For more specialty coffee knowledge, please follow our WeChat official account: Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)

Everyone's perception and preference for coffee taste is different. Some friends think of coffee as that rich, bitter brew, some love sour coffee, and others like their coffee with milk and sugar. Today we'll only discuss black coffee—are there any coffee beans that taste very sweet? First, let's understand why coffee has sweetness.

Coffee beans contain sucrose-like substances. Although there isn't much, and it's often masked by high acidity or high bitterness, this is a genuine source of sweetness. Next is aroma—when we smell honey, sweet fruit, caramel, or maple syrup notes in coffee, it's because of compounds like furanones and terpenones present in the coffee.

Coffee beans go through processing after being harvested from coffee cherries; in the end, they are part of a fruit, and ripe fruit is sweeter than unripe fruit. Therefore, processing only fully red cherries is a prerequisite for ensuring coffee quality. During processing, the more substances involved in fermentation, the higher the sweetness of the coffee beans. So, if you like pronounced sweetness, you can try coffee beans that are sun-dried, black honey processed, or anaerobically sun-dried.

The most direct factor affecting coffee sweetness is the roast level. The lighter the roast, the more sour the coffee; the darker the roast, the more bitter. Coffee closest to a medium roast has the best sweetness.

If we make a simple, rough division, coffee beans with higher sweetness can also be split into two directions: sweet with acidity, and sweet amid bitterness.

Sweet with acidity is currently a flavor type that many people like. It shows up specifically as the taste of ripe fruit, and it's very pleasant to drink. Front Street would like to share a few highly popular coffee beans for your reference.

The first is Yirgacheffe Sun-Dried Red Cherry.

This coffee bean is a classic representative of relatively high sweetness among light-roasted coffees. This bean was the first to propose fully red cherry sun-dried processing, so its quality is very high. Front Street used a medium-light roast, giving this bean a tasting profile that smells of ripe fruit, with an obvious fermented aroma and berry notes on entry; as it cools slightly, there's citrus acidity, creamy smoothness, and a ripe grape juice-like finish.

The second is Strawberry Candy coffee beans.

This is a Front Street-selected blend combining high-altitude coffees from two origins. It combines Panama washed Geisha and Costa Rica honey-processed coffee. To maximize the strengths of both origins, Front Street used a medium roast, allowing the coffee to retain rich floral and fruity notes while also highlighting roast-related aromas. When brewed, it presents caramel, raisins, dried fruit, and a sweet, luscious rose floral note.

The third is the Musician Series Mozart coffee bean.

Costa Rica's Mozart is characterized by a Kyoho grape-like sweetness, and it has long been loved by many friends. This coffee bean uses a raisin honey processing method, allowing the coffee cherries to ferment slowly. Front Street used a medium-light roast to highlight this bean's very rich aromas of raisins, roses, and fermented wine.

When bitterness and sweetness exist in the same pot of coffee, what we often notice first is bitterness. After swallowing, a sweet aftertaste remains at the base of the tongue. This pleasing sweetness that bitter coffee naturally carries is what people often describe as "hui gan," or the sweetness that comes after bitterness, and it is most common in medium-dark roasted coffees. For example, Blue Mountain No. 1 and Golden Mandheling show this kind of finish.

Coffee that shows sweetness amid bitterness mainly has nuts and dark chocolate as its main notes, bringing out obvious sweetness of sucrose, maple syrup, and caramel. It is the first choice for friends who don't like sour coffee. Front Street would like to share a few enduringly popular coffee beans for your reference.

The first is Queen's Estate Yellow Bourbon coffee beans.

Queen's Estate Yellow Bourbon is a coffee bean Front Street really likes. Its biggest feature is good sweetness, and it's an all-purpose bean (suitable for pour-over, French press, moka pot, and espresso machines). Queen's Estate itself is a specialty estate in Brazil, and the Yellow Bourbon variety is an excellent cultivar. Sun-dried processing also makes the coffee notably sweet. Front Street used a medium roast, showing flavors of nuts, cream, sucrose, and soft fruit acidity.

The second is Front Street2013coffee beans.

This is coffee grown by Front Street in Yunnan. Many people know that Front Street shares coffee knowledge and roasts coffee beans, but few know that Front Street grows coffee in Yunnan. As early as 2013, Front Street began growing coffee in Lincang, Yunnan, proceeding step by step through site selection, breeding, planting, and management. What Front Street grows is the Typica variety, an Arabica variety with excellent flavor. It uses sun-dried processing and, after a medium roast, shows very high dried-fruit sweetness, plum, yellow sugar, and chocolate.

If you think all the coffees above are bitter, then if you want something sweet, the only option is to add sugar, and how much to add depends on your own preference.

In Front Street's view, everyone's dietary habits are different, so their ability to perceive sour, sweet, bitter, and salty will naturally differ. Even when drinking the same pot of coffee, perhaps some people find it very bitter while others think it's very sweet. If you don't want the barista to serve you what you consider "bitter coffee," you might as well add one more sentence when ordering: whether the coffee you want to drink is fruity and sweet-sour, sweet from a dark roast, sweet and aromatic in flavor, or sweet with extra sugar.……

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