What does the Huakui 6.0 green coffee bean taste like?

Huakui 6.0 is the 2022 release of the Ethiopian natural bean from Hambela that won the 2017 TOH Natural Group championship. Cupping against a Buku batch showed noticeable appearance defects in the pre-ordered Hongshun lot, so a second batch from the same washing station was compared side by side to check flavor consistency.

The X.0 series has been updated yearly since the bean's 2017 win, when Li Jianfei took the China region of the World Brewers Cup using it against mostly Geisha entries. The green coffee bean name Huakui, meaning head of the geishas, arguably applies only to the original winning batch. Flavor, lot quality, and Hambela prices shift with each harvest.

In the specialty coffee circle, Geisha and Huakui are two beans you can't avoid. Huakui's rise to fame stems from winning the 2017 TOH Natural Group championship, and the legendary experience of subsequently defeating Geisha in the China region of the World Brewers Cup. Since then, Huakui has been updated year by year with the X.0 series, from 2.0 to 5.0, with flavors and batches constantly changing. In 2022, Huakui 6.0 green beans arrived as scheduled. Front Street Coffee pre-ordered and received the Hongshun batch at the first opportunity, only to find that the beans had many appearance defects. To ensure quality, Front Street Coffee separately found another batch of Huakui from the same processing plant (buku) and conducted a cupping comparison. This article will detail the flavor characteristics of Huakui 6.0, its differences from 5.0, and the price and purchasing suggestions for the new-season Hambela Huakui, providing a reference for coffee enthusiasts.

In the domestic specialty coffee field, Geisha and Huakui are almost universally known. The former is a recognized top variety, while the latter made its name in a showdown with Geisha in 2017.

The story begins in 2004, when Panama's Hacienda La Esmeralda won that year's BOP championship with a coffee called "Geisha," and from then on Geisha ascended to the altar.

Time came to 2017. On the other side of the African continent, at the Taste of Harvest (TOH) competition, a natural bean from Hambela, Ethiopia, won the natural group championship. This in itself was not unusual, but in the same year, Li Jianfei from Beijing won the China region of the World Brewers Cup with this bean, while almost all of his competitors on stage were using Geisha. In other words, this bean defeated many Geisha contestants that year. Thus, Beijing Hongshun, the company responsible for introducing it, named it "Huakui," with a very straightforward meaning—Huakui, the head of the geishas (Geisha).

Front Street Coffee has always held that authentic Huakui coffee refers only to the batch that won the 2017 TOH natural championship. Other so-called same-batch, same-origin beans are like 1982 Lafite versus other Lafites, or Moutai liquor versus liquor produced in Maotai Town.

After that, new beans naturally could not casually bear the name Huakui. After all, flavor is something you taste, not something you see. When new beans do not possess the flavor of that year, continuing to use the name would only erode the IP's value. Thus, the X.0 series came into being: 2018 Huakui 2.0, 2019 Huakui 3.0 and 3.1, 2020 Huakui 4.0, 2021 Huakui 5.0. The processing plants also expanded from the original one buku to four. In other words, the difference between X.0 and the original is similar to iPhone iterations, except that iPhones get better with each generation, while coffee beans, as agricultural products, vary from year to year.

Although the later X.0 series no longer has the intense strawberry flavor of the original Huakui, it still comes from Ethiopia's specialty coffee-producing regions, so quality is still guaranteed. Therefore, the subsequent Huakui X.0 series continued to be highly sought after.

In 2022, Huakui 6.0 green coffee beans began pre-sale, and Front Street Coffee also pre-ordered a batch at the first opportunity, expected to arrive at port in April. However, due to shipping congestion, Front Street Coffee did not receive the Huakui 6.0 from Hongshun until June. Upon receipt, Front Street Coffee found that this year's Hongshun Huakui 6.0 contained a large number of flat beans and shell beans, with insufficiently plump particles. After roasting with as much visible defect removal as possible, many flat beans and irregular cracked beans were still found. According to Hongshun's explanation, insufficient rainfall at the end of 2021 led to a high flat-bean rate in mature coffee beans.

(The image above shows Hongshun Huakui 6.0 that Front Street Coffee screened at the green bean stage. After roasting, a random 15g sample could still yield this many defective beans.)

After discovering this problem, considering the excessively high rate of abnormal appearance in this batch of Huakui 6.0, Front Street Coffee truly could not sell it to customers. So they sought another batch of coffee beans from the same processing plant as Huakui (buku processing plant), and this batch of Huakui beans had a relatively plump appearance.

Front Street Coffee conducted a cupping comparison between Hongshun's new-season Huakui and the new-season Huakui that Front Street Coffee found. Hongshun's Huakui 6.0 had better sweetness, with notes of berries, honey, and fermentation. The 2022 new-season Huakui that Front Street Coffee found was very close in flavor to Huakui 5.0, with rich orange blossom aroma and berry-like fragrances, and when tasted, it had flavors of citrus, orange blossom, grapefruit, and honey, with a very strong juicy mouthfeel.

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