Why Geisha Coffee Beans Skipped Version 9.0 This Season

The new-crop Huakui is already on shelves, but it is labeled Huakui X rather than 9.0, which is why 9.0 is missing from cafe menus. The change reflects a naming shift, not a missing harvest. Huakui is a naturally processed G1 coffee from the Buku Abel station in Dimtu, in Ethiopia's Guji Hanbela area, first recognized through the TOH competition in 2017.

That background explains the version numbers. Huakui began as a regional name, Hambella, and became a commercial label tied to repeated competition results, so each crop received a numbered suffix. This year the sequence moved to X instead of 9.0. Reviews of the new crop still describe a familiar profile, which places it among famous Ethiopian coffee lots, though the label has changed.

The 2024 new-crop Huakui has quietly hit the shelves, but many coffee lovers have noticed that "Huakui 9.0" is almost nowhere to be seen on the menus of offline cafés, and even Front Street has never published a review related to 9.0. Could it be that there really is no Huakui 9.0 this year? In fact, the new batch of Huakui is already on the market, and what Front Street has listed is precisely the beans from the latest crop. It's just that this year's naming convention had a bit of an "accident" — it isn't called 9.0, but "Huakui X." This article will start from the origins of Huakui, trace the evolution of this coffee from a TOH champion to a commercial name, explain the origin of the version-number suffix, and why this year skipped 9 and went straight to X. At the same time, Front Street will also bring a complete brewing review of the new-crop Huakui, to see whether it still retains that signature "Huakui flavor."

But more than half a year has passed since then, and many friends have found that "Huakui 9.0" is almost nowhere to be seen on the menus of offline coffee shops! Not only that, even Front Street, which should have published a review early on, has never shared any post related to 9.0. This inevitably makes one curious — could it be that there is no "Huakui 9.0" this year?

Yes and no. The new-crop Huakui has in fact long been on the market, and what Front Street has listed is already the latest batch of Huakui. If we follow the naming rules as we previously understood them, then it should indeed be called Huakui 9.0. But unfortunately, this set of rules differs somewhat from our understanding, so this year's Huakui is not called Huakui 9.0. That doesn't stop it from still being Huakui, so today Front Street will share with everyone why there is no Huakui 9.0 this year, and whether the new-crop Huakui truly has the same "Huakui flavor" as always.

Why is this coffee called "Huakui"? Before "Huakui coffee" became "Huakui," its name was "Hambella," which translates to "Hanbela." Like most coffees, it was named after the region where the coffee is produced. Hanbela is a sub-region of the Guji production area in Ethiopia, which is to say, Huakui is produced in Guji Hanbela. To trace it in more detail, it is a naturally processed G1 coffee produced by the Buku Abel processing station located in Dimtu town in the Hanbela production area.

In February 2017, Ethiopia's DW Coffee Company, when participating in the green bean competition TOH (Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest competition) organized by the African Fine Coffees Association, chose this naturally processed coffee bean from the Hanbela Buku Abel processing station to compete. And this coffee bean went on to win the championship of the competition with its extremely rich berry aroma and creamy texture.

Afterwards, this champion coffee bean was bought by a green bean trader in Beijing, and based on its flavor and its performance, the green bean trader gave it the name "Huakui," meaning "the chief of a hundred flowers, outshining all others." So from this everyone can see that "Huakui" is neither a variety name nor a place-of-origin name, but a commercial name. After being introduced to China, Huakui was used by a contestant in a China coffee brewing competition as their competition bean, and ultimately, with its excellent aroma and the contestant's outstanding presentation, they achieved a good result of second place. But because most of the contestants ranked below them chose Geisha as their competition bean, that year, besides second place, Huakui also drew attention for "beating a host of Geishas," smoothly becoming the "breakout star" of 2017.

You should know that Huakui's advantages are not just its excellent flavor — the key is that its price is also very affordable. So when people truly began to encounter Huakui offline, they were immediately captivated by its extremely high cost-performance ratio. As word spread from person to person, Huakui's fame grew higher and higher. Huakui's explosive popularity sharply increased market demand for it; it is said that the Huakui produced by DW Company that year reached as much as tens of millions of tons. Clearly, such a large output was not something the previous production capacity could handle. So after Huakui became famous, DW Company gradually expanded production capacity as demand increased. Besides the Buku Abel we mentioned at the beginning, four other small villages in its vicinity — Buku Saysay, Haro Soresa, Tirtiro Goye, and Seke Bokosa — also joined the ranks of "Huakui" production, and only then was the market demand for Huakui satisfied. Why does Huakui have a suffix? As Front Street has always emphasized, coffee beans are an agricultural product, and their taste is affected by many factors. So the taste of coffee cannot remain stable like an industrial product; even for the same origin and the same processing station, the taste of the coffee differs from year to year. And Huakui is the same! For example, the new-crop Huakui of 2018 was already somewhat different from the Huakui that won the championship the previous year. Although the flavor had not changed much, its mouthfeel, aftertaste, and performance in various other aspects were slightly inferior.

So in order to better sell this naturally processed coffee from Hanbela going forward, the domestic green bean trading company made a very clever decision: to distinguish the Huakui sold subsequently from the original version! The specific method was very simple — just add a "version number" to Huakui. Starting in 2018, every Huakui produced would carry a suffix. For example, the batch produced in 2018 was called "Huakui 2.0," the batch produced in 2019 was called "Huakui 3.0," the batch produced in 2020 was called "Huakui 4.0," and so on. In short, counting onward from 2017, the number in the version name increases year by year, so that through this suffix we can know which year's product the Huakui in our hands is, and whether it is the latest batch.

By this reckoning, this year's Huakui batch should logically be the "9.0" version. But that is not the case. Last year, in its post on Huakui 8.0, Front Street joked that this naming method was somewhat similar to Apple's iPhone (which is also something people often joke about) . As a result, this year the domestic green bean trader naming Huakui announced that, in tribute to Steve Jobs, this year's "version number" would, like the iPhone, skip 9 entirely and use X for the naming — that is, the new batch that should have been called Huakui 9.0 was named "Huakui X."

Unlike phones, this change appears only in the name's suffix; Huakui itself is still that naturally processed G1 coffee bean from Hanbela. So some coffee shops, in order to let everyone focus on the beans themselves rather than the version name, simply dropped the suffix and sold it directly under the original name "Huakui"~ (Front Street is among them) All right, last is the question everyone cares about most: does this year's Huakui still have the Huakui flavor? How does the new-crop Huakui taste? Although judging by the name, Huakui coffee's main flavor characteristic should be a rich floral aroma, that is actually not the case! Compared with floral notes, fruit flavors such as strawberry, mango, pineapple, blueberry, and citrus are Huakui's main characteristics, and of course, there is also its creamy texture. And what won Huakui the competition championship back then were exactly these captivating aromas — what we often call the "Huakui flavor." It is worth mentioning that these are also the distinctive fruit flavors of Ethiopian Sidamo natural beans; on Front Street's Sidamo·Alo and Aito in the Front Street bean list, everyone can also taste similar flavor characteristics. All right, enough talk — next, Front Street will share just how the new-crop Huakui performs~

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) : Ethiopia · Huakui Production area : Guji·Hanbela production area Processing station : Buku Abel Altitude : 2250–2350 meters Variety : local heirloom varieties Processing method : natural process

Flavor : orange blossom, lemon, berry, blueberry, black tea

The new-crop Huakui already shows a very obvious aroma in the dry fragrance, with strawberry, orange, lemon, and jasmine notes. After hot water is poured in, one can smell the sweet aroma of chocolate, cream, and berries.

Through slurping, Front Street tasted clear fruit aromas of orange, yellow peach, mango, pineapple, and more in this new-crop Huakui — a round and full juicy mouthfeel! Tasting carefully, one can catch aromas similar to orange blossom. After the temperature drops slightly, the sweetness is enhanced, and a flavor of fruit gummies begins to emerge. And after swallowing, one can feel the texture of black tea! Very good, with very rich layers. - END -

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