What Makes Guji Arabica Coffee Beans Stand Out?

Guji coffee beans come from the Guji region of Sidamo in Ethiopia, an area the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange separated into its own production zone in 2010 after strong local results. The region sits next to Yirgacheffe, and its fertile black soil, deep root growth, altitudes above 1,800 meters, and wide day-night temperature swings support high-quality arabica.

Huakui, a natural-processed Guji lot, moved from an unnamed Sidamo lot to winning the 2017 TOH green bean competition and later beating Geisha contenders in a Chinese brewing competition. Local cultivation relies on fallen leaves and soil organic matter rather than chemical fertilizer. Coffee arabica coffee from Guji typically combines floral and berry notes.

From an unnamed lot in the Guji region of Sidamo, Ethiopia, to winning the 2017 TOH green bean competition, and then defeating many Geisha contenders in the Chinese brewing competition, the rise to fame of Huakui coffee beans is full of legendary color. This article will guide you through the variety classification, origin evolution, processing plant sources, and the origin of the Huakui X.0 series, along with Front Street Coffee's brewing suggestions and flavor descriptions, to help coffee enthusiasts gain a comprehensive understanding of this natural processed coffee that combines floral and berry notes.

When mentioning Front Street Huakui coffee beans, just hearing the name evokes the image of "the queen of a hundred flowers, charming and enchanting." This Front Street Sidamo natural bean truly lives up to the name "Huakui." It delivers an intoxicating aroma and taste upon sipping. Next, Front Street will introduce how this natural Sidamo coffee bean from Ethiopia transformed step by step from obscurity to the "queen of a hundred flowers."

The Origin of Huakui Coffee Beans

Front Street Huakui coffee originates from the Guji region of Sidamo. Guji was originally part of the Sidamo production area. In 2010, due to the outstanding performance of local coffee beans, the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) designated it as a separate new production area.

The Guji region is adjacent to Yirgacheffe and features diverse topography, with fertile black soil that can reach depths of up to two meters, allowing coffee tree roots to penetrate deeper. Additionally, the average altitude of the region exceeds 1,800 meters, with significant temperature differences between day and night, creating favorable conditions for Guji to produce high-quality coffee. Local coffee cultivation hardly relies on chemical fertilizers; the fallen leaves, litter, plant residues around the trees, and organic matter in the soil are sufficient to provide ample nutrients for the coffee trees to thrive.

Today, we still often see the Sidamo and Guji production areas mentioned together. This is mainly because Ethiopia's administrative divisions have four levels, from largest to smallest: Region, Zone, woreda, and kebele. Most green coffee bean naming follows this rule. Taking Huakui as an example, it is located southeast of Yirgacheffe in the Sidamo production area and administratively belongs to Oromia Region → Guji Zone → Shakisso woreda → Hambella.

This area features reddish-brown organic soil, abundant rainfall, and significant temperature differences between day and night, producing coffee with delicate flavors and high-quality, full-bodied acidity. During the harvest season, farmers hand-pick only fully ripe red cherries, placing them in baskets before sending them to processing plants equipped with professional facilities. The natural processing begins only when the sugar content of the red cherries reaches 21 or above. With scientific measurement and meticulous management, the traditional natural process is preserved while the coffee beans achieve more stable quality and enhanced sweetness.

The excellent balance of acidity and sweetness, along with stable quality, caught the attention of Ethiopia's DW green bean company. In 2017, DW submitted the natural coffee beans from the Buku processing plant in this region to the TOH (the Taste Of Harvest) East African Green Bean Cupping Competition. These beans won the championship with their rich and full-bodied berry notes, creamy smooth mouthfeel, and high sweetness. That same year, a Chinese green bean company imported the competition lot of green coffee beans and gave it a mysterious name—"Huakui"—to encapsulate its flavor characteristics.

But this was not the key to its fame. In 2017, Li Jianfei, the runner-up in the World Coffee Brewing Competition China region, used this lot of Huakui coffee beans to defeat many competitors' Geisha coffees. In an era when Geisha almost swept all major competitions, an Ethiopian natural bean could actually overcome so many Geishas, naturally making people view it with new respect and leading many to believe that this Huakui coffee bean was comparable to Geisha.

Afterward, DW established additional processing plants in the core production area of Hambella, Dimtu, namely Buku Abel, Buku Saysay, Haro Soresa, and Tirtiro Goye, with an annual output of about 1,100 tons. In terms of growing regions and processing plants, among all these estates and processing facilities, only the natural coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing plant can be called "Huakui." The Front Street Huakui coffee beans sold by Front Street over the years all come from the Buku Abel processing plant.

Why Are There So Many X.0 Series of Huakui Coffee Beans?

Strictly speaking, only the batch of coffee beans that won the championship in 2017 can be called Huakui coffee beans. But coffee beans are, after all, an agricultural product, and a series of environmental factors such as climate and soil can cause flavor differences from year to year. To distinguish them, DW assigned an X.0 series to the natural Huakui coffee beans produced by the Buku processing plant each subsequent year—for example, 2018 was called Huakui 2.0, and by 2024 it has reached the Huakui 8.0 series.

Not exactly; Huakui is simply the name of the coffee bean. The variety of Front Street Sidamo Huakui is the Ethiopian native species, commonly known as Heirloom. As the birthplace of Arabica coffee, Ethiopia possesses thousands of Heirloom varieties, making it a truly unique origin.

In Ethiopia, coffee cultivation is broadly divided into three systems: smallholder farming, semi-forest cultivation, and forest cultivation. Among these, coffee trees in semi-forest cultivation are mostly wild varieties growing in the wild, and farmers manage the cultivation areas while also planting other cash crops. Because there are too many varieties and they are too diverse, it is nearly impossible to conduct genetic testing and verification on a larger scale. Additionally, the local government wishes to protect these unknown varieties and prevent industry practitioners from various countries from rushing to acquire them, so it decided to uniformly name them "Heirloom."

According to Front Street's observations, native species beans are usually smaller in size, rounder in shape, and somewhat uneven, mostly between 14-15 screen sizes. In cupping, they often exhibit elegant floral and fruity flavors, making them highly favored.

When Front Street first received the Front Street Sidamo Huakui 5.0 green coffee beans, it detected a fermented aroma of coffee flowers, completely different from the grassy smell of ordinary green beans. It also noticed that the Huakui green beans varied in size, with many being pointed at both ends, and a good moisture content of around 11%, though not SHB beans with very high hardness. Because the beans are dense and hard, during brewing the initial stage should extend the dehydration time, and before first crack, the temperature rise should enter first crack as much as possible to preserve small-molecule aromatic substances like floral notes and reduce their loss.

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Suggestions

Dripper: V60#01

Water temperature: 90-91°C

Coffee dose: 15g

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Grind size: Medium-fine grind (80% passing through China standard No. 20 sieve)

Brewing method: Three-stage extraction. Use 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then pour in a slow circular motion with a small stream until reaching 125g for the first stage. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring until 225g and stop. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed again, remove the dripper. (Start timing from the beginning of the bloom.) Total extraction time is 2'00".

Front Street Sidamo Natural Huakui 5.0 Coffee Bean Brewing Flavor: Floral, berry, citrus, and plum-like sweet acidity, mango juice, honey, with a sweet black tea finish.

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