Aroma of Pu’er coffee spreads through competitions

Yunnan Green Coffee Competition, where high-quality coffee beans are gathered and graded by professional coffee tasters, has been hosted for eleven consecutive years.

“Every year I could learn something different in the competition. It is a valuable chance for me to exchange ideas with other coffee beans graders,” Chen Fang, a quality inspector that are good at processing and selecting coffee beans, said.

Chen works for Yunnan International Coffee Exchange, initiator of Pu’er Green Coffee Competition. This mixed-ownership company is more than a platform for sellers and buyers. It has been playing the role of spreading the idea of specialty coffee beans in Pu’er.

Currently, over 95 percent of coffee in China is produced in Yunnan, with over 60 percent of Yunnan's coffee coming from Pu'er. However, consumers’ changing tastes require producers in this coffee capital to double their efforts to enhance beans’ quality and branding. The competition of green coffee bean was initiated in 2013 to meet this demand.

“When we first started the green coffee bean competition, many producers here just sent us unshelled or unprocessed beans, which showed that few people understand the value specialty coffee beans,” said Liu Haifeng, deputy general manager of YCE.

Liu Haifeng is introducing the history of green coffee competition

Liu wanted coffee farmers to realize why quality matters. After the competition in 2015, the YCE hosted the first coffee auction in China, where the best beans were sold for 2,600 yuan a kilogram (about 360 US dollars per kilo).

Given the positive outcome in the first three years, this competition was upgraded to provincial level in 2016 to further promote Pu’er coffee industry. Given its rising importance, it takes three to four months to prepare the annual competition that lasts for a week. Participants started to register for this year’s competition in January but the final results were released by the end of April.

Beans should be well collected and roasted before professional graders did the cupping. Every coffee on the cupping table is brewed in two to three separate cupping bowls. This could help to prevent any mishaps from influencing the assessment of a coffee. Chen, the quality inspector, said that her job in preparing for cupping is to check the beans’ size, defect rate, and moisture before storage.

Chen is doing the cupping

“I participate more in roasting beans.” As coffee roasting initiates a bunch of complex chemical reactions that create the rich flavors, Chen deemed this step important to maintain the fairness of the competition because the processing method should be consistent for every participant’s beans.

In 2023, YCE continued the form of "cloud cupping" that started in pandemic when offline participation was difficult. As judges in different cities outside Pu’er are recruited to grade beans, the competition will be better known and accepted in this industry.

The influence should not be restricted to the domestic market. YCE knew that other countries still dominated coffee market, so it has done a lot to seek more global exposure.

Ted Lingle, former executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), has been a senior consultant with the YCE since 2015. He led 20 professional, trained tasters, or q-graders to the green coffee competition that year, which marked that the international standard was officially introduced to Pu’er. It is worth highlighting that q-grader certificate issued by the Coffee Quality Institute is one of the most prestigious awards in the coffee community worldwide.

Zhang Yong, head of the publicity section in Pu’er Tea and Coffee Development Center, also that the competition is well recognized due to its internationality.

Zhang really valued Pu’er International Specialty Coffee Expo, another high-level activity organized by YCE to promote Pu’er coffee. Through the platform of the Coffee Expo, many domestic and foreign coffee organizations, suppliers and buyers have established trade routes and deep cooperative relations. There are various professional events, including the final of the China Pu’er Coffee World Syphon Competition, the World Aeropress Championship-Pu 'er station, Yunnan Cup Coffee Bakers All-around Competition, the PCAPCA Latte Art Master All-Star Competition, Yunnan Green Coffee Competition, and the Special Coffee Testing.

However, Zhang also mentioned that expenditure will also be a little too high when the competition goes global. “We will cover all the fees when we invite experts from other countries,” he said.

But he showed his confidence in promoting Pu’er coffee. This government official expects coffee competitions to be more diverse in the following years than before.