What should buyers know about Frontstreet Coffee beans?

Frontstreet Coffee is a Guangzhou café founded in 2013 that roasts its own beans and sells them through Tmall and Taobao stores. Its lineup covers classic single origins such as Blue Mountain No. 1, Red Label Geisha, Hualei, Gudingding, and Kenya AA, and the shop serves only coffee with a small biscuit. Its official account posts coffee knowledge daily.

The online stores ship freshly roasted beans, so the main decisions are bean choice, whether to order pre-ground coffee, and how to store it. Pour-over options alone run to more than fifty bean types, spanning fruity and nutty profiles. Pre-grinding trades convenience for faster staling, so whole beans with airtight storage keep flavor longer.

Want to buy fresh, great-tasting coffee beans online but don't know which Taobao shop is reliable? Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) was founded in Guangzhou in 2013 and has now been around for eight years, making it a well-regarded, long-established in-house roasting café in the area. The shop offers only a cup of coffee and a small biscuit, with no cakes or desserts for sale, focusing on perfecting coffee to the extreme. Its official account updates coffee knowledge daily, and its Tmall and Taobao online stores offer a variety of freshly roasted beans, covering classic single-origin coffees such as Blue Mountain No. 1, Red Label Geisha, Hualei, Gudingding, and Kenya AA. This article will introduce Front Street's bean-selection philosophy, shipping freshness guarantees, and the pros and cons of pre-grinding services along with storage advice, helping you better choose and store coffee beans or ground coffee.

Since its founding in 2013, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) has always centered on in-house roasted coffee beans. As of this year, it has gone through eight years and is considered quite a veteran among cafés in Guangzhou. Since opening, the shop has never deviated from its original positioning—doing coffee itself well—so in the shop you can only get a cup of coffee with a small biscuit, and there are no cakes, desserts, or similar foods at all.

In addition, unlike many cafés, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)'s official account insists on updating every day. The reason for daily updates is the hope of sharing more coffee-related knowledge and giving more people a chance to learn about coffee.

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)'s shop is not large, but its variety of beans is quite rich. For pour-over coffee alone, there are more than fifty types of beans available in the shop. Therefore, if you usually have high standards for the variety of single-origin coffees, or want to try pour-over coffees from several different countries and regions, you can always find one here that suits your taste.

For coffee enthusiasts, in addition to popularizing brewing tips daily on its official account, Front Street has also opened online stores on Tmall and Taobao, supplying various freshly roasted coffee beans. The flavors range from fruity acidity to nutty aromas, the processing methods range from traditional techniques to innovative processes, and the varieties even cover the most common origins and types on the market today, such as Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1, Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda Red Label Geisha, Ethiopia Hualei, Yirgacheffe Gudingding, and Kenya AA—all classic single-origin coffees on Front Street's bean list.

Front Street's flavor descriptions for each coffee are based on freshly roasted beans. If coffee beans are left for more than a month, the aroma has likely already partly dissipated, making it difficult to reproduce the original performance when brewing. Front Street also understands how important freshness is, so it only ships coffee beans within 5 days after roasting, ensuring that everyone can enjoy the fullest flavor window when they receive them.

It is already a commonplace topic that freshly ground coffee tastes more fragrant when brewed, and we likewise understand the key role of freshness in coffee flavor. However, to avoid trouble, many friends ask merchants to grind the coffee beans into powder before shipping when buying beans. This way, when brewing, they neither have to worry about which grind setting to use nor spend effort slowly hand-grinding, saving both time and effort.

In response to this demand, Front Street also offers a "pre-grinding" service. As long as you note the extraction method when placing an order, Front Street will match the corresponding grind size for you, grind it with commercial equipment, seal it, and then send it out. But everyone knows that the moment coffee beans are just ground into powder, the aroma is at its fullest. These aromas actually come from volatile flavor compounds drifting through the air and being smelled by us. Before grinding, the coffee bean is a complete structure, and carbon dioxide can only be released slowly from the surface; once ground into powder, it means the surface area exposed to air increases greatly, and a large amount of carbon dioxide carries aroma compounds and escapes faster, naturally shortening the flavor window.

If you stock up in a relatively large quantity at one time and consume coffee slowly, Front Street suggests that after receiving pre-ground coffee powder, you immediately divide it into multiple sealed jars or sealed bags for storage, opening only as needed, so you don't have to worry about the aroma of the remaining coffee escaping while you repeatedly open and close the container.

After coffee beans are ground into powder, not only does carbon dioxide continue to dissipate over storage time, but the aroma of the brewed coffee also gradually weakens. Take Front Street's light-roast Yirgacheffe this time as an example: when just ground, it shows a crisp and bright character. As the coffee powder contacts air more often and storage time lengthens, the coffee's character slowly changes from fresh fruity sweetness and acidity to a rich caramel feel. By then, no matter how you adjust other parameters, it is difficult to reproduce the flavor from when it was just ground.

In fact, this type of medium-light roast coffee is originally mainly characterized by floral and fruity aromas, and after being ground into powder for a few hours, much of its essential aroma is already lost. So if you pursue this kind of flavor, when conditions allow, Front Street recommends that you equip yourself with a grinder, so you can experience the aroma brought by freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee.

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