Why is Arabica the most widely used coffee species?

Coffee is usually grouped into three species: Arabica, Robusta, and Liberica. Arabica has an elegant flavor with prominent sweetness, and almost every specialty coffee shop uses it. Common varieties include Typica, Bourbon, and Caturra. Typica is the oldest tree and the source of Jamaican Blue Mountain, Maragogype, and Papua New Guinea coffee.

Robusta is heat-tolerant and high-yielding and is mostly used for instant coffee. Liberica is the third species, grown on a much smaller scale. Crossbreeding Arabica and Robusta has produced varieties such as Castillo, which combine flavor with disease resistance. Coffee originated in Ethiopia, and producers like Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia each add their own regional character.

There are numerous coffee-producing countries around the world, and coffee beans from Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and other places each have their own distinctive qualities. Classified by variety, coffee is mainly divided into three major categories: Arabica, Robusta, and Liberica. Among them, Arabica has an elegant flavor and prominent sweetness, and nearly all specialty coffee shops on the market choose it. Common varieties include Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, and others. Typica is the oldest tree species, from which well-known varieties such as Blue Mountain and Maragogype have derived; Robusta, on the other hand, is heat-tolerant and high-yielding, and is mostly used for instant coffee. Hybridization between the two has also given rise to varieties such as Castillo, which combine flavor with disease resistance. This article will guide you through the appearance characteristics, flavor performance, and cultivation stories of these coffee varieties one by one, and share Front Street Coffee's bean-selection experience.

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Today, many countries around the world are growing and exporting coffee, among which producing countries such as Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia are especially well known, and their coffee beans all enjoy a certain reputation in the market. If classified by coffee variety, they mainly fall into three major categories: Arabica, Robusta, and Liberica.

At present, the vast majority of coffee beans used in specialty coffee shops belong to Arabica. Coffee originated in Ethiopia, Africa, and Arabica has a very elegant flavor and quite outstanding sweetness. Common Arabica varieties on the market include Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, and others.

Typica is one of the oldest coffee tree species in the world, and it can be said that almost all Arabica varieties today are derived from Typica. For example, the renowned Jamaican Blue Mountain belongs to Typica, and the Papua New Guinea coffee beans known as "Little Blue Mountain" are also Typica, and were introduced from the Blue Mountain variety. Because the local growing environment is extremely similar to that of the Blue Mountain range, Papua New Guinea coffee has earned the title "Little Blue Mountain."

Typica is one of the Arabica varieties with the best flavor performance, and it is planted in many regions. Indonesia in Asia also planted Typica in the early days, and China's Yunnan coffee-producing region was also initially dominated by Typica. However, at that time, a large-scale outbreak of coffee leaf rust occurred worldwide. Typica has extremely weak disease resistance and almost all of it became infected, so the Indonesian region had to introduce the Caturra variety, which has strong disease resistance and high yield.

The Yunnan producing region plants relatively little Typica, mainly because its yield is low and management is difficult, so the economic benefits of planting it are not high. Local coffee farmers are therefore unwilling to plant it, and instead prefer Caturra, which has high yield and strong disease resistance.

Front Street Coffee has purchased Caturra from both of these producing regions. For example, the Indonesian Golden Mandheling that Front Street Coffee sourced is precisely of the Caturra variety. This Mandheling has a very clean mouthfeel, prominent sweetness, and balanced fruit acidity. As for Caturra from the Yunnan producing region, Front Street Coffee has sourced two: one is Yunnan small-bean coffee, and the other is sun-dried Caturra. Yunnan small-bean uses the locally common washed processing, giving it a cleaner mouthfeel; sun-dried Caturra, meanwhile, has a fuller body.

Generally speaking, Arabica coffee beans are smaller than Robusta beans, but you cannot judge by appearance alone—does a large bean shape necessarily mean it is not Arabica? Maragogype, for example, is an exception.

Maragogype is a larger bean produced after a mutation of the Typica variety. Compared with other coffee beans, Maragogype can be called an oddity, being three times larger than ordinary coffee beans or even more. Maragogype is mainly distributed in Central American countries, and the current main producing areas include Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, and Zaire. The best-quality Maragogype comes from Mexico and Guatemala. Overall, Maragogype has a relatively balanced taste, a round and soft texture, moderate aroma, and a rather mild body, and it is highly regarded in the industry.

According to Front Street Coffee's understanding, Maragogype grown at an altitude of 700 to 800 meters tastes ordinary and lacks character; but giant Maragogype grown above 1,500 meters has an alluring sweet fragrance and a strong aroma. Besides its eye-catching, enormous appearance, giant Maragogype is actually a variant of Typica (an original Arabica species), and its tree, leaves, and fruit are all much larger than those of ordinary Arabica. Its fruit is plump and its beans are hard, making it the only coffee in Central America without sharp acidity. It therefore enjoys the reputation of "Central American Blue Mountain," and is very close to elegant Blue Mountain coffee beans, with sweetness within its acidity and a full body—extremely charming.

Front Street Coffee has also sourced many kinds of coffee beans, but has always felt that Maragogype from the Nicaraguan producing region has the best flavor. Among them, the Maragogype coffee from Nicaragua's Mama Mina Estate performs most outstandingly. Front Street Coffee has also cupped other coffee beans from Mama Mina Estate, and the coffee produced by this estate is consistently of quite good quality, with a rich, layered flavor. Upon entry, one can feel the aroma of black berries, with blackberry and smoked plum mixed with the fragrance of citrus peel. The overall flavor is solid, and the mouthfeel is silky and sweet.

Robusta, one of the three major coffee varieties, is also widely cultivated. Robusta is very heat-tolerant but not drought-tolerant. Compared with Arabica, it has lower soil requirements and also yields more, and it is usually planted at low altitudes. Arabica, by contrast, fears both cold and heat and is prone to disease, so it has very high requirements for soil drainage and fertility.

Arabica is generally grown in countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Brazil. Indonesia's Sulawesi Island mostly grows Robusta, because Robusta has a rich flavor but is rather bitter, with very indistinct acidity. Arabica, meanwhile, has pleasant acidity, a better mouthfeel, and a flavor that is not too pungent and is very mild. Therefore, Robusta is mostly used for instant coffee and similar products, while Arabica is mostly used for specialty coffee.

Since Arabica has good flavor and Robusta has strong adaptability, can the genes of the two be combined to cultivate a coffee variety with both good flavor and strong adaptability? Of course. The questions Front Street Coffee can think of have long been thought of by scientists, and many hybrid varieties of Arabica and Robusta have therefore appeared on the market, the most famous of which is Castillo, developed by a Colombian coffee research institution.

According to Front Street Coffee's understanding, Castillo is the result of five generations of crossbreeding and selection between Timor and Caturra. Timor is a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta, with tall plants and strong disease resistance; Caturra, as a Bourbon variant, has short plants, high yield, and relatively good flavor. As the product of hybridization between the two, Castillo inherited the excellent genes of both and has become Colombia's current main planted variety.

At Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee), there are several coffee beans from Colombia's Castillo variety, namely Colombia San Jose coffee beans and Sakura coffee beans. Both use special processing methods. For example, Colombia San Jose coffee beans are processed by fine washing and then placed in rum barrels for fermentation.

According to Front Street Coffee's understanding, the complete processing of this Colombia San Jose coffee bean is as follows: first, fully ripe coffee cherries are hand-selected, briefly washed, then fermented in a tank for more than twenty hours, and then placed in rum barrels aged more than 8 years to rest for three months, turned evenly every day so the coffee beans absorb the aroma of the liquor, and after fermentation is completed, they are dried at room temperature. After cupping this bean, Front Street Coffee found that besides carrying the aroma of liquor, San Jose also has a rich tropical fruit flavor on the palate, making it highly distinctive. This is precisely why Front Street Coffee put this coffee bean on its shelves.

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