Why Does Yellow Bourbon Coffee Ripen Orange-Yellow?

Yellow Bourbon, or Bourbon Amarello, is a yellow-skinned Bourbon variant unique to São Paulo, Brazil. Its cherries stay orange-yellow instead of turning red at ripeness. In the cup it shows elegant sweetness, aroma and acidity, which is why yellow bourbon coffee stands out among the wider group of arabica coffee varieties.

The Bourbon line traveled from Bourbon Island, now Réunion, to Brazil around 1860 and spread across Central and South America. Yellow Bourbon performs well at high altitude and has appeared in Brazil's Cup of Excellence. Front Street Coffee's Brazil Queen Estate lots come from the Mogiana region at 1400–1950m, naturally processed, with notes of nuts, chocolate, cream, peanut and sugarcane.

Bourbon Amarello is a yellow-skinned Bourbon variant unique to São Paulo, Brazil. When ripe, its fruit turns orange-yellow rather than red, and in cupping it shows elegant sweetness, aroma, and acidity. This article traces the spread of the Bourbon variety from Bourbon Island to Brazil, introduces the genetic basis of Yellow Bourbon’s color, its advantages when grown at high altitude, and its performance in Brazil’s Cup of Excellence (COE), and focuses on Front Street Coffee’s Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon coffee beans, analyzing their origin, processing method, and flavor characteristics. It also shares pour-over brewing ideas and specific parameters under a medium-dark roast, helping coffee lovers understand the source of this rare variety’s sweetness and the key points of brewing.

Yellow Bourbon (Bourbon Amarello), also translated into English as Yellow Bourbon, is a yellow-skinned Bourbon variant unique to São Paulo, Brazil. Generally, coffee cherries turn red after ripening, but Yellow Bourbon does not turn red when ripe; it is orange-yellow, hence the name. The flavor characteristics of Yellow Bourbon are very elegant in cupping, with relatively prominent sweetness, aroma, and acidity. Front Street’s Brazil Queen Estate coffee beans are selected from the rare Yellow Bourbon.

Front Street Coffee: Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon Coffee Beans

Region: Mogiana Region

Estate: Fazenda Rainha

Altitude: 1400–1950m

Variety: Yellow Bourbon

Processing Method: Natural Process

Flavor: Nuts, Chocolate, Cream, Peanut, Sugarcane

After reviewing materials, Front Street learned that the Arabica coffee varieties in the world are composed of Typica and Bourbon, as well as their derived descendants. Among them, Bourbon is mainly popular in Central and South American countries and is one of Brazil’s main varieties. The name Bourbon comes from Bourbon Island, namely Réunion Island off the east coast of Africa. In the seventeenth century, as a French territory, it was named Bourbon Island and was not renamed until the end of the eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century, the French introduced round coffee beans from Yemen to Bourbon Island, where they began to take root and grow. It was not until 1860 that Brazil brought round Bourbon back to the country for cultivation, and it subsequently spread to various countries in Central and South America, becoming the oldest mother variety of Latin American coffee.

The fruit of the Bourbon variety is short and round, and the coffee beans are high in density. Bourbon grown at high altitude has high sweetness and bright acidity. Like Typica, it is an old and excellent variety. Bourbon is more resistant to leaf rust than Typica, and its flavor is no inferior to Typica. For common Bourbon, from flowering to ripe fruit, the color gradually changes from green to slightly yellow, then red, and finally fully ripe dark red, so it is called Red Bourbon. There are also Bourbon varieties that do not turn red after ripening, instead turning a rarer yellow or pink, namely Yellow Bourbon and Pink Bourbon.

The “yellow” of Yellow Bourbon is determined by genetic selection for color. Yellow Bourbon planted at high altitudes contains a large amount of fructose and can present a sweet, juicy, and delicate flavor, which is why it once won top honors in multiple editions of Brazil’s Cup of Excellence (COE) competition.

After picking ripe Yellow Bourbon coffee cherries, Queen Estate uses the natural process, allowing the coffee cherries to absorb more sweetness from the pulp during drying. Brazil is located near the equator, and because the harvest season happens to fall in the dry season, coffee cherries are very suitable for direct dehydration and drying through sun exposure. However, the traditional “sun-drying method” is very rough: after picking, the cherries are directly dried on dirt ground, and the resulting coffee is easily mixed with an earthy taste; uneven heating can produce negative notes of over-fermentation. Queen Estate first pours the coffee cherries into a water tank and removes insufficiently ripe cherries through flotation. Then it dries the coffee in small batches on African raised beds with better breathability, turning them irregularly, thereby avoiding earthy flavors and over-fermented notes. Its sweetness is also a step higher than that of the traditional natural method.

Because Yellow Bourbon coffee beans grown at high altitude are denser and have high glucose content, Front Street’s roasting approach is to highlight the classic rich aroma of Brazilian coffee while showcasing Bourbon’s own sweetness. After many experiments and cupping comparisons, Front Street’s Brazil Queen Estate coffee beans are roasted to a medium-dark level. After medium roasting, the internal structure of the beans is changed to a relatively large extent, becoming loose, and when ground into coffee powder, it absorbs water more strongly. If the brewing parameters are not adjusted well, the coffee will easily become over-extracted and bitter. If you want the coffee to have enough aroma without over-extraction, you need to reduce the extraction rate. Front Street uses a relatively low water temperature and a relatively coarse grind to reduce the release of bitter macromolecules in the coffee. Combined with the use of a KONO dripper for extraction, the coffee’s body and roundness are better.

Pour-over parameters: 87–88°C water temperature, KONO dripper, medium grind (70% passing through China standard No. 20 sieve), coffee powder: 15g, coffee-to-water ratio 1:15, three-stage pouring

Use twice the amount of water relative to the coffee powder to wet the coffee bed, forming a dome and letting it bloom for 30s. Then pour in a thin stream in circles from the inside out until 125g, pausing in stages. Wait until the coffee bed drops to half the height of the dripper, then continue pouring the third stage with the same thin stream to 225g. Once all the coffee liquid has filtered through, remove the dripper. The time is about 2 minutes. Finally, swirl the coffee liquid in the server to even it out and enjoy.

The pour-over Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon coffee presents aromas of dark chocolate, cream, peanut, and nuts. On the palate it is as refreshingly sweet as sugarcane, with a balanced mouthfeel, bright flavor, and a long-lasting finish in the mouth.

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.