Catimor Coffee Beans: Flavor Characteristics, Grind Settings, and Processing Methods Introduction

Catimor Coffee Beans: Flavor Profile, Grind Settings, and Processing Methods

Although there are increasingly many Arabica coffee varieties today, the Catimor variety has long been favored by coffee growers in Asia. There are many reasons for its popularity: cold resistance, strong disease resistance, and high yield are the primary factors. However, the disadvantages are that Catimor has a short lifespan, and its coffee flavor is not particularly rich, with a less refined mouthfeel.

Therefore, when Catimor is mentioned in specialty coffee circles, people tend to have different opinions. However, with significant improvements in coffee cultivation and post-processing methods in recent years, the flavor cleanliness of Catimor coffee has also improved, leading to a better image for Catimor in recent years.

What is Catimor Coffee?

FrontStreet Coffee has learned that, like many delicious and fascinating varieties beloved in the specialty coffee world (such as Pacamara and SL28), Catimor is a variety created in a laboratory, which is rather unromantic. On one side of its pedigree is Caturra, a natural mutation of the Bourbon variety from Brazil. On the other side is Hibrido de Timor (or "Timor Hybrid" or "Tim Tim"), which is the only known strange result of a natural mating between a Canephora (a type of Robusta) plant and an Arabica plant, occurring in the early 1900s on Timor Island in Southeast Asia.

Because of the mixed Robusta genes, some people believe that Catimor is not technically an Arabica variety. However, from the coffee growers' perspective, cash crops should require low investment but yield high production. However, as consumers have pursued better coffee flavors, greater attention has been paid to the cultivation of Catimor and the coffee bean extraction process.

Some coffee cultivation research scholars indicate that as long as Catimor is planted in high-altitude areas with mild climates and sufficient rainfall, and the surrounding environment can be kept clean during coffee processing, the astringency and unpleasant flavors inherent in the Catimor variety can be effectively reduced.

Is Yunnan Catimor Small Bean Coffee Good to Drink?

It's believed that everyone first heard about Yunnan coffee starting from the Catimor variety. Although Yunnan has a hundred-year history of coffee cultivation, it didn't originally cultivate Catimor coffee. The first coffee tree brought to Yunnan by a French missionary in 1904 was later genetically confirmed to be the Typica variety, but at that time, the coffee variety was not recorded as "Typica," instead using the morphological description of Arabica coffee fruit "small bean coffee" as the record.

Later, for a period because the country needed to repay Soviet loans, coffee farmers in Yunnan region大规模 planted Typica coffee trees. However, after repayment was completed, because there were few people in China who needed coffee, many farmers cut down coffee trees and switched to other economically beneficial crops. It wasn't until the 1990s when Nestlé took a fancy to Yunnan as a treasure land and distributed Catimor variety coffee trees that could better resist leaf rust disease that people replanted coffee trees, continuing to supply them to Nestlé.

When mainly supplying Nestlé, coffee farmers did not carefully cultivate and grow the coffee, and the entire coffee bean extraction and drying process was not very detailed, resulting in Yunnan coffee's flavor not being as desirable in the first 20 years, and it wasn't good to drink directly. Therefore, everyone's impression of Yunnan coffee was not good.

However, as more and more consumers developed demand for coffee, Yunnan coffee producers and sellers realized the need to cultivate Yunnan coffee more scientifically, and the extraction and drying process also needed to be more refined in order to make Yunnan coffee's flavor cleaner. At the same time, with the maturity of special processing techniques in recent years, people began applying special processing methods to Yunnan Catimor coffee beans, changing unpleasant flavors through external intervention, and consumers gradually accepted Yunnan coffee.

Although scientific cultivation and changes in post-processing methods have made Yunnan coffee much better tasting, FrontStreet Coffee believes that the inherently unpleasant flavors of Catimor still exist, merely masked through more scientific cultivation and post-processing methods. The significance of specialty coffee is to improve quality. If there's no change in cultivation varieties and altitude, emphasizing quality improvement solely through post-processing methods is somewhat forced and doesn't align with the meaning of specialty coffee itself.

Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee chose to establish its own plantation in 2013, starting to cultivate Typica coffee varieties. The reason for choosing Typica is firstly because as one of the oldest coffee varieties, it possesses pure Arabica variety genes. Secondly, because of its elegant and clean flavor, it has always been recognized as a specialty coffee variety.

Although until 2022, FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Typica coffee beans were not abundant, with only over 600 kilograms, enough to supply FrontStreet Coffee's Taobao store sales and FrontStreet Coffee's physical store production. But only by personally experiencing the entire process can one know the shortcomings and continuously improve. Also, because of the change in coffee variety, "FrontStreet Coffee 2013 Yunnan Typica Coffee Beans," although using traditional natural processing, exhibits very full and attractive flavor, with plum, berry, brown sugar, black tea, and nut flavors.

Although FrontStreet Coffee cultivates Yunnan Typica coffee, FrontStreet Coffee also sells a Catimor coffee bean from Yunnan's Baoshan region. As part of FrontStreet Coffee's signature daily bean series, this Yunnan small bean coffee allows everyone to taste Yunnan regional flavors at the highest cost-performance ratio. Its flavor profile features the unique plum acidity of the Yunnan region, the caramel sweetness of brown sugar, and the aroma of melons and fruits.

How to Brew Yunnan Coffee Beans for Great Taste?

All coffee beans sold by FrontStreet Coffee are shipped within five days of the roasting date, as only freshly roasted coffee beans can showcase the coffee's most wonderful flavors! To preserve the sweet-sour characteristics and tea-like qualities of Yunnan coffee, FrontStreet Coffee applies medium roasting.

FrontStreet Coffee recommends using a V60 dripper with a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, medium grind (approximately raw sugar size/75% pass-through rate with China #20 standard sieve), water temperature of 88-89°C, combined with three-stage pouring for brewing.

First pour 30g of water for 30 seconds of pre-infusion; second stage, pour in small circular motions until reaching 125g, wait until the water level in the coffee bed drops halfway before pouring again, then continue with small circular motions until reaching 225g. After complete dripping, the total extraction time should be around 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

Important Notice :

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