Today Front Street will talk about how a newbie should choose coffee when making hand brew for the first time.
Since Pour over(V60) coffee uses drip extraction, which can well present the flavor and tonality of the coffee beans in the cup, Front Street recommends giving priority to single-origin coffee beans that focus on personalization for brewing. These beans can maximize the style of the production area by adjusting the roasting degree, allowing us to drink exquisite coffee flavor. As a mature coffee bean roasting brand, Front Street Coffee has more than 50 items for everyone to choose from, and each bean has a unique aroma and taste.
Before getting into the topic, let’s first understand where coffee beans are grown in the world, and the area formed by these places is also called the “golden coffee growing belt” by the industry. From 25° north latitude to 25° south latitude, coffee is grown and produced in 79 countries and regions around the world. Different countries/regions have different climates and terroirs due to their geographical environment, and the coffee they produce has different flavors. Therefore, when choosing which coffee beans to choose, we must start from which continent and country we should choose.
When choosing, we can simply determine what kind of coffee we want to drink, whether it is acidic, bitter, or more balanced.
If you want to drink coffee with bright acidity and floral and fruity aroma, you can choose Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda in Africa. Most of their coffees are light roasted. We recommend the floral-flavored Front Street. Fruit Ding Ding, Front Street. Red Cherry and the fruity Front Street. Cherry Tomato, Front Street. Rwanda Red Bourbon, etc.;
If you want a mellow taste and can accept the bitter taste, you can try coffee from Brazil, Indonesia, and Jamaica.country coffeeGenerally dark roasting is used, and the overall flavor is generally nutty, dark chocolate, hot cocoa... Representative coffee beans include Front Street Brazilian Cerato, Front Street Mandheling, and Front Street Blue Mountain No. 1;
If you want coffee that is neither too sour nor too bitter, and has a more balanced taste, you can try beans from Papua New Guinea, Yunnan, China, and Costa Rica. For example, the nutty Front Street Bird of Paradise, the soft tea-like Front Street Yunnan Granules, and the fruity Front Street Strawberry Candy are very suitable. This type of coffee beans generally have a balanced taste, with a slight fruity acid flavor, and is very comfortable. (So, when choosing the place of origin, the degree of roasting is also chosen to a certain extent.)
Choice of treatment method
Although the origin is determined, you will still find that the same beans are obviously from the same manor (/processing plant), but there are different processing methods? Different coffee processing methods have different coffee flavors. The traditional processing methods include sun drying, washing, honey processing... There are also anaerobic processing, enzyme fermentation, and wine barrel fermentation that are very common on the market in recent years...
The sun-drying process involves sifting mature and full coffee, and then sun-drying the whole coffee cherries until their moisture content is 12%, then shelling them and putting them into storage. Therefore, sun-dried coffee beans will retain more flavor, have obvious sweetness, and be richer and fuller.
The washing process involves peeling off the skin and part of the pulp of the coffee cherries, placing them in a fermentation tank or fermentation barrel, using fermentation to remove the pectin layer, and finally drying them to a moisture content of 12%. Washed coffee beans will have higher acidity and cleaner flavor. We recommend Front Street Butterfly.
Honey processing can be simply understood as removing the skin and pulp of the coffee cherries first, leaving the pectin part for sun-drying, and the entire process is water-free. Since the peel is removed and sun-dried, the drying time is shorter. Honey-treated coffee beans will have a relatively higher sweetness and softer taste. Front Street Baha and Front Street Mozart are recommended.
The anaerobic treatment method is to put the coffee beans with the pectin layer into an unsealed container before and after removing the coffee cherry pulp, remove the oxygen, and leave only carbon dioxide, allowing anaerobic bacteria to assist the coffee beans in fermenting for a period of time. Anaerobically processed coffee generally exhibits highly distinguishable berry and floral aromas. We recommend the passion fruit-flavored Front Street Cicada and the blackcurrant juice-like Front Street Big Navel.
Front Street suggests that novices can start with the most traditional treatment methods: sun drying and washing. In the same production area, washing is the basic and main flavor of a bean. Sun-drying increases the aroma on the basis of washing. This is why Front Street gives priority to batches that have been washed when customizing the ration bean series.
Roast degree selection
The same kind of coffee, with different roasting degrees, will have a big difference in flavor. Different green coffee beans have different coffee roasting requirements based on the characteristics of the coffee beans themselves.
For example, in order to highlight the unique lemon-citrus sourness and rich floral and fruity aroma of the Ethiopian Gacheffe production area, the roasters use light roasting. Medium roasting, the caramelization and Maillard reaction in the coffee are just right, and there is still a little sour aroma, and the overall flavor is more balanced. For example, Front Street Papua Bird of Paradise is roasted at this level, with the sweetness of toast, nutty sweetness, and slight acidity. The overall sweet and sour taste is full of layers, and the taste is rich and balanced.
Dark roasted beans require longer roasting times, higher temperatures, and more obvious bitterness. Front Street’s Golden Mandheling from Indonesia is a heavyweight representative of dark roasted beans, with a strong caramel flavor and a full, smooth, and mellow taste.
Price options
As a novice player, if your brewing theory is not solid enough, your technique is not stable enough, and your flavor appreciation ability is not enough. If you buy expensive beans and are worried that you will not be able to brew them well and cannot identify any flavor, but you also hope to help yourself practice, then a pack of cost-effective beans is particularly important.
Judging from the experience of the past, instead of challenging those expensive manor beans, newcomers should start with representative and relatively affordable batches. They don’t have to worry about overturning and can also serve as daily rations. After you have mastered the brewing skills, you can continue to learn more about your favorite production areas or estates, drink beans with higher prices (grades), and then explore your own bean list.
On the bean list of FrontStreet Coffee, you can see 6 beans, each of which is selected from the more representative production areas and is suitable for beginners to try. They are Ethiopian washed Yirgacheffe, Colombian Cymbidium, Brazilian Cerato, Yunnan arabica coffee, Indonesian Mandheling, and Costa Rican tala beads. Front Street launches ration beans with the purpose of allowing coffee lovers to drink cost-effective coffee and at the same time understand the basic flavors of different production areas.
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
