What is the difference between hard beans and soft beans in coffee? What is the difference between the altitude of coffee growing? How to classify coffee levels?

We can often hear the words "hard beans and soft beans" in the conversation of baristas, such as what soft beans are easier to grind, hard beans are difficult to extract, and so on. But when we picked up the so-called soft beans and pinched them up, we found out, yeah? It's not soft either! Why would a barista say it is a soft bean?

What are hard beans / soft beans? in fact, soft beans and hard beans do not refer to the flexibility of the bean, but its density! Why? Because in the beginning, the term "hard beans" comes from the grade of coffee beans! Such as Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala and other Central American countries, their coffee bean grading system is based on altitude. The higher the altitude of the coffee beans, the higher the density of the beans and the higher the grade of the beans.

As mentioned earlier in Qianjie, the higher the altitude, the lower the temperature. Such an environment will slow down the growth and development, or ripening time, of coffee beans. For example, coffee beans grown at 1000 meters above sea level can be harvested in only half a year, while coffee beans grown at 1500 meters take about a year. During this period, coffee beans can absorb and accumulate more abundant substances, adding delicacy to the final coffee. As a result, most Central American countries do not use "size" as a grading method like those in the old producing areas. Instead, the elevation of coffee beans is used as a measure of whether beans are good or bad.

To put it simply, the higher the altitude of the beans, the longer it takes for the beans to mature, the more things they accumulate, the harder the beans are, and the more delicious the coffee they end up drinking. Now that we've come to this point, let's take a look at how coffee is graded in the coffee producing areas of Central America.

The above is the Panamanian classification standard, we need to note that although there are many producing countries that use altitude classification. However, because the planting areas and average elevations vary from country to country, the classification of different countries will have different altitude standards. It is worth mentioning that some countries do not use elevation / bean hardness for grading, nor do they use a grading system of size. Yes, we are talking about Ethiopia! Ethiopia's average altitude is very high, so it does not need to be graded by altitude at all. Most beans are very hard beans.

To sum up, we can know that the hard beans in the mouth of the barista actually refer to the hard beans planted at high altitude. Since hard beans refer to hard beans grown at higher elevations, soft beans naturally refer to beans grown at lower elevations and less dense. In addition to altitude, in the growth and development stage of coffee beans, there are many factors that can affect the density of coffee beans. For example, the planting environment, climatic conditions and so on.

It is true that high-hardness coffee will taste better (relatively speaking), but at the same time, it will also add more obstacles to all aspects of making coffee. Qianjie believes that friends who use hand grinding should have a deep understanding that coffee beans that are also shallow-baked will be more laborious for beans with high elevations. This situation is also well demonstrated during cooking, just like a friend who left a message at the bottom of the article on the front street a while ago, the shallow baked Yejashifen is more likely to block the water, simply because it is shallow, harder and denser. But maybe this is the so-called wind and waves, the bigger the fish, the more expensive, in the case of paying more, we also reap a proportional delicacy ~

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FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。

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