What is a good way to drink Huakui 5.0 coffee?

Huakui 5.0 is a 2025 new-crop Ethiopian natural coffee with strawberry-cream sweetness and a juicy body. It can be brewed four ways: hot pour-over, iced pour-over, ice drip, and cold brew. Each style uses different water temperature, coffee-to-water ratio, grind size, and pouring rhythm, so the same bean shows gentle layers depending on the method chosen.

The award-winning Huakui name traces back to a 2017 TOH championship lot from the Buku Abel station, and the 5.0 version reflects roasting adjustments for higher moisture in new-crop beans. For anyone learning how to make coffee with powder at home, starting with hot pour-over and then trying cold brew is a practical way to compare how extraction changes sweetness.

As a new-crop Ethiopian natural coffee for 2025, Flor Queen 5.0 is loved for its strawberry-cream sweetness and full, juicy body. This article begins with Flor Queen's award-winning history, traces the version evolution from 1.0 to 5.0, and shares in detail the roasting adjustments Front Street's roaster made in response to the high moisture content of the new-crop beans. At the brewing level, the article fully presents the specific parameters and methods for four extraction styles—hot pour-over, iced pour-over, ice drip, and cold brew—including key data such as water temperature, coffee-to-water ratio, grind size, and pouring rhythm, helping coffee lovers fully express this bean's gentle layers at home.

2025 New-Crop Flor Queen Coffee Beans

On a summer evening at dusk, looking up at the soft sunset glow on the horizon easily brings to mind a much-loved coffee—Flor Queen 5.0. Its fruity character is like twilight woven from orange-yellow and pale purple, its rich berry juiciness is like pink and purple blending into sunset clouds, and its creamy smoothness is like the warmth of a summer evening. So how do you bring Flor Queen's gentleness to your lips? Front Street usually presents it in four ways.

Let's first talk about the origins of Flor Queen coffee beans.

In 2017, Ethiopian green bean company DW sent a batch of coffee beans to the TOH (the Taste Of Harvest) green bean competition held by the African Coffee Association. One lotted from the "Buku Abel" processing station won the TOH Ethiopia championship with its intense strawberry and cream aroma. This batch of green beans was then introduced into China by a Beijing green bean trader and was named "Flor Queen" because of its champion status. In the same year, Beijing's Li Jianfei used this 2017 champion Flor Queen coffee to win runner-up in the World Coffee Brewing Championship China region (most other competitors that year chose Geisha), and China's coffee community thus firmly remembered this bean.

Is Flor Queen 5.0 still the same Flor Queen as before?

No. As the climate continues to change, coffee beans are an agricultural product, so their flavor naturally changes as well. Although all Flor Queen series are produced at the "Buku Abel" processing station and all use the natural process, the formation of coffee flavor is affected by multiple factors such as climate and soil. Therefore, DW distinguishes Flor Queen coffee by version each year: Flor Queen 2.0 in 2018, Flor Queen 3.0 and 3.1 in 2019, Flor Queen 4.0 in 2020, and Flor Queen 5.0 in 2021—that is, this year.

How does Front Street's roaster bring out Flor Queen 5.0's gentleness?

New-crop green coffee has a relatively high moisture content, and during roasting, the moisture in the green beans affects heat transfer, making incomplete dehydration likely. At this point, the beans may look roasted on the outside while the core is still underdeveloped. To avoid this, Front Street recommends extending the dehydration phase when roasting Flor Queen 5.0 (that is, the time from the turning point to the yellowing point); at the same time, to highlight the sweetness and fermented notes brought by the natural process, Front Street's roaster also appropriately lengthened the Maillard phase (that is, the time from the yellowing point to first crack). Flor Queen 5.0 is grown at an altitude of 2,250 m to 2,350 m, and the beans are relatively hard, so heat needs to be increased before first crack to avoid overly long first-crack development and the loss of the coffee's sweet-and-acidic flavors.

How does Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) bring Flor Queen coffee beans' gentleness into the mouth?

| Hot pour-over method & iced pour-over method

To fully extract Flor Queen 5.0's rich layering, Front Street uses a relatively high water temperature and a finer grind, but to avoid over-extraction caused by high temperature, it pairs this with a faster-flow dripper, such as the V60. The V60 dripper is a 60-degree cone, and this angle allows the coffee grounds to gather centrally; when pouring, the water also automatically converges toward the center of the dripper, ensuring enough contact time between water and coffee grounds and thus extracting a suitable coffee liquid. In addition, the ribs on the inside of the V60 dripper form a clockwise spiral extending from the bottom to the top, leaving ample space between the filter paper and the dripper for better water flow; combined with the large hole at the bottom, the overall flow rate is faster than that of many drippers.

The parameters and brewing method for hot pour-over are as follows: water temperature 90°C, coffee-to-water ratio 1:15, dose 15 g, medium-fine grind (80% passing through a Chinese No. 20 standard sieve).

First, use 30 g of water to fully wet the coffee bed so that it forms a "hamburger" shape, and let it bloom for 30 seconds; for the second pour, when the timer reaches 1:00, pour water until it reaches 125 g, then stop, and wait until the water level drops to two-thirds of the coffee bed before pouring the third stage; for the third pour, when the timer reaches 1:40, pour water until it reaches 225 g, and after the coffee liquid has fully dripped through, the total extraction time is 1:59. After extraction is complete, gently swirl to make the coffee liquid fully even before tasting.

The parameters and brewing method for iced pour-over are as follows: water temperature 91°C, coffee-to-water ratio 1:10, dose 15 g, medium-fine grind (85% passing through a Chinese No. 20 standard sieve), 100 g ice cubes. Also use a three-stage pour: the first stage pours 30 ml and blooms for 30 seconds, the second stage pours 60 ml, and the third stage pours another 60 ml; then pour the coffee liquid into a cup containing 100 g of ice cubes and shake evenly.

| Ice drip method

Front Street's method for making ice drip coffee is: place 60 g of coffee grounds in the coffee powder chamber and extract 600 ml of coffee liquid, for a coffee-to-liquid ratio as high as 1:10. For grind size, choose a setting slightly finer than for pour-over; judged by a No. 20 sieve, the passing rate is about 85%. Use a 1:1 ratio of ice to water, and control the flow-control valve at a rate of 7 drops every 10 seconds. The entire extraction process lasts about 6 to 8 hours. After extraction is complete, bottle it and chill it for 12 hours before drinking.

| Cold brew method

Taking Front Street's everyday cold brew production as an example, the coffee beans are ground slightly finer than for pour-over, that is, a 75% to 80% passing rate through a Chinese No. 20 standard sieve; visually, it is about the texture of fine granulated sugar, corresponding to a setting of 9.5 to 10 on an EK43s. For a hand grinder, taking the C40 as an example, it is about 22 to 26 clicks.

Next, pour the ground coffee into a clean container—it can be a dedicated cold brew pitcher or a mineral water bottle—add room-temperature water at a 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio, stir evenly, seal with plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator to steep for more than 8 hours (12 hours or less is best). Finally, filter out the coffee grounds with filter paper, and the cold brew portion is ready.

The coffee-to-water ratio for cold brew is usually what everyone cares about most. Front Street believes that if you drink it directly without adding anything else, you can use a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:12 to 1:13, because black coffee made in this range has the highest drinkability and also captures aroma relatively fully. But considering that fresh milk will be added at the end, the coffee concentration needs to be increased so that it will not be diluted too much later; here Front Street recommends making it at a ratio of 1:10 to 1:11, which is more suitable.

Finally, Front Street would like to remind you once more: generally speaking, for the sake of flavor experience and health and safety, whether it is ice drip or cold brew, for any extraction method carried out in a low-temperature environment, Front Street recommends drinking it within 5 days from the date of production.

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