Rich and Mellow Yunnan Small Bean Coffee: Flavor Profile, Processing Methods, Quality Characteristics, and Taste Introduction

In recent years, when visiting coffee shops, you've likely heard about Yunnan small bean coffee produced in our own country. So what exactly do Yunnan small beans taste like, and which variety does "small bean" refer to? In this article, FrontStreet Coffee will help you understand this better.

What Are "Small Bean" Coffees?

Yunnan small bean coffee is also known as Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.). In the 1950s, the dominant varieties in Baoshan, Yunnan were Typica, Bourbon, and S288. Among these, the oldest is the Typica variety, known for its pure and elegant flavor, but it has low yield and weak disease resistance, making it susceptible to blight. Consequently, Yunnan introduced the Catimor variety, which can be densely planted and has strong disease resistance, becoming the most widely planted coffee variety in the Yunnan region today. Therefore, when we often mention "Yunnan small beans," we're actually referring more to Yunnan's Catimor coffee beans.

In 1959, Portuguese scientists developed and created a small-stature coffee plant resistant to diseases and pests, which could also grow well in low-altitude areas and achieve high yields. In other words, Catimor was cultivated as a "commercial bean." Although Catimor has achieved commercial value to some extent, its cupping quality is often questioned, meaning it has flavor defects. Therefore, Catimor has been largely overlooked, and some producers are unwilling to label it as Catimor.

What Causes Catimor's Drawbacks?

Catimor is a hybrid descendant of Caturra and Timor. Caturra is a highly regarded natural mutation of the Bourbon variety, often appearing as a "regular" in various specialty coffee competitions. For example, among FrontStreet Coffee's house-roasted coffee beans, dozens of varieties use Caturra. Timor belongs to the natural cross-species of Robusta and Arabica, discovered in the early 1900s on Timor Island in Southeast Asia. Robusta is notoriously known for its unappealing taste, characterized by heavy bitterness and intensity, but it possesses super high disease resistance, is cold and heat tolerant, and has high yields. Therefore, Catimor also inherits some of these characteristics: higher survival rates, fruit setting rates, short maturity periods, naturally making it more favored by coffee farmers and producers.

In the past, Yunnan coffee farmers didn't accumulate much mature experience in coffee cultivation, planting Catimor at lower altitudes, combined with rough processing methods, resulting in mediocre coffee quality that was mostly acquired for commercial instant coffee. With the popularization of specialty coffee culture in China, many coffee professionals and researchers began investing in Yunnan's growing regions, continuously improving coffee quality in areas such as coffee disease and pest prevention, shade trees, soil and water conservation, planting altitudes, and cherry picking and processing methods. Today, Yunnan Catimor coffee produced using professional techniques can also present good aroma and cleanliness.

What Does Washed Yunnan Small Bean Coffee Taste Like?

When launching Yunnan coffee as a daily drinker bean, FrontStreet Coffee conducted multiple cupping comparisons and selected washed Catimor coffee from the Baoshan region as Yunnan coffee's representative, launching it in 100-gram small packages to let everyone experience the "taste of Yunnan." FrontStreet Coffee finds this Yunnan daily drinker bean has a relatively balanced mouthfeel, with a hint of nutty flavor and some plum fruit aroma, along with brown sugar-like sweetness, making it overall quite gentle.

The Washing Process Steps:

Use machines to remove the skin and pulp from harvested coffee cherries, place the peeled coffee beans into fermentation tanks for fermentation, use fermentation to decompose the mucilage layer, wash the fermented coffee beans repeatedly with clean water to remove the decomposed mucilage, and finally dry the coffee beans in the sun for 1-2 weeks. Washed Yunnan coffee not only reduces the defect rate but also produces more stable coffee quality and higher cleanliness, allowing one to better appreciate Yunnan coffee's most original flavors in the cup. This is also why FrontStreet Coffee prioritized washed processing batches when launching the "Yunnan Representative" daily drinker bean.

FrontStreet Coffee's Pour-Over Recommendations

Dripper: Hario V60
Dose: 15g
Water Temperature: 90°C
Grind Size: 75% pass-through rate on #20 sieve
Water-to-Coffee Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size and Water Temperature: Because Yunnan coffee's flavor profile is neutral and balanced, excessively high water temperature and too fine grind size can easily lead to over-extraction, releasing too many bitter, large molecular flavor compounds. Conversely, too low water temperature and too coarse grind size lead to under-extraction, making the coffee tasteless. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee chooses medium water temperature and grind size, using 90°C hot water for extraction, with coffee ground to 70% pass-through rate on Chinese standard #20 sieve, or EK43s setting 10.5 in-store.

Three-Stage Pouring: Use twice the coffee dose in water to wet the coffee bed, forming a dome and bloom for 30s, then use a small water stream to pour in circles from inside to outside until reaching 125g, wait for the coffee bed to drop to half the dripper's height, continue with the same fine water stream for the third stage to 225g, and remove the dripper once all coffee liquid has filtered through, taking about 2 minutes total.

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Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473