Recommended Coffee Beans with Distinct Sweetness: Flavor Profile of Yirgacheffe and Huakui Coffee

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Everyone's perception and preference for coffee taste varies. Some friends perceive coffee as rich and bitter, while others love sour coffee, and some prefer coffee with milk and sugar. Today, we'll only discuss black coffee and whether there are coffee beans that exhibit sweetness. First, let's understand why coffee has sweetness.

Coffee beans contain sucrose-like substances. Although not abundant, they are often masked by high acidity or bitterness, but they genuinely provide the source of sweetness. Secondly, aroma compounds like ketones and furanones in coffee allow us to detect honey, sweet fruits, caramel, and maple syrup fragrances.

Coffee beans require processing from coffee cherries and are essentially part of the fruit itself. Ripe cherries are sweeter than unripe ones, making all-red cherry processing essential for ensuring coffee quality. During processing, the more substances involved in fermentation, the higher the perceived sweetness in coffee beans. Therefore, friends who prefer noticeable sweetness might try naturally processed, black honey processed, or anaerobic naturally processed coffee beans.

The most direct factor affecting coffee sweetness is the roast degree. Lighter roasts result in more acidic coffee, while darker roasts produce more bitterness. Coffee roasted closer to medium degree exhibits the best sweetness.

Categories of Sweet Coffee

If we use a simple classification method, highly sweet coffees can be divided into two categories: acidity with sweetness and bitterness with revealed sweetness.

Acidity with Sweetness

Acidity with sweetness is currently a popular flavor profile that many people enjoy. It specifically manifests as the taste of ripe fruits, providing a very pleasant drinking experience. FrontStreet Coffee would like to share several popular coffee beans for everyone's reference.

First: Yirgacheffe Natural Red Cherry

This coffee bean is considered a classic representative of high sweetness in light-roasted coffees. These beans were among the first to propose all-red cherry natural processing, ensuring their exceptional quality. FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-light roasting, allowing this bean to showcase aromas of ripe fruits, with distinct fermentation notes and berry flavors upon entry. As it cools slightly, it reveals citrus acidity, creamy smoothness, and a juice-like sensation of ripe grapes in the finish.

Second: Strawberry Candy Coffee Beans

This is a blend carefully selected by FrontStreet Coffee, combining high-altitude coffees from two regions: Panama washed Geisha and Costa Rica honey-processed coffee. To maximize the advantages of both origins, FrontStreet Coffee employs medium roasting, allowing the coffee to retain rich floral and fruit notes while highlighting roasted aromatics. When brewed, it presents caramel, raisin, preserved fruit notes, along with sweet rose fragrance.

Third: Musician Series Mozart Coffee Beans

Costa Rica's Mozart is characterized by a Kyoho grape-like sweetness and has long been popular among many friends. This coffee bean uses raisin honey processing, allowing coffee cherries to undergo slow fermentation. FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-light roasting to highlight the very rich and fragrant notes of raisins, roses, and fermented wine aroma in this bean.

Bitterness with Revealed Sweetness

When bitterness and sweetness coexist in a cup of coffee, we often perceive bitterness first, followed by a sweet sensation that remains at the back of the tongue after swallowing. This pleasing sweetness inherent in bitter coffee is what people often describe as "aftertaste sweetness" - the so-called "sweetness after bitterness," most commonly found in medium-dark roasted coffees. For example, Blue Mountain No. 1 and Golden Mandheling exhibit this characteristic finish.

Coffees with bitterness revealing sweetness primarily feature nuts and dark chocolate as the main notes, bringing out distinct sucrose, maple syrup, and caramel sweetness. These are the first choice for friends who dislike acidic coffee. FrontStreet Coffee would like to share several time-tested coffee beans for everyone's reference.

First: Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon Coffee Beans

Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon is a coffee bean that FrontStreet Coffee particularly likes. Its greatest characteristic is excellent sweetness, making it versatile (suitable for pour-over, French press, moka pot, and coffee machine). Queen Estate itself is also a premium estate in Brazil, and the Yellow Bourbon variety is exceptional. Natural processing also enhances the coffee's perceived sweetness. FrontStreet Coffee uses medium roasting, presenting notes of nuts, cream, sucrose, and soft fruit acidity.

Second: FrontStreet Coffee 2013 Coffee Beans

These are coffee beans grown by FrontStreet Coffee in Yunnan. Many people know that FrontStreet Coffee shares coffee knowledge and roasts coffee beans, but few know that FrontStreet Coffee also grows coffee in Yunnan. FrontStreet Coffee began planting coffee in Yunnan's Lincang region as early as 2013, proceeding step by step with site selection, breeding, planting, and management. FrontStreet Coffee grows Typica, an excellent Arabica variety with outstanding flavors. Using natural processing and medium roasting, it exhibits high preserved fruit sweetness, plum, brown sugar, and chocolate notes.

Personal Preference Matters

If you find all the above coffees to be bitter, then adding sugar might be your only option if you want to drink something sweet, with the amount depending on your personal preference.

In FrontStreet Coffee's view, everyone's dietary habits differ, naturally leading to variations in recognizing sour, sweet, bitter, and salty tastes. Even when drinking the same pot of coffee, some might find it very bitter while others consider it quite sweet. If you don't want the barista to serve what you consider "bitter coffee," perhaps add an extra sentence when ordering - specify whether you want your coffee to be fruitily sour, dark-roasted sweet, flavorfully sweet, or sweetened with additional sugar...

Important Notice :

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