What Are the Common Types of Coffee Beans? Recommendations for Coffee Beans with Relatively Lower Acidity

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The Rise of Coffee Variety Flavors

With the third wave of coffee specialization, coffee beans now exhibit various flavor profiles including floral, fruity, cocoa, and nutty notes. FrontStreet Coffee presents this introduction to common coffee varieties.

Main Coffee Species

In terms of species, the most common are Arabica coffee beans and Robusta coffee beans. Arabica beans are known for their superior flavor, typically exhibiting floral and fruity notes. They represent the most widely cultivated commercial variety, accounting for 70% of global production. Arabica coffee generally requires cultivation at higher altitudes.

Robusta coffee beans naturally lack the distinctive elegant aroma of Arabica beans, instead offering a richer, deeper flavor profile with notes of walnut, peanut, hazelnut, wheat, and grains. However, they are more resilient than Arabica, can be grown at lower altitudes, and possess strong disease and pest resistance. Robusta yields higher production per unit than Arabica and currently accounts for 30% of global cultivation, typically used as a base for espresso blends and instant coffee.

The Arabica Coffee Family

Today, 70% of global coffee production consists of Arabica beans, which have been further subdivided into numerous detailed varieties. Below are some of the most common Arabica coffee varieties:

Typica Coffee Beans

Typica is one of the world's oldest native varieties. Typica plants have bronze-colored young leaves and oval or slender-pointed beans. They offer elegant flavors but have relatively weak constitution, poor disease resistance, and low fruit yield. Typica has been cultivated in virtually all regions suitable for Arabica coffee. Many famous coffee beans, such as Jamaica Blue Mountain, Sumatra Mandheling, and Hawaii Kona, belong to the Typica family.

Bourbon Coffee Beans

Red Bourbon, commonly referred to simply as Bourbon, produces coffee cherries that turn wine-red when ripe. Bourbon beans are relatively round in shape. When grown at high altitudes, Bourbon typically offers excellent aroma and bright acidity, with flavor characteristics similar to red wine.

Bourbon has many derived varieties, including direct variants such as Yellow Bourbon, Pink Bourbon, and Caturra.

Yellow Bourbon cherries turn yellow when ripe, unlike typical red coffee cherries. It was first discovered in Brazil in 1930 and is now primarily grown in Brazil. It is believed to have originated from a cross between red-fruited Bourbon and a yellow-fruited Typica variant known as "Amerelo de Botocatu" (discovered in São Paulo state in 1871), followed by natural mutation. Due to its lower yield and poor resistance to wind and rain, it wasn't widely cultivated. However, when grown at high altitudes, it exhibits exceptional flavor characteristics and has become more common in recent years.

For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon presents a sweet and smooth fruitiness with distinct nutty flavors, balanced and gentle acidity, minimal and clean bitterness, featuring rich chocolate and nutty notes with a bright and refreshing mouthfeel.

Pink Bourbon cherries turn pink when ripe. This is an extremely rare new variety, cultivated through crossbreeding Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon. Pink Bourbon is considered rare because maintaining this beautiful pink color is challenging - sometimes harvests yield orange Bourbon, as the final color of coffee cherries is determined by recessive genes within the pollen grains.

Among selected pollen grains for crossbreeding, there are both yellow genes leaning toward Yellow Bourbon and red genes leaning toward Red Bourbon, all of which are recessive and easily interfere with each other. This makes Pink Bourbon difficult to produce consistently. Additionally, Pink Bourbon closely resembles unripe Red Bourbon, making it difficult to distinguish and often causing them to be mixed together, further contributing to its rarity.

Pink Bourbon offers fresh floral aromas, blueberry and green grape juice sweetness, mid-palate cherry notes, and brown sugar-like sweetness in the finish. Its acidity primarily presents complex citrus and berry characteristics. It is currently mainly cultivated in Colombia and Guatemala.

Caturra Coffee Beans

Caturra is a single-gene variant of Bourbon, discovered in Brazil in 1937. It offers better production capacity and disease resistance than Bourbon, with shorter plant height that facilitates harvesting. Unfortunately, like Bourbon, it experiences biennial production cycles. Its flavor is comparable to Bourbon, but more importantly, it has excellent adaptability and doesn't require shade trees, earning it the name "Sun Coffee." It can adapt to high-density cultivation but requires more fertilization, increasing costs and resulting in low initial acceptance among coffee farmers.

With the surge in coffee prices during the 1970s, farmers increasingly switched to Caturra to increase yields. With vigorous promotion by Brazilian and Colombian authorities, results were fruitful. Farmers began comprehensive Caturra cultivation. By 1990, one million hectares of coffee cultivation areas could harvest 14 million bags of coffee beans, increasing production capacity by 60%, making Caturra highly favored by Central American countries.

Caturra is suitable for cultivation at altitudes ranging from 700 meters to 1700 meters, demonstrating strong adaptability. However, higher altitudes yield better flavor though with relatively lower production. Caturra exhibits strong fruity characteristics with prominent berry flavors.

SL28 & SL34

SL28 is one of Africa's most famous coffee varieties. It was selected, researched, and cultivated by the former Scott Agricultural Laboratories (now the National Agricultural Laboratory). This variety possesses good drought resistance, tolerates dry conditions and pests, and is suitable for cultivation at medium to high altitudes, though it is susceptible to common coffee diseases. SL28 has mixed lineage including French Mission (Bourbon), Mocha, and Yemen Typica.

SL34 was also selected and cultivated by the former Scott Agricultural Laboratories in the late 1930s. At that time, researchers selected trees prefixed with "SL" from plantations, studying their yield, quality, drought resistance, and disease resistance. SL28 and SL34 were the outstanding varieties selected from this research. SL34 is suitable for cultivation in high-altitude areas with good rainfall, though it is also susceptible to various common coffee diseases. A distinctive feature of SL34 is that most leaf tips on the plant are dark brown (research suggests selection from Typica), with only a small portion being green.

SL28 and SL34 have similar flavor profiles, but SL34 offers richer acidity and a more intense mouthfeel. However, both varieties possess unique Kenyan characteristics with abundant fruit acidity and balanced flavors.

Catuai Coffee Beans

Cataui is an Arabica hybrid variety, a cross between Mundo Novo and Caturra. It offers good resistance to natural disasters, particularly strong wind and rain resistance. It inherits Caturra's advantage of shorter plant height, addressing Mundo Novo's shortcomings. Another advantage is its firm fruit that doesn't easily drop in strong winds, remedying Arabica's vulnerability. However, its overall flavor profile is more monotonous than Caturra and lacks the body and richness of Mundo Novo, which is its greatest drawback. Additionally, its fruit cultivation and harvesting lifespan is only about ten years, making its short longevity another weakness.

After its official release in the 1970s, it was promoted to Central American countries and widely cultivated in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and its country of origin, Brazil. Considering flavor alone, under appropriate terroir conditions and processing methods, Catuai can produce quite wonderful flavors.

Geisha Coffee Beans

The Geisha variety was discovered in 1931 in the Geisha forest of Ethiopia. Later, Geisha was sent to the Coffee Research Institute in Kenya, introduced to Uganda and Tanzania in 1936, brought to Costa Rica in 1953, and introduced to Panama in 1970.

Initially, Geisha didn't receive much attention until Panama La Esmeralda (Hacienda La Esmeralda) separated it from other varieties in 2003, and it became the BOP competition champion in 2004. Only then did the Geisha variety truly enter the spotlight. Today, Geisha coffee is almost synonymous with premium coffee. Geisha coffee typically presents fragrant white floral notes, comfortable citrus acidity, and sweet honey.

Low-Acidity Coffee Recommendations

Coffee flavor depends on various factors including variety, processing method, and roast level. FrontStreet Coffee introduces several low-acidity coffees for your selection:

① FrontStreet Coffee Costa Rica Baha

Region: Canet Estate, Tarrazú region, Costa Rica

Processing: Raisin Honey Process

Altitude: 1980 meters

Varieties: Caturra, Catuai

Flavor Description: Raisin, osmanthus, sweet orange, berries, pineapple

This Musician Series Baha bean uses the raisin honey processing method. This involves drying the whole coffee cherries in the sun for 72 hours until they reach a raisin-like state, then removing the fruit skin while preserving 100% of the mucilage for additional sun-drying. This process combines the fermented wine aroma of natural processing, the clean口感 of washed processing, and the sweetness of honey processing. Through FrontStreet Coffee's medium-light roast, it presents raisin-like sweetness with fermented wine notes.

② FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Queen Estate

Region: Mogiana region

Estate: Fazenda Rainha (Queen Estate)

Altitude: 1400-1950m

Variety: Yellow Bourbon

Processing: Natural Process

FrontStreet Coffee uses medium roast for this variety. At this roast level, Brazil Queen Estate exhibits distinct sweetness that isn't monotonous, with subtle lemon aromas in the background that are more prominent in the wet aroma phase. The finish features distinct dark chocolate flavors, creating an overall rounded sensation that embodies Brazilian characteristics while maintaining lively qualities.

③ FrontStreet Coffee Indonesia PWN Gold Mandheling

Region: Gayo Mountain, Aceh, Sumatra

Altitude: 1100-1600 meters

Variety: Ateng

Grade: G1, triple hand-sorted

Processing: Wet-Hulled Method

Gold Mandheling coffee beans come from Lake Tawa in the Gayo Mountains of northwestern Sumatra. Since discovering Mandheling, Japanese companies have shown great dedication to this coffee bean. Through cooperation with local green bean suppliers, they established strict screening standards. After processing, green beans undergo density and color sorting, followed by four rounds of manual bean selection, finally presenting Mandheling with uniform color and consistent bean shape. It is said that during green bean processing, Mandheling beans exposed to sunlight emit a golden luster, hence the name Gold Mandheling.

Gold Mandheling specifications are above 18 screen size with fewer than 3 defective beans (per 300g green bean sample), belonging to the highest G1 grade. The beans are dark green in color with uniform flat shape. After rigorous screening, FrontStreet Coffee found that not only does Gold Mandheling lack the characteristic earthy impurities of regular Mandheling, but it also offers a cleaner and brighter taste with more intense sweetness.

However, it wasn't a Japanese company that registered Gold Mandheling as a trademark, but rather the Indonesian company PWN (Pwani Coffee Company), which had early cooperation with Japanese companies for exporting Mandheling coffee beans. The Japanese company registered "Gold Top Mandheling," which means Summit Gold Mandheling. FrontStreet Coffee believes there's actually little difference in flavor performance between the two, but due to different brands and marketing strategies, public opinion may have shifted. Therefore, which of the two Gold Mandhelings is superior remains a matter of personal preference.

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