Rich and Mellow Blue Mountain Coffee Flavor Description Grind Characteristics Variety Region Introduction

FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain coffee contains remarkably little caffeine, less than half that of most other coffees, which sits comfortably with modern ideas about drinking well. Yet the same coffee variety, grown in Hawaii, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, or anywhere else with a comparable climate, simply cannot produce the flavor of Blue Mountain beans.

FrontStreet Coffee's pure Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee fuses the acidity, bitterness, sweetness, and body of coffee into a single seamless whole, producing an elegant, deeply alluring aroma that nothing else can match.

People who love it put the matter plainly: "It is the beauty of coffee, gathering every virtue a good cup can have."

Jim, general manager of the American coffee-and-tea house Peet's Coffee & Tea, described it this way: "Its aroma is fragrant, smooth, and rich, giving me a feeling as precious as holding a gem." Because its flavor is so moderate and so complete, Blue Mountain is almost always drunk black.

"The liquid looks golden in sunlight, and it drinks very smoothly. Coffee books say Blue Mountain is the only coffee in the world that combines acidity and bitterness in a way people actually enjoy. You will understand once you drink it."

FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain carries every hallmark of a fine coffee. It is rich and mellow, and because sweetness, acidity, and bitterness are so perfectly balanced, it shows no harsh bitterness at all, only a moderate and complete acidity. It is normally served as a single-origin coffee, but with production this limited and prices this high, the market generally turns to coffees of similar flavor as substitutes.

Authentic FrontStreet Coffee Blue Mountain is made from the finest local green beans, and that is precisely where a connoisseur's pleasure lies. The cup is rich, balanced, and fruity with a clean acidity, satisfying a wide range of preferences. High-quality fresh Blue Mountain also holds its flavor unusually long, leaving, as wine lovers would say, an endless aftertaste.

The finest Blue Mountain beans are No. 1 peaberry, also called pearl beans: carefully selected small round beans taken from crops grown at 2,100 meters altitude, the finest of the finest.

Flavor Profile

• Flavor: Very intense aroma with persistent fruitiness
• Bean Size: Relatively full
• Recommended Roasting: Medium roast

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the balance described above is what you are after, the clearest expression of it in the FrontStreet range is FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1. It is the highest grade in the Jamaican Blue Mountain system, and the beans come from the historic Clifton Mount Estate, where coffee has been grown and processed since the mid-eighteenth century, at an average of 4,300 feet (1,310.64 meters). Ample altitude, mild afternoon cloud that shades the hillsides, generous sunlight, and mineral-rich soil give the trees excellent growing conditions and stretch out the ripening of the cherries.

The beans are roasted to a medium-dark level, which is what draws out the thick, rounded body and the traditional sweet-after-bitterness character of classic Blue Mountain. In the cup you will find hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel in a clean, layered harmony, with no single note pushing ahead of the others.

FrontStreet Blue Mountain is shipped within five days of roasting, so the beans arrive at full flavor and can be brewed straight away; resting them four to seven days from the roast date gives the best results. FrontStreet recommends a Kono dripper, 15g of coffee per person, a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, 87-88 degrees Celsius, and a grind about as coarse as granulated sugar. Pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, pour to 120g, then pour to 225g, keeping the stream vertical and the circles small and slow in the middle stage and slightly quicker at the end so the bed does not clog and over-extract. The result is a very clean, complex, gentle cup with chocolate sweetness and a long fruit finish.