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Typica coffee variety (Typica Varietal) is one of the Arabica coffee varieties, also translated as Typica or Typica. The earliest coffee variety discovered by people was Arabica. Specifically: Typica coffee beans are Arabica coffee beans, but Arabica coffee beans are not necessarily Typica coffee beans.
Coffee varieties are divided into three major varieties based on biology: Arabica, Robusta, and Liberica. The earliest coffee variety discovered was Arabica. Arabica coffee accounts for 70%-80% of the world's total economically cultivated coffee production. It has a variety of excellent flavors and a variety of excellent acidity, low bitterness, and high sweetness, but its output is small.
The Typica variety is currently recognized as the prototype of all Arabica coffee varieties. It can be traced back to the birthplace of Arabica coffee in southwestern Ethiopia and is one of the most important varieties of Arabica coffee.
What are the characteristics of the Typica variety?
The biggest feature of the Typica coffee tree is that the top leaves are reddish bronze, so it is also called "red-top coffee". Its trunk is thin, the branches are very thin, and the branches are slightly inclined. The side branches form an angle of 50-70° with the vertical stem. The plant is about 5 meters high, so it is not very suitable for manual picking.
There is a pot of Typica variety and a pot of Katim variety planted right next to the entrance of the Front Street Coffee Shop. You may want to pay attention to it while drinking coffee. The particles of Typica coffee beans are larger, longer, and pointed at both ends, a bit like eggs. Typica coffee beans often have a sour citrus flavor with a sweet aftertaste. They are praised by many as elegant and clear coffee beans. Front Street Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is the Typica variety.
Typica has very poor disease resistance and is difficult to resist the most common diseases such as leaf rust, pulp disease, etc., and its yield is also very rare. Coffee trees infected with leaf rust are equivalent to suffering from an incurable disease and will eventually wither or even die. As coffee is a cash crop, it is difficult for Typica, which has low yields and is weak and sick, to achieve profitability, so many growers choose to give up and switch to other varieties with better disease resistance. It is not easy to grow Typica coffee beans with elegant and pure flavor. Every aspect of the innate terroir conditions, plant management, fruit picking, and post-processing must be fully guaranteed, so that the coffee beans can develop a positive flavor and taste. This also means that producing high-quality Typica requires more investment in labor costs and research technology.
The history of Typica coffee
A batch of wild Arabica coffee trees collected in southern Ethiopia were brought to Yemen between the 15th and 16th centuries. Then in 1700, the seeds of these coffee trees were brought to the Malabar Coast of India and West Java, Indonesia, and were named Typica. In 1760, Typica seeds were sent from Java to the Dutch Botanical Garden, then to the South American colony of Suriname in 1722, and finally to northern Brazil in 1727.
By the late 1800s, Tiepica coffee could be grown in Central America, South America, and in Jamaica in the Caribbean. Later, Tiepica coffee in Central America spread to Africa, Asia, and then to the Americas.
As a crop, every time the Typica variety reaches a region, its genes will be modified according to the region's terroir and climate, so that it can better adapt to the environment of a region. Therefore, the flavor of Typica coffee from different regions will vary, but the taste is the cleanest among so many Arabica varieties.
What are the flavor characteristics of Typica coffee from different regions?
Currently, Typica varieties are mainly grown in island-type climate areas: Papua New Guinea, Jamaica, and Kona, Hawaii. There are a small amount of Tibetan coffee varieties grown in Yunnan, China and Ethiopia.
Among the Typica coffee beans currently purchased by Front Street, they include Front Street Bird of Paradise (Papua New Guinea), Front Street Blue Mountain No. 1 (Jamaica), Front Street Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), and Front Street 2013 sun-dried Typica small coffee beans grown by Front Street Coffee in Lincang, Yunnan.
Among the Typica coffee beans from the three regions, the one that best embodies the cleanliness, quietness, balance and mellow taste of Typica is none other than Front Street Blue Mountain No. 1! After being roasted to a medium-dark degree by FrontStreet Coffee, FrontStreet Blue Mountain No. 1 exhibits a rich dark chocolate aroma, slight citrus acidity, and caramel sweetness. It is a coffee bean with a balance of sourness, sweetness, and bitterness, and a solid and mellow taste.
Front Street Bird of Paradise, which is also grown in an island-shaped climate and terroir, has the title of "Little Blue Mountain", so Front Street Coffee also uses medium-dark roasting. Although it is a coffee bean with the same balance of sourness, sweetness and bitterness and the same degree of roasting, the Front Street Bird of Paradise is not as mellow as the Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee bean, but the aroma of nuts and toast is very prominent, making it very comfortable to drink.
The Front Street 2013 Typica coffee grown by Front Street Coffee at an altitude of 1,300 meters in Lincang, Yunnan Province, has a much cleaner taste and flavor than other Katim arabica coffees in Yunnan. This is due to the quiet and clean characteristics of the Typica variety itself.
In terms of roasting, Front Street believes that the taste of Yunnan coffee should have a mellow coffee aroma and a certain acidity, so Front Street will use a medium roasting degree. Produced in daily stores, Front Street extracts it in the form of hand brewing, hoping to present the aroma of the coffee itself for everyone to taste.
Hand-brewed black coffee is not only the daily extraction method used by FrontStreet Coffee baristas, but it is also a method that many coffee drinkers can easily operate at home. Front Street considers that Yunnan Tiepika coffee prefers a balanced taste, that is, it does not have excessive acidity and heavy bitterness. Front Street prefers to use V60 filter cups, using medium-fine grinding and medium water temperature for extraction.
Front Street will use corresponding parameters when brewing different coffee beans. For coffee beans with a higher degree of roasting, such as Mandheling coffee and Brazilian coffee, Front Street will use a water temperature of 87 to 88 degrees Celsius and a medium-coarse grinding degree. For coffee beans with a lighter roasting degree, such as Ethiopian coffee beans, such as Ethiopian coffee beans and Panama Gesha coffee, Front Street will use a high temperature of 91 to 93 degrees Celsius and a medium-fine grinding degree to stimulate the aroma of high-altitude hard beans. Back to the brewing of Front Street Yunnan arabica coffee, Front Street uses medium water and grinding temperature to highlight the neutral and balanced taste.
Brewing parameters:
Filter bowl: hario v60
Powder amount: 15g
Water temperature: 90 degrees Celsius
Grinding degree: No. 20 screen pass rate 75%
Gouache ratio: 1:15
Three-stage water injection: Wet the powder bed with twice the amount of coffee powder to form a drum and steam it for 30 seconds. Then inject water in a small circle from the inside to the outside until it reaches 125g. When the powder bed drops to half of the filter cup, continue to inject the same thin water flow into the third section to 225g until all the coffee liquid has been filtered and take out the filter cup, which takes about 2 minutes.
Front Street 2013 Yunnan Tiepika Coffee adopts the traditional sun-dried processing method and is roasted to medium. After brewing, it can show plum-like acidity, nutty aroma, brown sugar-like caramel sweetness and black tea-like sweetness.
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
