Yunnan coffee beans have stood out in green coffee bean competitions in recent years and have frequently appeared in the public eye. And like a dark horse, it slowly appears in the specialty coffee market. Today Front Street will share with you about the development of Yunnan coffee in recent years.The history of coffee cultivation in YunnanYou must know that coffee cultivation in Yunnan has a history of more than a hundred years. A hundred years ago, the coffee variety in Yunnan was not the Katim variety that is everywhere today, but the Typica variety. This variety has been developed twice in Yunnan. In 1904, French Catholic missionary Tian Deneng entered the Dali area of Yunnan via Vietnam to preach. He came to Zhukula Village to build a church and planted a batch of Typica coffee trees next to it. And this Typica is what we often call Arabian coffee. This is the original origin of Yunnan coffee.The first wave of development occurred in the 1960s. At that time, in order to repay loans from the Soviet Union, Yunnan Farmers planted coffee, and the products were purchased by the national foreign trade department. At that time, coffee cultivation was distributed in several reclamation farms: Baoshan Lujiang Farm, Xincheng Youth Farm, Dehong Zhefang Farm, Ruili Farm, Wanding Farm, Wenshan Babu Farm, and Tianbao Farm. The varieties are the locally bred Typica and Bourbon varieties. The entire coffee planting area of the farm has reached 50,000 acres. Later, due to the end of the repayment work, the foreign trade department no longer actively purchased. At the same time, due to the spread of infectious diseases, causing large-scale deaths and to avoid the crazy spread of infectious diseases, felling was once carried out.shrinkThe cultivated area is less than 3,000 acres.
The second wave of development came in the 1980s during the period of reform and opening up. In 1988, Nestlé decided to support the development of Yunnan’s coffee industry and introduced Catimis species for widespread planting in Yunnan. Because of this development, Catimis coffee species replaced the ancient tree species Typica in Yunnan and became the main tree species of Yunnan coffee, accounting for 99% of Yunnan’s coffee production. Catimis is a hybrid variety, and it can be classified as Arabica. The third wave of development occurred after 2000. As China’s economy took off, China introduced the concept of specialty coffee. At the same time, scientific development is carried out in the selection and planting of Yunnan coffee. At present, Yunnan coffee’s process of becoming a specialty coffee is still in progress.Why does Yunnan coffee in recent years emphasize processing methods?Although Yunnan is in the coffee growing belt suitable for coffee production, the altitude is mostly around 1000m, which is the qualification standard for growing high-quality Arabica coffee. Not all of Yunnan is suitable for growing coffee. Only Baoshan, Lincang, Simao and Dehong in southern Yunnan are suitable for growing coffee. With the popularity of specialty coffee in recent years, Yunnan is unlikely to be absent as a representative of the origin. But you will find,When we discuss other production areas, we will start from the place of production, varieties, and then processing methods in this order.When discussing Yunnan coffee, it seems that more emphasis is placed on processing methods rather than varieties.When specialty coffee was proposed, China did not pay much attention to the development of coffee. In the 1980s, under the guidance of the coffee giant Nestlé, Yunnan began to plant the Katim variety with higher yield and stronger disease resistance. With the support of Nestlé, the coffee harvested by coffee farmers in Yunnan would be purchased by Nestlé at a reasonable price and used as raw materials for making instant coffee. In our era of rapid economic development, the concept of specialty coffee has been introduced in developed areas, but Yunnan is a farmer-dominated cultivation philosophy with yield as the primary goal. Coffee with high yields generally does not have very good quality.
Today, the development of coffee in Yunnan is based on the existing tracts of Katim coffee trees, and we also know that this was originally a raw material coffee supplied to Nestlé, and it is impossible to soar into a specialty coffee. Therefore, there are currently two development paths for Yunnan coffee specialty. One is to use existing beans, follow the example of Colombia, and use new processing methods to change the flavor of coffee, making it rely on processing methods to form flavor. Here, you will see a very strange phenomenon. A barista sometimes mentions special processing methods. It seems that he is very taboo when he is analyzing the method, but after a while, if he recommends Yunnan coffee, most of them will recommend Yunnan beans with special processing methods; the second method is to start from scratch, choose the right place, plant excellent coffee varieties, adopt scientific planting management, and cultivate high-quality coffee from Yunnan step by step.In 2011, Yunnan coffee experienced historically high prices. Even when international coffee futures continue to reach new highs in 2022, they still have not reached that price level. At that time, many coffee farmers in Yunnan began to plant coffee again, but the price soon reached a low point again. This is the law of agriculture.Therefore, even with the rise of specialty coffee now, they are not willing to spend 5 years replacing the original Catim variety. People who grow coffee would rather use the current coffee beans to customize the processing methods. You want sun-dried ones, you want sun-dried ones, you want anaerobic ones, and I give you anaerobic ones. It only takes a month. Starting from the basics, from varieties, to washing methods, to determining the traditional route of good flavor, it takes at least 5 years. Moreover, at the beginning of planting, how can you ensure that if you plant it now, it will bloom and bear fruit in 5 years and it will be a good result?Front Street faced these two roads and chose the long latter.Front Street Coffee’s Yunnan Planting Exploration PathMany people’s impression of Front Street Coffee is “a cozy little shop with home-roasted coffee”. This year is the twelfth year of Front Street Coffee, but what many people don’t know is that the planting of Front Street coffee started half a year earlier than the roasting. The predecessor of Front Street Coffee is "Dazhen Coffee". The name came from the fact that in 2013, we wanted to grow coffee in a place called Dazhen in Guangdong. When we used Katim to breed seedlings and grew them to 20cm, it took more than half a year to understand the relationship and sequence of the three types: variety, altitude, and processing methods.Choosing the right varieties, planting them at the appropriate altitude, and experimenting with processing methods that can express unique flavors after maturity are the only logical relationships that Front Street believes that specialty coffee can have obvious regional flavors. So we gave up the plan to grow coffee in Guangdong. Because the place where coffee was originally roasted was located on Baoan Qian Street, we changed the name of "Dazhen Coffee" to "Front Street Coffee". On Qian Street, while roasting coffee, we continued to move forward with our idea of growing specialty coffee. We successively visited the Institute of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (Institute of Tropical Agricultural Sciences), which has in-depth research on coffee cultivation and is the coffee source bank of the Ministry of Agriculture. A few coffee farmers who have planted specialty coffee figured out the reason why Yunnan does not grow the mainstream varieties of specialty coffee, Typica and Bourbon. By chance, we found suitable land for planting in the main coffee producing areas of Yunnan.
Arabica coffee beans have requirements for planting altitude. The altitude requirement is above 1,000 meters. If you want better flavor, the higher the altitude must be. But the altitude of the common mountains in Yunnan is only on the qualified line, which is also a disadvantage of Yunnan coffee. In order to make up for the deficiencies in altitude, better agronomic management is required on the premise of good coffee varieties. Front Street did not purchase the ready-made coffee estate Katim for direct harvesting and processing, but purchased a hilltop suitable for growing coffee. Starting from the variety, no matter how good the land is, if we say that the basis of specialty coffee is the origin, variety, altitude, and processing method when talking about most refined coffee, and if we ignore these points when we want to do well in Yunnan, it is actually very difficult to achieve boutique flavor. Choosing a road to grow coffee from scratch is actually a last resort. When we planted it, we didn’t know whether it would be a good result in a few years, but at least we had done the basics of specialty coffee. After all, the historical conclusion was to choose Arabica Typica, Bourbon and Gesha.
The Yunnan coffee variety mainly planted in Front Street is Typica, which is an Arabica species with excellent flavor among coffees, to record this long Yunnan specialty coffee experiment. At the same time, the output of Typica is very low, one-third of the output of Katim, so why is the price more expensive? At the same time, Typica and Bourbon are also very susceptible to rust disease, which is one of the biggest reasons why farmers are reluctant to plant what they call the old variety of Typica. Yunnan does not have four seasons, only dry season and rainy season. Most coffee producing areas have a similar situation. This is also the fundamental reason why some producing areas use the sun drying method. Entering June is the beginning of the rainy season in the production area. It will rain in the next three to four months, which is the most favorable period for growing coffee. Only when the seedlings are planted at this time can they grow a well-developed root system and survive the first half-year dry season under the moisture of rain for several months.
Growing coffee from scratch is also a very time-consuming process. It takes three to four years for coffee to grow from seedling to first fruit, and then as quickly as five years to get the first batch of coffee before you experiment with suitable treatments and eventually reproduce. No one can guarantee the production of high-quality specialty coffee. Front Street firmly believes that nothing is so easy in this world. After many times of variety selection and post-harvest refining processing experiments, several years have passed.After 7 years, Front Street finally produced a report card that is visible to the public. This batch only contains a few 200 kilograms of Typica coffee beans, which were sun-dried. In order to record the process of the past few years, this batch of coffee beans was named "Front Street 2013" and sold in stores. It took us 8 years to make this cup of coffee.So what is the flavor of this batch of self-produced coffee beans from Front Street?Pink to water ratio: 1:15Grinding degree: Fine granulated sugar (Chinese standard No. 20 screen pass rate 80%) Front Street brewing technique: segmented extraction. Use 30 grams of water to steam for 30 seconds. When the water level drops and the powder bed is exposed, continue to pour water to 227 grams. When the water level drops and the powder bed is exposed, remove the filter cup. (Steaming starts timing) The extraction time is 2 minutes. Taste description: Front Street 2013 Yunnan Sun-Dried Typica Coffee also has a nutty tonality. The taste is more solid than Front Street Washed Yunnan Coffee. The acidity is slightly lower than Front Street Washed Typica Yunnan Coffee, but the sweetness is slightly more, with a higher sense of balance, berry-like acidity, mixed with brown sugar, and a slight tea taste.
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
