Is Ethiopia Kaffa Coffee a Budget-Friendly Alternative to Gesha? Why is Kaffa Coffee Called "Kaffa"? Can Moka Pots Extract Light Roast Coffee Beans?

The Challenge of Brewing Light Roast Coffee with Moka Pot

It can be said that among the Moka pot inquiries received by FrontStreet Coffee, nearly 70% are about how to extract light roast coffee beans with a Moka pot. As the saying goes: "Radishes and cabbages, each has its own lovers!" Not all friends prefer to make coffee with deeply roasted, rich and mellow dark roast beans, so they often choose light roast beans with prominent flavors to make Moka pot coffee. As a representative of high-cost-performance among light roast beans, Flower Queen offers excellent flavor at an affordable price, naturally becoming the first choice for most friends.

However, many friends discovered after trying that the extracted Flower Queen coffee either lacked flavor or was filled with sharp acidity. It didn't match the cup of "Flower Queen flavor" coffee they had in mind. For this reason, these friends turned to FrontStreet Coffee, asking how to extract the Flower Queen flavor using a Moka pot! Therefore, today FrontStreet Coffee will share how to use a Moka pot to extract the "Flower Queen flavor" of Flower Queen. But before that... as per our tradition, let's first introduce to new friends what Flower Queen is and what the "Flower Queen flavor" means.

What is Flower Queen?

Flower Queen is a bean produced in the Hambella region of Ethiopia. FrontStreet Coffee believes that many friends first became acquainted with Flower Queen at the 2017 coffee competition, where contestants used Flower Queen to defeat numerous Geisha varieties and achieved excellent rankings. This caused Flower Queen's reputation to soar in a short time, gaining many "fans." But did you know that before Flower Queen became "Flower Queen," this bean had actually won the TOH competition championship held in Ethiopia by the African Coffee Association. It was precisely because of its victory that prompted a Beijing green bean trader to name it Flower Queen after acquiring it. The meaning behind it is "the best among flowers, outshining all others."

FrontStreet Coffee often mentions that Flower Queen also has the meaning of surpassing Geisha. Because Geisha was originally called "Geisha" in translation, which has the meaning of "geisha" in Japanese. Geisha is a profession in Japan, while Flower Queen (Oiran) was the outstanding figure in this profession. Later, because Flower Queen achieved good results in various competitions, such an interpretation became deeply rooted in people's hearts. Initially, Flower Queen was only produced at the Buku abel processing station in Dimtu town, Hambella. But as Flower Queen's fame grew and market demand increased, DW company began to expand production scale, putting the origins around the Buku processing station into coffee bean production. These are Buku Saysay, Haro Soresa, Tirtiro Goye, and Seke Bokosa - all villages and processing stations within Dimtu town, with the farthest being about 4 kilometers from the Buku processing station.

However, as everyone knows, coffee is an agricultural crop that depends on weather. Therefore, each year's coffee will have different final flavors due to climate changes in the growing environment and variations in processing details. Flower Queen is no exception! In 2018, people discovered that this year's Flower Queen tasted different from the one that shined in various competitions the previous year. Therefore, to distinguish it from the original Flower Queen, domestic green bean trading companies began to assign annual exclusive batch numbers to Flower Queen -- X.0. Calculating from 2017, each subsequent year's Flower Queen would have an X.0 suffix added. For example, the Flower Queen produced in 2018 was the second batch, so it's Flower Queen 2.0, the Flower Queen produced in 2019 was the third batch, so it's Flower Queen 3.0, 3.1 version...

This year marks the eighth year of Flower Queen production, so this year's suffix is: 8.0. This way, buyers can clearly know which year's batch of Flower Queen they're purchasing and whether it's current season coffee.

What is the "Flower Queen Flavor"?

The reason Flower Queen became famous is not only due to the fame brought by competitions but also because its flavor is very special, different from the traditional Yirgacheffe region flavors. Traditional Yirgacheffe flavors are characterized by citrus, pineapple, mango, and other mature tropical fruit flavors, while Flower Queen, on top of these, also adds rich, sweet aromas like cream and strawberry. When we combine these flavors together, we get what's called the "Flower Queen flavor."

How to Extract the "Flower Queen Flavor" with a Moka Pot?

Getting back to the main topic, the reason many friends fail to extract the "Flower Queen flavor" is because they've overlooked a crucial point! That is, Flower Queen is a light roast coffee bean, but they're using the same grind size and dose as for dark roast beans. Compared to dark roast beans, light roast beans don't expand as much and aren't as brittle. This results in the coffee puck formed by light roast coffee powder having less resistance than dark roast under the same grind and dose, because there are more gaps and water permeates faster. Therefore, the final extracted coffee will have insufficient contact time between powder and water, basically resulting in the sharp acidity of under-extraction. (If the Moka pot's output is directly in a "spraying" state, then this is definitely the case!)

For such situations, we can have different solutions depending on different needs (for detailed Moka pot operations, please refer to FrontStreet Coffee's other content, as we won't elaborate too much here). The first solution is to adjust the grind finer or increase the dose! For friends who grind coffee beans fresh with a grinder, adjusting the grind finer is naturally the best choice! Move the setting 2 notches toward the finer side, then extract with the same dose. The coffee puck will become tighter due to the reduced particle size of the coffee powder, naturally increasing resistance, thus extending the contact time between powder and water; for friends who buy pre-ground coffee, they need to increase the dose to enhance the puck's resistance, because the grind cannot be further adjusted finer, so we can only increase the puck's resistance through accumulation. (Exaggerated)

Another method is to control the heat - when the Moka pot starts producing coffee, reduce the heat source, and when the coffee liquid fills half the cup, remove the Moka pot from the heat source to reduce the generation speed of water vapor, thus appropriately extending the contact time between water and coffee powder. Of course, the previous two factors need to be met as prerequisites.

When we've made these adjustments, the hot water can perform at its maximum capacity for extraction. The fully extracted Flower Queen coffee naturally won't have sharp acidity, and the "Flower Queen flavors" of strawberry, cream, citrus, etc., can then be properly expressed!

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