Yunnan Coffee Bean Varieties, History of Yunnan Coffee Regions, FrontStreet Coffee 2013 Small Bean Coffee Flavor Characteristics

Yunnan coffee beans have stood out in recent coffee green bean competitions, frequently appearing in the public eye. Yunnan small-grain coffee should not be underestimated. In recent years, Yunnan coffee has gradually emerged in the specialty coffee market like a dark horse. Today, I'll share with you the development of Yunnan coffee in recent years.

The Planting History of Yunnan Coffee

It should be known that Yunnan's coffee cultivation has a history of nearly a hundred years. A hundred years ago, Yunnan's coffee varieties were not the ubiquitous Catimor varieties of today, but Typica varieties. This variety had two periods of development in Yunnan. In 1904, French Catholic missionary Alfred Tienne entered the Dali region of Yunnan via Vietnam to preach, established a church in Zhukula Village, and planted a batch of Typica coffee trees nearby. Subsequently, Yunnan coffee cultivation would welcome three waves of development. This Typica is what we often call Arabica small-grain variety, which is the original origin of Yunnan small-grain coffee.

The first wave of development was in the 1960s, when in order to repay Soviet loans, coffee was planted by Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation, with products purchased by the national foreign trade department. At that time, coffee cultivation was distributed across several agricultural reclamation farms: Baoshan Lujiang Farm, Xincheng Youth Farm, Dehong Zhefang Farm, Ruili Farm, Wanding Farm, Wenshan Babu Farm, and Tianbao Farm. The varieties were locally propagated Typica and Bourbon variants. The entire coffee cultivation area of agricultural reclamation had reached 50,000 mu. Afterwards, due to the completion of repayment work, the foreign trade department no longer actively purchased, and at the same time, due to infection and spread of leaf rust disease, which caused large-scale deaths and to prevent the crazy spread of the disease, trees were cut down, once reducing the cultivation area to less than 3,000 mu.

The second wave of development was in the 1980s during the Reform and Opening Up period. In 1988, Nestlé decided to support the development of Yunnan's coffee industry, introducing Catimor varieties for widespread cultivation in Yunnan. It was also because of this development that Catimor coffee varieties replaced the status of the ancient Typica trees, becoming the main tree species of Yunnan coffee, accounting for 99% of Yunnan's coffee production. Catimor is a hybrid variety, which can also be classified as Arabica.

The third wave of development was after 2000, when China's economy took off, and China introduced the concept of specialty coffee. At the same time, scientific development was carried out for the selection and cultivation of Yunnan coffee. Currently, the journey of Yunnan coffee toward specialty status is still ongoing.

Why Has Yunnan Coffee Emphasized Processing Methods in Recent Years?

Although Yunnan is located within the coffee cultivation zone suitable for coffee production, most altitudes are around 1000m, which is the qualified standard for planting high-quality Arabica coffee. Not all of Yunnan is suitable for coffee cultivation—only Baoshan, Lincang, Simao, and Dehong in southern Yunnan are suitable for coffee cultivation. With the popularity of specialty coffee in recent years, Yunnan, as a representative producing region, certainly cannot be absent. However, you will find that Yunnan coffee seems to place more emphasis on processing methods rather than varieties. When we discuss other producing regions, we instead start from origin, variety, and then processing method.

When specialty coffee was first proposed, China did not pay attention to coffee development. By the 1980s, under the guidance of coffee giant Nestlé, Yunnan began planting the higher-yielding, more disease-resistant Catimor variety. With Nestlé's support, the coffee harvested by Yunnan's coffee farmers would be purchased by Nestlé at reasonable prices and used as raw material for instant coffee. When our economy developed rapidly, developed regions introduced the concept of specialty coffee, while Yunnan maintained a farming-focused mindset with yield as the primary goal. Generally, high-yield coffee does not have very good quality.

Today, Yunnan's coffee development is at a stage where there are already large areas of Catimor coffee trees, and we are well aware that these were originally raw coffee beans supplied to Nestlé, and it's impossible for them to suddenly leap to specialty coffee status. Therefore, Yunnan's specialty coffee development has split into two paths. One is to use existing beans, emulating Colombia, utilizing new processing methods to change the coffee's flavor, making it rely on processing methods to form flavor characteristics. Here, you will see a peculiar phenomenon—sometimes a barista seems reluctant to mention special processing methods, but after a while, when they recommend Yunnan coffee, they mostly recommend specially processed Yunnan beans. The second path is to start from scratch, selecting suitable locations, planting excellent coffee varieties, adopting scientific cultivation management, and step by step cultivating high-quality Yunnan coffee.

In 2011, Yunnan coffee reached historically high prices. Even when international coffee futures continued to reach new highs in 2022, they still did not reach that price level. Many Yunnan coffee farmers began replanting coffee that year, but prices quickly fell into a trough again—this is the pattern of agriculture.

Therefore, even with the rise of specialty coffee today, they are unwilling to spend 5 years replacing the original Catimor varieties. Those who still grow coffee would rather customize processing methods for current coffee beans. If you want natural process, they'll give you natural process; if you want anaerobic, they'll give you anaerobic—it only takes a month. However, starting from the basics—from variety, to washing methods, to determining the traditional route of good flavor—requires at least 5 years or more. Moreover, when you first plant, how can you guarantee that what you plant today will yield good results when it flowers and bears fruit 5 years later?

FrontStreet Coffee, facing these two paths, chose the longer latter.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Planting Exploration Journey

Many people's impression of FrontStreet Coffee is "a warm small shop with its own roasting." This year is the eleventh year of FrontStreet Coffee, but many people don't know that FrontStreet Coffee's coffee cultivation actually started half a year earlier than roasting. The predecessor of FrontStreet Coffee was "Dazhen Coffee" (Big Town Coffee). This name was chosen because in 2013, we wanted to grow coffee in a place called Dazhen in Guangdong. When we used Catimor to grow seedlings to 20cm, more than half a year had passed before we finally understood: the relationship and sequence of variety, altitude, and processing method.

Choosing the right variety, planting it at appropriate altitudes, and after maturity, experimenting with processing methods that can express unique flavors—this is FrontStreet Coffee's belief in the only logical relationship for specialty coffee to have distinct regional flavors.

Therefore, we gave up the plan to grow coffee in Guangdong. Because the initial coffee roasting place opened on Bao'an Front Street, we renamed "Dazhen Coffee" to "FrontStreet Coffee." At FrontStreet Coffee, while roasting coffee, we continued to move forward with our ideas of specialty coffee cultivation, successively visiting the Tropical Agricultural Science Research Institute (which has in-depth research on coffee cultivation and the Ministry of Agriculture's coffee germplasm repository), and a few coffee farmers who planted specialty coffee. We clarified the reasons why Yunnan does not plant mainstream specialty coffee varieties like Typica and Bourbon, and by chance, we found suitable land for cultivation in Yunnan's main coffee-producing areas.

Arabica coffee bean varieties have requirements for cultivation altitude—they need to be above 1000 meters. For better flavors, the cultivation altitude needs to be higher. However, the average altitude of Yunnan's mountains is only at the qualified line, which is also a disadvantage of Yunnan coffee. To compensate for the altitude disadvantage, with good coffee varieties as a prerequisite, more excellent agronomic management is needed.

FrontStreet Coffee did not purchase existing coffee manors with Catimor for direct harvesting and processing. Instead, we purchased a mountain area suitable for coffee cultivation, starting from the varieties. Even if the land is good, if we talk about most specialty coffees and say that the foundation of specialty coffee is origin, variety, altitude, and processing method, but when we want to do well with Yunnan, we ignore these points—it's actually difficult to achieve specialty flavors. Choosing a path of growing coffee from scratch was actually a helpless choice. When we planted, we didn't know if it would be a good result several years later, but at least we did the basic points of specialty coffee. After all, historical conclusions have chosen Arabica's Typica, Bourbon, and Geisha.

The main Yunnan coffee variety planted by FrontStreet Coffee is Typica, which is the Arabica variety with excellent flavor in coffee, to record this long Yunnan specialty coffee experiment. At the same time, Typica yield is very low, only one-third of Catimor's yield, which is why it is more expensive. At the same time, Typica and Bourbon are also very susceptible to leaf rust disease, which is one of the biggest reasons why farmers are unwilling to plant what they call old varieties like Typica.

Yunnan has no four seasons, only dry and rainy seasons, and most coffee-producing areas have similar situations. This is also the fundamental reason why some producing areas use natural processing methods. Entering June marks the beginning of the rainy season in the producing areas. The next three to four months will be rainy, which is the most favorable period for coffee cultivation. Only by planting seedlings at this time, with several months of nourishment from rainwater, can they develop well-developed root systems to survive the first dry season lasting half a year.

Starting coffee cultivation from scratch is also a matter with high time costs. Coffee takes three to four years from seedling to first fruiting, and then experimenting with suitable processing methods and finally reproducing them—it takes at least five years to get the first batch of coffee. No one can guarantee that high-quality specialty coffee will be produced immediately. FrontStreet Coffee firmly believes that there are no such easy things in this world. After multiple variety selections and post-harvest refined processing experiments, several more years have passed.

After 7 years, FrontStreet Coffee finally presented a report card that could be shown to people. This batch was only a small 200 kilograms of Typica coffee beans, processed using natural method, to record the journey of these years, so this batch of coffee beans was named "FrontStreet Coffee 2013" and sold in the store. For this cup of coffee, we used 8 years.

How Does This Batch of FrontStreet Coffee's Self-Produced Coffee Beans Taste?

Dripper: V60

Water Temperature: 88°C

Dose: 15 grams

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size: Fine sugar granules (Chinese standard #20 sieve, 80% pass-through)

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Method: Segmented extraction. Use 30g of water for blooming for 30 seconds. When pouring small circular水流 to 124g, segment. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 227g and stop pouring. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, remove the dripper. (Timing starts from blooming) Extraction time is 2 minutes.

Taste Description: FrontStreet Coffee 2013 Yunnan Natural Typica coffee also has nutty notes, with a more solid texture than FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yunnan coffee. The acidity is slightly lower than FrontStreet Coffee's washed Typica Yunnan coffee, but the sweetness is slightly higher, with better balance. Berry-like acidity, mixed with brown sugar, and a slight tea-like sensation.

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: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473