Yunnan Premium Coffee Beans: Flavor Profile and Characteristics of Washed Process Catimor Coffee Varieties

The True Flavor Profile of Yunnan Coffee

How does Yunnan small-bean coffee actually taste? Many coffee drinkers are familiar with Yunnan coffee and increasingly appreciate it, but most haven't delved deeper into understanding Yunnan coffee or its current state. At FrontStreet Coffee, you'll find two Yunnan coffee bean varieties: one is FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Huaguoshan (Typica variety), and the other is FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan small-bean coffee (Catimor variety). At FrontStreet Coffee, Yunnan Typica is labeled as Yunnan specialty coffee, while Yunnan Catimor coffee beans are correspondingly labeled as Yunnan small-bean coffee according to market customs.

FrontStreet Coffee roasts both Yunnan coffees to medium roast because the Yunnan growing region is not known for acidity, and the coffee bean flavors are quite balanced, with base notes of nuts and brown sugar. FrontStreet Coffee chooses medium roast to showcase the balanced flavor of Yunnan coffee beans, along with nutty and brown sugar sweetness and gentle fruit acidity.

When discussing Yunnan coffee beans, there are often two statements that can terminate variety discussions: one is "thanks to the efforts of coffee farmers and improved technology, today's Yunnan coffee beans are quite good," and the second is "Yunnan beans are pretty good." These two have become classic comments about Yunnan coffee, making it impossible to continue discussion. Yunnan small-bean originally got its name from Typica, because Typica is indeed Arabica small-bean variety, but times have changed - Typica variety degenerated with low yield and was replaced by Catimor coffee beans, yet the name "small-bean coffee" was surprisingly inherited by Catimor coffee beans.

Mr. Zuo Yuanfan is one of the few farmers still growing Typica, though only about 70 acres. Typica planting density is lower than Catimor's 330 plants, calculating to about 5-7 tons of green beans production. Seesaw's Yunnan Geisha is commissioned through cooperation with Mr. Fan's newly developed small mountain forest area. Before FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan beans were produced, the Yunnan coffee used was Mr. Fan's Typica. FrontStreet Coffee used over 20,000 seeds provided from Mr. Fan's mountain in some plots. After a few years, this bean won the 2019 Yunnan Green Bean Competition championship, and he also sold the coffee beans to Starbucks - but that's another story.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan coffee bean plantation mainly grows Typica and a small amount of Bourbon. Yunnan coffee varieties are dominated by the hybrid Catimor coffee bean with Robusta genes, quite different from major coffee growing regions that primarily use traditional Typica. In domestic Yunnan green bean competitions, Catimor consistently takes the top ten spots, while the undisputed quality Arabica varieties are nowhere to be seen because too few people grow them. This gives people the impression that Yunnan Catimor should not be underestimated. Ted Lingle, senior advisor at America's CQI, said that when Yunnan Catimor is grown at high altitudes above 1500 meters, it can enhance aroma and body, and with appropriate post-processing, the flavor brilliance of coffee beans won't lose to traditional old varieties. The notion that "Yunnan coffee isn't bad" spread under this background.

Misguided Development Approaches

This may be a misguided approach that's heading further in the wrong direction. Catimor coffee beans and Typica coffee beans are not inherently in conflict - one is raw material, the other is specialty coffee. The significance of specialty coffee is to improve quality, while the significance of raw material is to increase yield. Inevitably, Yunnan will be dominated by Catimor. But confusing the two表面上似乎解决了云南咖啡的出路问题，实际上咖啡就还是那些咖啡，品种海拔没有发生改变，只提后制处理法就强调品质在提高有点牵强。以解决目前两百万种植面积咖啡出路为由头，引导咖啡果摘下来以后强调处理法就贴上好咖啡的标签过于简单粗暴，拔高这种评价的人并没有多少真正了解云南咖啡，从种植者的角度出发，鼓励和支持从品种海拔开始对精品咖啡规则的基本遵从，这或者才是对云南咖啡产区健康持续发展的另一种尝试，一个产区都是精品咖啡，很难，但要有，当水洗法好喝且每年能呈现主风味的时候，才是云南精品咖啡的开始。

Initially, most people's impression of Yunnan was like this, and so was FrontStreet Coffee's. Later it became like this...

In 2015, FrontStreet Coffee processing freshly picked coffee seeds at the plantation

2015: FrontStreet Coffee's plantation coffee seeds sprouting in sand beds

Growing under shade nets

It takes one year to grow into seedlings ready for planting, because Yunnan has a dry season for half the year

One year later, beginning to prepare the planting plots.

Freshly dug coffee planting pits in the forest

FrontStreet Coffee's coffee seedlings planted in the forest

Planting plots in the forest

Plots by the forest, where FrontStreet Coffee divides them into 5 different growing areas based on altitude and environment

Then, we could only wait for them to slowly grow...

FrontStreet Coffee plantation

FrontStreet Coffee plantation

FrontStreet Coffee plantation, several years passed and they began to flower

The following photo shows Catimor planted by farmers near FrontStreet Coffee's plantation in earlier years - very high yield.

After looking at this Typica photo below, you'll understand why Typica is more expensive than Catimor coffee beans - so few, how could it not be expensive?

Washed processing represents the basic flavor of a growing region. From seed to bean, FrontStreet Coffee took 5 years for these photos.

Before this, FrontStreet Coffee spent two years finding suitable environments and altitudes for the plantation.

So, you'll understand why people are unwilling to change varieties and start growing Yunnan coffee from scratch.

Sometimes life is like this - when impressions still linger that FrontStreet Coffee only roasts coffee, that's actually not the case. A few years ago, a short video was added to the product descriptions on FrontStreet Coffee's Taobao store. The first second of that scene comes from FrontStreet Coffee's coffee plantation deep in the mountains of the Golden Triangle on the China-Myanmar border.

Debunking Myths About Yunnan Coffee

To understand Yunnan small-bean coffee, let's examine the facts behind these common rumors:

1. Despite many domestic Q-graders giving high scores to Yunnan green beans in competitions, these scores actually cannot be found on the official CQI website.

2. Despite persistent rumors that Catimor was sent to America for scoring and received high marks (this should also refer to the CQI official website), historical scores similarly cannot be found. The system only has records of two green bean samples from 2016, scoring 61 and 81.5 points respectively, submitted by YCE.

3. Despite rumors that the industry has long given specialty scores to Robusta beans, the fact is that India uses SCA's R version for Robusta scoring - this is an independent scoring system specific to Robusta, not including Robusta in specialty coffee scoring.

4. There are claims that besides Catimor coffee beans, Yunnan also grows Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, and other varieties. While it's true that multiple varieties are planted, this deliberately ignores the fact that Catimor coffee beans occupy 99.9% of the planting area.

Without variety improvement, the claim that Yunnan coffee quality has greatly improved in recent years thanks to effort and technological advancement is, in fact, as mentioned earlier - changing processing methods without changing varieties makes current Yunnan Catimor coffee beans better than previous Yunnan Catimor, but from the perspective of Yunnan specialty coffee as a whole, there hasn't been any fundamental change. This is why even with many more high-scoring beans from Q-graders, the growing region can still only sell at commercial coffee raw material prices. When asked about specific reasons, most will vaguely brush it off, and no one can clearly explain what real efforts have been made.

If you seriously examine the Yunnan green bean competition rankings in recent years, many winners are growers named "Meng x" - "Meng" comes from the Dai language meaning village, so Dai villages all start with "Meng" as place names. The Dai people have a characteristic of preferring to live in low-lying areas they call "bazi" (basins), which are relatively flat and suitable for growing vegetables, rice, rubber, and bananas as main industries. Historically, after conflicts with the Dai people, many other ethnic minorities ran to the mountains. Besides variety, altitude is another important factor in coffee quality. Finding good coffee in the basins indicates that Yunnan mountain coffee potential is still very large.

Catimor can become excellent raw material for instant coffee and blending beans. Getting domestic Q-graders to give Catimor overly high scores through post-processing methods early on will not put Yunnan coffee on the fast track to specialty coffee. Catimor coffee bean is a high-generation variety with medium dwarf plants, vigorous growth, stable secondary characteristics, bright green terminal buds and young leaves, dark green overall leaf color, columnar plant shape, short internodes, many branches, vigorous growth, wide adaptability, strong drought resistance, and certain cold resistance. Under medium management levels, with 330 plants per mu calculation, yield is 200-300 kg - 3 times that of Typica. Farmers have no reason not to plant Catimor, and changing varieties takes too long for them. This is why current Yunnan coffee focuses on post-processing methods. As for whether this is good for Yunnan coffee, looking at the actual trading prices of Yunnan coffee general goods in recent years should be a good reference.

Reference Materials:

Catimor: Currently an important commercial variety. East Timor was colonized by Portugal for four hundred years, and the Portuguese had long exposure to East Timor's coffee trees. In 1959, the Portuguese moved Brazil's Bourbon mutant Caturra to East Timon to hybridize with Timor, which has Robusta bloodline, successfully cultivating Catimor with strong disease resistance and productivity. From 1970 to 1990, leaf rust plagued global coffee-producing countries. With international organization assistance, various producing countries vigorously promoted Catimor to resist leaf rust and increase productivity. However, while Catimor inherited Robusta's strong disease resistance advantage, it also inherited the gene for poor flavor. Additionally, early Catimor had high yields but required shade trees, otherwise it would easily wilt - seemingly strong but actually weak.

For decades, many botanists have researched Catimor variety improvement, cultivating dozens of new varieties. Colombia is the largest producer, cultivating sun-grown Catimor in 1982 and naming it "Colombia" after the country. Colombia claims that after multi-generational cross-breeding, [Colombia] differs from general Catimor and has become one of the country's two main varieties alongside Caturra, long replacing the weak, low-yield Typica. However, most [COE] winners in Colombia are Caturra, with Robusta-blooded [Colombia] rarely winning awards. Colombia's mass-exported [Supermo] commercial beans should be lower-altitude [Colombia] or Caturra, not traditional Typica - this is the main reason why [Supermo] flavor becomes increasingly bland, but Colombia cannot re-cultivate low-yield Typica.

To improve Catimor's (Catimor, Katimo, Catimor) poor cupping reputation, botanists from various countries in recent years have returned to cross-breeding Arabica with Catimor across multiple generations, attempting to reduce Robusta bloodline while enhancing Arabica's elegant flavor, thus cultivating new-generation Catimor including [CatimorH528], [CatimorH306], as well as Costa Rica's [CatimorT5175], [CatimorT8667]. However, Costa Rica has abandoned Catimor cultivation, focusing on Caturra varieties and exporting improved Catimor to Asian producing countries. Catimor lines are too numerous to count, with different cupping results and habits for each line. Although improvement has been going on for years, Catimor has still not broken into the top 30 of international cupping competitions. Catimor's biggest fatal flaw is that it's not inferior when cupped alongside low-altitude Caturra, Catuai, or Bourbon beans, but its cupping results are obviously inferior to Bourbon, Catuai, or Caturra when planted at high altitudes. Whether Catimor can ascend to the elite ranks remains to be seen. We hope that one day a super Catimor suitable for high altitudes can be developed, shocking the specialty coffee world. The coffee beans on the market are fragrant and charming, but green coffee beans are completely tasteless - they need high-temperature roasting to cause sugar browning and produce special aromas, so roasting can be said to be the most important factor affecting coffee bean aroma. Roasted coffee beans expand in volume by about 30% and lose 18% to 25% in weight. Han Huaizong mentions in his specialty coffee studies that Catimor coffee beans, due to Robusta genes, always have a bit of "devil's aftertaste" in the finish, making them more suitable for medium to dark roasts.

Traditional Arabica coffee trees are not easy to grow, with low yield and susceptibility to disease - these two points are the main reasons Yunnan replaced old varieties (Typica, Bourbon) with Catimor. You must understand that Yunnan coffee's main customer at that time was Nestlé, a producer of instant coffee. Arabica is mostly grown on high-altitude slopes and also requires manual harvesting. But it wins in balanced flavor and lower caffeine content. Robusta varieties are easier to grow - heat-resistant, cold-resistant, moisture-resistant, drought-resistant, and disease-resistant. Once, Vietnam's coffee trees all died due to leaf rust attacks, so they switched to Robusta varieties, making Vietnam unexpectedly the largest producer of Robusta. The Hainan coffee I want is mostly exported from Vietnam under the name of Hainan coffee. Robusta varieties are also easier to harvest - besides manual labor, shaking machines can also do the job. This variety seems to have all advantages, but the fatal flaw is that the produced coffee beans have poor aroma, sufficient bitterness but insufficient acidity, and very high caffeine content, so they're mostly used for instant coffee.

Coffee is a short-day plant. Coffee has the characteristic of multiple flowering and concentrated flowering periods. Small-bean coffee in Yunnan flowers from February to July, with peak flowering from March to May. Coffee flowering is greatly influenced by climate, especially rainfall and temperature. Coffee flowers have short lifespans, lasting only 2-3 days. Small-bean coffee generally begins to bloom between 3-5 AM and fully blooms between 5-7 AM.

Coffee fruit development takes a long time. Small-bean coffee fruit takes 8-10 months to mature, generally maturing from October to December of the same year. Rainfall greatly affects fruit development, and climate conditions directly affect fruit growth. Catimor has 3846 seeds per kilogram after 2 months of cooling and drying, and about 5000 seeds after 5 months of cooling and drying. Within two months after seed production, the germination rate is above 95%, within three months it's 85%, after three months germination weakens, and after six months most seeds lose germination ability. Resistance to leaf rust shows as sub-immune or extremely resistant type. Its plant form is compact, with certain inhibitory effect on longhorn beetles that mostly lay eggs in exposed trunk and branch parts. It has high yield, no prominent alternate bearing phenomenon, excellent quality, and has been the main cultivated variety in coffee production since planting. Catimor CIFC7963 (F6) has been widely promoted and planted in Yunnan's coffee growing areas including Dehong, Baoshan, Pu'er, Xishuangbanna, Lincang, Wenshan, Yuxi, etc., and also in Panzhihua, Sichuan and neighboring Myanmar, with a total promotion area of over 200,000 mu.

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