Yunnan Small Bean Coffee Brewing Methods: Flavor, Quality Characteristics, Grind Settings & Processing Guide

Have you ever wondered what Yunnan coffee tastes like? At FrontStreet Coffee, we believe Yunnan coffee features a rich bitterness, moderate acidity, and a sweet finish, creating a balanced and harmonious profile. Let's explore what creates these distinctive flavor characteristics in Yunnan coffee.

What variety is Yunnan small-bean coffee?

The term "small-bean coffee" is used to distinguish it from the medium-bean Robusta variety grown in China's Hainan region. In essence, like many coffee-producing regions, Yunnan coffee belongs to the Arabica variety.

Before the 1960s, Yunnan primarily cultivated Typica and Bourbon, both small-bean varieties. Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, major coffee-producing regions worldwide suffered from leaf rust disease, and coffee growers everywhere began seeking solutions. In 1990, driven by the multinational corporation Nestlé, Yunnan introduced the Catimor variety from Central and South America, which offered better disease resistance and higher yields, to replace the "unprofitable" Typica coffee trees. Catimor began large-scale cultivation in Yunnan, with continuously increasing production breakthroughs. However, its flavor profile was not exceptional, and the green bean processing techniques of Yunnan farmers at that time were not sophisticated enough. As a result, coffee batches were often sold at low prices, becoming ingredients for commercial blends or instant coffee.

Catimor is a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta species. Robusta offers excellent leaf rust resistance, rich oils, high yields, and easy cultivation. After hybridizing with Arabica Typica, Catimor acquired 25% Robusta genes. This improved its leaf rust resistance while preserving rich oils, and it also retained some of the complex flavors of the original Typica variety. Consequently, most Yunnan estates began large-scale Catimor cultivation. FrontStreet Coffee believes that Catimor grown in Yunnan exhibits nut, brown sugar, and plum-like flavors, though its overall cleanliness is not as excellent as the Typica variety.

Where is Yunnan small-bean coffee grown?

Currently, coffee cultivation in Yunnan Province spans 9 prefectures and 35 counties, including Pu'er City, Baoshan City, Dehong Prefecture, Lincang City, Wenshan Prefecture, and Xishuangbanna. The Yunnan coffee on FrontStreet Coffee's bean menu is selected from the Baoshan and Lincang regions.

Baoshan's year-round frost-free warm climate is ideal for growing small-bean coffee. Particularly in the Lujiang Dam area, the unique dry-hot valley climate shows little temperature variation throughout the year but significant day-night temperature differences, creating the distinctive sweet aftertaste of Baoshan small-bean coffee. Additionally, the reasonably low rainfall provides excellent conditions for coffee cherry development. Baoshan is one of Yunnan's larger and earlier coffee-producing regions. Compared to farms in Pu'er, Menglian, and other regions, Baoshan's most distinctive climatic feature is relatively low precipitation and higher altitudes. As a result, most Baoshan coffee beans have less pulp but higher sweetness. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee selected Baoshan small-bean coffee as the representative of Yunnan coffee, allowing everyone to savor the taste of domestic coffee.

Yunnan's Lincang region is influenced by warm, moist air currents from the Indian Ocean and southwest monsoons. The distinction between seasons is not obvious, but there are clear wet and dry seasons. With abundant rainfall, long sunshine hours, short frost periods, and some areas being frost-free year-round, the region's three-dimensional climate is pronounced and ideal for Arabica coffee cultivation. FrontStreet Coffee specifically selected the original Typica variety. Typica offers rich and diverse flavors, presenting various fruit acids and delicate textures, making it a recognized premium variety. The world-renowned Blue Mountain coffee and Hawaiian Kona coffee both belong to the Typica family.

Naturally processed Yunnan coffee beans

Some merchants use novel flavor-enhancing processing methods to mask the inherent flaws in Yunnan beans while adding artificial flavors to increase prices. FrontStreet Coffee believes this approach neither authentically preserves the true taste of Yunnan coffee nor properly informs consumers. Some friends, after tasting Yunnan coffee beans processed with special methods, notice their prominent aromas and mistakenly believe this represents mainstream processing techniques in Yunnan. In reality, most Yunnan coffee farmers face challenging conditions and lack expensive processing equipment. Therefore, the vast majority of Yunnan coffee beans can only use natural processing methods, namely washed and natural processing.

If you truly want to explore the "taste of Yunnan," FrontStreet Coffee recommends our Yunnan small-bean daily coffee, which uses washed processing. FrontStreet Coffee's daily coffee selection features 7 classic origins, covering multiple representative regions and varieties, using naturally traditional processing methods to showcase the distinctive flavor profiles of each origin.

The washed process involves: Using machines to remove the skin and pulp from harvested coffee cherries, placing the de-pulped coffee beans in fermentation tanks to ferment, using fermentation to break down the mucilage layer, thoroughly washing the fermented beans with clean water to remove the decomposed mucilage, and finally drying the beans for 1-2 weeks. Washed Yunnan coffee not only reduces defect rates and provides more stable quality but also enhances the flavor cleanliness.

FrontStreet Coffee also offers a coffee bean processed using natural sun-drying methods: "FrontStreet Coffee 2013," produced at FrontStreet Coffee's own estate in Lincang, Yunnan. We selected the elegant-flavored Typica variety, processed using natural sun-drying methods. When November arrives, the coffee cherries grown by FrontStreet Coffee ripen successively. FrontStreet Coffee arranges for workers to hand-pick each red coffee cherry individually, then spreads the fresh cherries under the sun to dry naturally. The cherries are periodically turned to ensure even dehydration and avoid over-fermentation. Sun-dried Yunnan coffee has more fruity fermentation notes than washed coffee, presenting higher sweetness in the cup.

Brewing FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan small-bean coffee

Some friends who purchase roasted Yunnan small-bean coffee beans may not know how to extract them properly. First, FrontStreet Coffee believes that coffee bean freshness is crucial. Since roasted coffee beans have an optimal tasting period, once the aroma peak passes, the flavors become difficult to extract. The beans FrontStreet Coffee ships are freshly roasted within 5 days, aiming to ensure that everyone can enjoy the complete optimal tasting period.

FrontStreet Coffee's pour-over parameters:

• Filter: Hario V60
• Dose: 15g
• Water temperature: 90°C
• Grind size: 75% pass-through rate on #20 sieve
• Water-to-coffee ratio: 1:15

Filter choice:

FrontStreet Coffee believes Yunnan coffee should present rich aromas and diverse flavor layers. FrontStreet Coffee's baristas use plastic V60 drippers. The V60 dripper features flow ribs connecting the top and bottom with a large central hole, which accelerates water flow. The spiral-shaped air channel design lengthens the water path, increasing contact time between coffee grounds and hot water. Each water stream flows along the grooves toward the center point, concentrating pressure on the coffee grounds and extracting coffee with richer layering.

Grind size and water temperature:

Because Yunnan coffee's flavor profile is balanced and harmonious, excessively high water temperature and too fine a grind can easily lead to over-extraction, releasing too many bitter, large molecular flavor compounds. Conversely, too low water temperature and too coarse a grind result in under-extraction, making the coffee taste weak. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee chooses moderate water temperature and grind size: 90°C hot water for extraction, with coffee grounds sized to achieve 70% pass-through rate on China's standard #20 sieve (store setting: EK43s - setting 10.5).

Three-stage pouring:

Wet the coffee bed with twice the amount of water as the coffee dose, creating a dome and letting it bloom for 30 seconds. Then, using a small water stream, pour in concentric circles from inside out to 125g, pausing when the water level drops to half the dripper. Continue with the same fine water stream for the third stage to 225g, until all coffee liquid has filtered through, then remove the dripper. Total time should be approximately 2 minutes.

FrontStreet Coffee Yunnan small-bean daily coffee flavor:

The aroma presents prominent nutty scents. The entry reveals herbal, chocolate, and caramel notes, with a hint of light fruit acidity in the aftertaste. The overall cup is balanced with good cleanliness.

FrontStreet Coffee 2013 Natural Typica flavor:

The dry grounds present caramel, nut, and citrus aromas. At high temperature, the cup shows chocolate, fermentation notes, and berries. As the temperature decreases, plum acidity emerges, with black tea and sugarcane sweetness in the finish. Medium to high body, clear texture, with rich and varied layers.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee's private WeChat account: qjcoffeex

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473