Where Do Single-Origin Coffee Bean Names Come From?

Most coffee bean names describe where the coffee was grown or who produced it. Yirgacheffe is an Ethiopian region, and names like Tintin, Kochere or Worka after it point to smaller cooperatives or washing stations there. In Central and South America, names such as Huila, Antigua, Blue Mountain or Kona usually mark a producing region or estate.

Other beans carry the title of a green coffee competition, as with TOH, COE and BOP lots that are sold under the award they won, such as a 2017 TOH champion or a 2020 Ethiopia COE lot. Estates also name coffee after their own product lines, and suffixes like G1, AA and SHB indicate grade or screen size rather than flavour.

Walking into Front Street Coffee and facing those long or short names on the bean list, many coffee lovers can't help but wonder: where exactly do these names come from? This article systematically sorts out the main naming methods for single-origin coffee beans—naming by producing region or producer, by green bean competition titles, by estate product lines, and the historical origins of the special name Mandheling. It also explains the meanings of common suffix letters and numbers such as G1, AA, and SHB, helping you understand the information behind the bean list so you can shop with greater confidence.

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At Front Street Coffee stores, customers often stare at the dense bean list for a long time without knowing where to start. Today, Front Street Coffee will talk about how these coffee bean names actually came to be.

Naming by producing region, origin, or producer

At present, the vast majority of single-origin coffee beans on the market use this naming logic, and the advantage is that consumers can tell the source of the beans at a glance. Take Yirgacheffe, which everyone is most familiar with—it is itself a famous coffee-producing region in Ethiopia. After Yirgacheffe, there is often a string of names attached—Tintin, Kochere, Beloya, Worka, and so on—which actually refer to smaller producer cooperatives or washing stations within the Yirgacheffe region.

The situation in Central and South America is different. There, people are more accustomed to naming coffee after independent estates or large coffee-producing regions. Examples include Colombia's Huila, Cauca, and Narino; Guatemala's Antigua and Huehuetenango; as well as Jamaica Blue Mountain and Hawaii Kona. These names all represent coffee-producing regions.

Naming by award titles from green bean competitions

Major green coffee competitions held every year, such as TOH, COE, and BOP, attract close attention from a large number of bean traders. Coffee beans that stand out in these competitions are often named directly after the titles they win. For example, the 2020 Ethiopia COE 22nd-place lot that Front Street Coffee previously won through auction, and the well-known 2017 TOH champion "Huakui," are both typical representatives of this naming method.

Naming by the estate's own product line

For some coffees with rare varieties or widely recognized outstanding flavor, estates usually adopt the method of estate name plus bean variety, such as Geisha, Pink Bourbon, and Pacamara.

Other estates or processing stations, because they have mastered unique processing techniques and can create distinctive flavors, give their products elegant and fitting names. The Musician Series from Finca El Injerto, Rose Valley from Finca El Arbol, and Sherry from Honduras Moca Estate all belong to this category.

There is also another type of naming driven by brand positioning and product grading needs. Hacienda La Esmeralda divides its coffees into several tiers: Esmeralda Special (Geisha Red Label), Private Collection (Geisha Green Label), Geisha 1500 (Geisha Blue Label), Diamond Mountain (specialty Catuai), and Palmyra (ordinary Catuai). The naming approach for the series products of Hacienda La Esmeralda is similar, and Panama Butterfly, Golden Mandheling (which will be discussed in detail later), and Guatemala La Flor also follow this path.

The origin of the name Mandheling

Mandheling is rather special. It is neither the name of a producing region nor a coffee variety, but the name of a local tribe that grows coffee—and it was originally misheard; the transliteration of the tribal name is actually "Mandailing." Today, Arabica coffee beans produced in North Sumatra can all be called Mandheling coffee.

Within Mandheling coffee there are further detailed classifications, and the naming methods are roughly as follows: those named by origin include Lintong Mandheling, Gayo Mandheling, and Lake Tawar Mandheling; those named by brand include Golden Mandheling and Tiger Mandheling. Golden Mandheling is the trademark of the Pawani company. Its most prominent feature lies in extremely strict bean screening standards—only beans of 18 screen size or above are selected, and after three rounds of manual hand sorting plus one round of machine screening, there are very few defects and the beans are plump. It is no exaggeration to call it the highest-quality Mandheling.

Tiger Mandheling (officially named Mandheling Sumatra Tiger) uses coffee beans from around Lake Tawar in Aceh. It carries an aroma similar to traditional Chinese herbal medicine, and only Mandheling of 17 screen size or above with a defect rate below 4% is qualified to bear the word "Tiger."

There is also Aged Mandheling, named for its special processing method. So-called Aged Mandheling is made by placing coffee beans that have completed wet-hulling into a temperature-controlled warehouse to age for 2 to 3 years. After a long period of maturation, Mandheling's original fruit acidity becomes softer and warmer, and its body and unique flavor perform even more impressively on the palate.

What do G1, AA, NO.1, and SHB each represent?

Many coffee bean names end with terms such as G1, G2, AA, and AB. These letters and numbers actually reflect the grade of the coffee. The grading standards adopted by different coffee-producing countries are not uniform: G1 and G2 are usually based on defect rate, with G1 representing the highest grade, such as Yirgacheffe G1; while AA and AB are graded by coffee bean size, for example Kenya AA represents Kenya's highest-quality coffee. SHB means Strictly Hard Bean and is generally a grading standard used by Central and South American countries.

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