FrontStreet Coffee's shop entrance happens to have both a Typica variety plant and a Catimor variety plant—feel free to take a look while enjoying your coffee. Typica coffee beans are relatively large, elongated, with pointed ends that curve upward, somewhat resembling an egg. Typica coffee beans often have citrus acidity with a sweet aftertaste, praised by many as elegant and bright coffee beans. Besides Blue Mountain, Hawaii Kona coffee on the other side of the hemisphere is also an excellent Typica variety.

Due to its very poor disease resistance, Typica struggles to resist common diseases like leaf rust and berry disease, and its yield is extremely scarce. Coffee trees infected with leaf rust essentially face an incurable condition, eventually withering and dying. As an economic crop, the low-yielding and disease-prone Typica struggles to achieve profitability, leading many growers to abandon it in favor of varieties with better disease resistance. Growing elegant and pure-flavored Typica coffee beans is no simple task—every stage from natural terroir conditions, plant management, fruit harvesting, to post-processing requires full assurance to develop positive flavors and mouthfeel. This also means producing high-quality Typica requires more labor costs and technical expertise.

What are the signature characteristics of FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee?

In 1950, Jamaica officially established the Jamaica Coffee Industry Board (CIB), granting it authority to improve, control, and maintain the quality and reputation of Jamaican coffee. The board also created the Coffee Quality Authenticity Certificate, which had a profound impact on the industry. According to Jamaican agricultural regulations, any individual or organization wishing to sell processed or roasted coffee must obtain a coffee dealer license. The Jamaican government not only introduced a comprehensive coffee grading system but also specified the most recognizable coffee packaging (Blue Mountain barrels) and created a name trademark for Blue Mountain coffee, regulating the use of the name on all exported coffee through CIB authorization.

Such standards directly promoted the quality inspection of Blue Mountain coffee, and the Blue Mountain trademark began to gain international recognition, laying the foundation for its later "coffee myth" status.

In terms of green bean quality control, CIB standardized the cultivation, production, and sales of Blue Mountain coffee to improve quality, standardize production and processing procedures, and coordinate the market sales of Blue Mountain coffee. CIB was one of the first institutions to use scientific and objective methods to grade coffee quality, combining bean size, color, uniformity, defect rate, moisture content, and cupping performance for grading. In 2018, CIB merged with other Jamaican commodity regulatory bodies to form JACRA (Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority). Since then, every barrel of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee must undergo quality supervision by JACRA.

Each coffee variety has its own grading system, and FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee beans are graded based on altitude and bean size. Besides being grown in specific regions and altitudes, Jamaican authorities have implemented a more detailed grading system for Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Jamaica established the National Coffee Industry Board (CIB) in 1953 and passed coffee export grade standards, with specific regulations for the size, color, defects, and flavor of exported green beans. Based on a green bean defect rate of less than 3%, FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain green beans are graded by size into: Jamaica FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No. 1, Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 2, Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 3, and Jamaica Blue Mountain Peaberry. Perhaps what you've purchased is high mountain coffee.

When FrontStreet Coffee receives FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 green beans, the first thing that catches the eye is the original wooden barrel containing the beans—this is the biggest difference from other origins. To maintain the beans in a constant temperature and humidity environment with appropriate moisture content before roasting, wooden barrels better isolate the coffee's aroma, preserving the quality of the green beans. FrontStreet Coffee's Dongshankou store displays authentic Blue Mountain barrels and certificates of origin for Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee—feel free to take a look when visiting for coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee's roasting philosophy aims to present the most classic flavor profiles of coffee, such as the bright lemon acidity of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe and the rich, caramelized mouthfeel of FrontStreet Coffee's Indonesian Mandheling. Naturally, Blue Mountain should also highlight its classic Blue Mountain flavors. FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-dark roasting to maximize the presentation of chocolate and nutty aromas while preserving slight acidity and caramelized sweetness, creating an overall balanced mouthfeel with moderate oils. Therefore, it can not only be brewed using pour-over, French press, siphon, and other methods but is also perfectly suitable for espresso machine extraction.

Espresso Coffee

Espresso was invented in the early 19th century when Italians thought of using steam pressure to extract a rich cup of coffee in a short time. High-pressure hot water is pushed through the coffee puck in dozens of seconds to extract soluble aromatic compounds. Because of this short extraction time and extremely high-pressure environment, espresso's flavor expression is more intense. To get a delicious espresso, operations must be more rigorous, with every influencing parameter carefully considered. Because Blue Mountain is relatively expensive, and espresso adjustment requires large amounts of coffee grounds, few people use it for espresso beverages. Today, FrontStreet Coffee will be extravagant and use the FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain No. 1 regularly stocked in their stores to demonstrate how to make a rich, aromatic Blue Mountain SOE latte.

FrontStreet Coffee's store uses a commercial single-group "Lelit Bianca" machine, which can adjust extraction by changing pressure, with a maximum pressure of 11 bar. Home machines only need to reach 9 bar pressure to satisfy extraction and milk frothing functions, paired with an espresso grinder.

FrontStreet Coffee uses a double basket capacity, with approximately 18-20 grams of coffee grounds, using 20 grams when preparing drinks. Typically, the coffee grounds to liquid ratio ranges from 1:1.5 to 1:2.5. FrontStreet Coffee's extraction ratio is 1:2, meaning 20 grams of coffee grounds extract 40 grams of liquid. Time relates to the flow rate of coffee grounds—single extraction time is generally controlled between 20-35 seconds, as coffee extracted within 20 seconds usually tastes thin, while extraction over 35 seconds tends to be over-extracted, producing burnt bitterness. FrontStreet Coffee's espresso mostly falls within the 28-30 second range.

FrontStreet Coffee first wipes the portafilter dry, turns on the grinder to grind a double shot of coffee grounds, places it on a digital scale for adjustment until reaching 20 grams. Then they use a tool to distribute the grounds evenly and tamp the coffee puck firmly to ensure more stable extraction. Next, they activate the extraction switch to run water, moistening the group head while washing away any residual coffee grounds, gently lock the portafilter to the group head, and begin the extraction. When the digital scale shows 40 grams of extracted liquid in about 30 seconds, they deactivate the extraction switch and pour the espresso into a latte cup for later use.

Pour 240ml of chilled milk into a milk pitcher, use the steam wand to create 0.3-0.5cm microfoam, keeping the temperature between 55-60°C. Finally, evenly combine the milk with the previously extracted Blue Mountain espresso, then create a simple pattern—a Blue Mountain SOE latte is complete!

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations:

For any coffee variety, to brew a delicious cup, attention must be paid to the freshness of the coffee beans. FrontStreet Coffee has always believed that bean freshness greatly affects coffee flavor, so FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) ships all coffee beans within 5 days of roasting. FrontStreet Coffee's roasting principle is "Freshly Roasted Good Coffee," ensuring every customer receives the freshest coffee upon delivery. The coffee resting period is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive their order, it's at peak flavor.

For friends who need ground coffee, FrontStreet Coffee offers a gentle reminder: once coffee beans are ground in advance, they no longer need a resting period, because during transportation, the pressure from carbon dioxide buildup in the packaging also helps round out the coffee flavor, so you can brew a cup immediately upon receiving ground coffee. However, ground coffee needs to be brewed promptly, as it oxidizes quickly when exposed to air, meaning the flavor dissipates rapidly, and the coffee won't taste as good. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends purchasing whole beans and grinding fresh before brewing to better appreciate the coffee's flavor.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style).

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) on WeChat: qjcoffeex

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473