Is Antigua coffee from Bourbon and Caturra good in drip bags?
Guatemala Antigua La Flor is a washed single-origin coffee made from Bourbon and Caturra varieties, grown at around 1,200 meters on the La Minita estate and processed at the Las Pastores wet mill. Expect berry, citrus, light floral notes, and a chocolate finish, with soft, clean acidity that also works in drip bag coffee.
Coffee trees reached Guatemala in 1750, and by 1845 coffee had become an important economic crop. The Antigua region combines tropical rainforest, volcanic geology, and highland valleys, conditions that suit these arabica coffee varieties. Its bright acidity and delicate florals make it a common choice for filter brewing.
Guatemala Antigua La Flor del café bean from Front Street Coffee is a single-origin bean known for its bright acidity and delicate floral aroma. It comes from the La Minita estate in the Antigua region, processed by the Las Pastores wet mill, and consists of Bourbon and Caturra varieties. This bean presents berry, citrus, light floral notes, and a chocolate finish, with a soft and clean acidity. This article will comprehensively analyze the flavor sources of this La Flor del café from aspects such as the history of Guatemalan coffee cultivation, the terroir of the Antigua region, the management of La Minita estate, the wet processing method, varietal characteristics, as well as Front Street's roasting curve, cupping report, and V60 brewing parameters, and explore whether it is suitable for making drip bag coffee, providing a complete reference for coffee enthusiasts.
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If you are looking for a coffee with outstanding acidity and distinct flavor, Front Street usually thinks of this Front Street Antigua La Flor del café bean from Guatemala. This Front Street La Flor del café coffee, as its name suggests, exudes a delicate floral aroma while carrying berry and citrus notes. Enthusiasts who prefer acidic coffee highly praise it, and some even make special trips to Front Street stores for several consecutive weeks just to order this Front Street La Flor del café bean. Below, Front Street will discuss this bean in detail.
Front Street Guatemala Antigua La Flor del café Coffee
Country: Guatemala Region: Antigua Altitude: 1200m Variety: Bourbon, Caturra Processing Method: Washed Flavor: Berry, citrus, light floral, soft fruit acidity, chocolate finish
Guatemalan Coffee Bean Cultivation Environment and History
Coffee trees were introduced to Guatemala in 1750, and by 1845 coffee had become an important economic crop in the country, showing that Guatemala has a very long history of coffee cultivation. Front Street believes that this is certainly also inseparable from the local natural environment that is very suitable for the growth of high-quality coffee cherries.
In addition, Guatemala's coffee-producing regions possess tropical rainforests, volcanic geology, and highland valleys, plus proximity to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, interweaving more than 300 microclimates, thus creating unique flavors for different regions. For example, among Front Street's daily drinking bean series, there is a Guatemala Huehuetenango coffee. Although it also has berry and citrus flavors, it presents more nutty and lemon peel notes.
Guatemala is home to many volcano-formed high mountains and plateaus, producing high-quality Strictly Hard Bean. The main coffee-producing regions include Antigua, Huehuetenango, Atitlan, Coban, Fraijanes, San Marcos, Acatenango, and others.
Front Street Guatemala La Flor del café comes from the Antigua region. Next, Front Street will explain in detail the characteristics of the Antigua region.
Introduction to the Antigua Region
The Antigua area is said to be the birthplace of Guatemalan coffee. It is located in a valley surrounded by three volcanoes (Agua, Fuego, Acatenango). According to Front Street's understanding, Fuego among them is an active volcano that erupts irregularly, making the soil in this region rich in minerals, which is what Front Street often calls organic-rich volcanic soil. At the same time, a large amount of primary forest is preserved in the Antigua province, filling the soil with abundant potassium ions. Organic matter and potassium ions work together to provide a continuous supply of nutrients for the coffee plants in the Antigua region, enabling them to grow healthily.
The climate here is very mild, with stable humidity. During the alternation between dry and rainy seasons, there are no extreme climate changes like in other regions, allowing coffee to grow slowly in valleys above 1500 meters. Moreover, the Antigua region is an enclosed valley, preventing severe soil erosion. Such a unique environment naturally makes Antigua coffee beans outstanding in quality. As for the quality of this Front Street Antigua La Flor del café bean, it goes without saying.
La Minita Estate
High-quality coffee beans also need to be processed and packaged by professional estates in order to live up to the high-quality coffee cherries. This Front Street Antigua La Flor del café comes from the famous coffee estate in Antigua—La Minita Estate.
La Minita Estate is renowned for its excellent cultivation and extremely strict quality management. For coffee bean processing, it entrusts Las Pastores, the largest wet mill in Antigua, to process the green beans, and names the coffee beans La Flor del café. This is because the washed processing method can maintain the original flavor of the coffee beans, making the coffee flavor very clean and bright. The dry aroma of this Front Street La Flor del café bean after grinding has a strong floral and tea fragrance. After brewing, the taste is not only clean and bright, but also has lime acidity and berry notes, with a honey sweetness in the finish. It is precisely this excellent taste that led this coffee bean to be named La Flor del café, and Front Street believes it truly deserves the name.
In addition, La Minita never uses insecticides in cultivation, and because the estate's climate and altitude limit pest growth, a small number of pests will not have much impact on the coffee trees. However, careful handling is required during harvesting. This is because at La Minita Estate, when the rainy season is about to end, the coffee cherries also mature soon after. The green cherries begin to turn red, but the coffee cherries mature very slowly and unevenly, unlike flowering which is rapid and consistent, so the harvesting work must be handled more carefully. To ensure excellent quality, only fully ripe dark red cherries are harvested on the estate.
Furthermore, according to Front Street's understanding, La Minita Estate conducts soil tests twice a year to ensure the soil quality for producing high-quality coffee beans, and La Minita fertilizes about 3 times a year. In addition, La Minita also applies fertilizers with trace elements such as zinc, boron, and copper to provide more nutrients for the coffee trees and prevent diseases.
Therefore, Front Street believes that it is precisely such scientific cultivation management that has created the excellent flavor expression of Front Street La Flor del café coffee and its reputation for consistent quality over the years. So Front Street decided to definitely introduce this Front Street Guatemala Antigua La Flor del café for Front Street's coffee-loving friends to taste.
Washed Processing Method
Of course, Front Street believes that the excellent flavor of this Front Street La Flor del café bean is also due to the contribution of the Las Pastores wet mill. This is because the washed processing method is a very cumbersome processing method. To process it with high quality requires a large number of steps and a large amount of water, all of which require professional handling to ensure the coffee beans have no off-flavors, become bright and clean in taste, and have excellent flavor. Therefore, Front Street also often says that washed-process coffee beans are the processing method that best reflects the original coffee cherry flavor of a region, and it is also a way to understand a region's flavor.
Washed Processing Method Flow
1. First, the coffee farmers pour all the harvested coffee cherries into water. In this way, defective coffee beans will float to the surface, and those that sink to the bottom are coffee cherries that pass the quality standard. This operation also greatly reduces the time wasted on selecting them one by one.
2. Put the screened coffee cherries into a depulper to remove the skin and pulp. After removing these, there will still be a layer of mucilage adhering to the surface of the coffee cherries, so a large amount of clean water is needed to wash off the sticky substance on the surface of the coffee cherries.
3. Next, fermentation is used to completely remove the mucilage. This process takes about 18 hours. But after fermentation is completed, the fermenting bacteria will adhere to the surface of the coffee cherries, so a large amount of clean water is needed again for washing. For this step, obtaining 1 kilogram of coffee beans requires consuming 40 to 50 kilograms of clean water. Front Street believes this is a very large number, and this is precisely why arid countries cannot adopt washed processing.
4. The cleaned coffee beans can then be dried. Some regions will directly take them outdoors to dry, while some more developed regions will send them to processing plants for machine drying, thereby reducing the coffee moisture content to about 11%.
5. Finally, the dried coffee beans are stored and packaged, and then they can be sold and exported.
Front Street Guatemala Antigua La Flor del café Coffee Variety
Of course, Front Street's previous articles have also said that an excellent coffee bean with good flavor depends not only on its region and processing method, but also on the coffee variety. For example, all single-origin coffees are Arabica coffee, and under the Arabica coffee species there are many varieties. For example, this Front Street Antigua La Flor del café is made up of Caturra and Bourbon coffee beans. So Front Street will briefly introduce these two varieties next.
Bourbon
It is a secondary species produced by a mutation of Typica, and together with Typica, it is one of the oldest existing Arabica coffee varieties. Its green cherries turn bright red when ripe. Compared with Typica, Bourbon has broader leaves and denser growth. Although its yield is higher than Typica, its harvest cycle is also 2 years, so it is still considered a low-yield variety. However, it has excellent taste, with wine-like acidity and a sweet finish.
Caturra
Caturra is a single-gene mutation of Bourbon, discovered in Brazil in 1937. Its productivity and disease resistance are both better than Bourbon, and the tree is shorter, making harvesting convenient. Unfortunately, like Bourbon, it has a cyclical problem of yield fluctuation every two years. However, its flavor is comparable to or slightly inferior to Bourbon beans. More importantly, it has super strong adaptability and does not need shade trees. It can thrive even under direct exposure to the sun, commonly known as sun-exposed coffee. It can adapt to high-density planting, but requires more fertilizer, increasing costs, so early coffee farmers did not accept it very readily.
The above is the relevant information compiled by Front Street about Front Street Guatemala Antigua La Flor del café coffee beans. I hope this article can help coffee-loving friends understand this coffee bean better. And whenever Front Street releases a new coffee bean, it conducts a large number of brewing tests, and brews the data with the optimal flavor for coffee-loving friends who come to Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) stores to taste coffee. So this Front Street Guatemala Antigua La Flor del café coffee bean is no exception. Next, Front Street will share the brewing data for brewing this Front Street La Flor del café coffee bean.
[Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Roasting Suggestion]
This Front Street Guatemala La Flor del café green bean is round and plump, yellow-green in color, with good uniformity and medium moisture content. Therefore, the Front Street roaster's goal is a medium roast. On one hand, it preserves bright acidity to show floral and fruity aromas; on the other hand, it enhances richness and balance.
Roaster: Yangjia 600g semi-direct fire
Charge when the drum temperature reaches 200°C, set airflow to 3, adjust heat to 160°C after 30s, keep airflow unchanged, turning point at 1'36", maintain heat. At 4'50", the bean surface turns yellow, the grassy smell completely disappears, and it enters the dehydration stage. Reduce heat to 140°C, adjust airflow to 4
At 4'50", dehydration is complete, reduce heat to 140°C. At 8'32", ugly wrinkles and dark spots appear on the bean surface, and the toast smell clearly turns into coffee aroma, which can be defined as the prelude to first crack. At this time, listen clearly for the sound of first crack. At 8'37", first crack begins. Reduce heat to 80°C, open airflow fully to 5 (adjusting heat must be very careful, not so low that there is no cracking sound). After first crack, develop for 1'50", drop at 195.3°C.
[Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Cupping Report]
[Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Brewing Suggestion]
Dripper: V60 dripper
Dose: 15 grams
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15
Temperature: 90°C
Grind size: BG#6S
[Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Brewing Method]
Pulse pouring extraction.
Bloom with 30 grams of water for 30 seconds, pour to 125 grams in stages, then when the water level is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225 grams and stop, and when the water level is about to expose the coffee bed, remove the dripper. (Start timing from the beginning of blooming.) The extraction time is two minutes.
[Flavor Description]
Floral, citrus acidity, caramel, slight smoky note
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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
