When you go to a cafe and want to order a cup of American style or milk coffee, you will often be faced with two options: one is the default Italian blend, and the other is SOE that requires extra money. At this time, some people may wonder, why is this "SOE" more expensive than the blend? How expensive is it?
SOEWhat the heck is coffee?
First of all, SOE and blending are both terms in the category of Italian coffee. SOE (single origin espresso) refers to espresso made using coffee beans from a single origin, which is different from house blend espresso.
In the era when "sour coffee" was not yet popular, the raw materials used by major coffee shops to make concentrates were almost all coffee beans that were combined from two or more production areas. At that time, merchants would not emphasize where they came from, nor would they pay too much attention to the formula (proportion) used. At the same time, according to the mainstream taste at the time, coffee beans are usually roasted to a darker degree, which not only ensures stable extraction, but also allows espresso to easily have beautiful coffee crema and mellow body.
In the 1980s, with the release of the concept of "specialty coffee", high-quality single-origin beans that emphasized the flavor of the production area suddenly emerged and became a "superstar" on the coffee stage. They also attracted the attention of roasters and baristas, who tried to tap out more exquisite flavors.
According to Front Street’s understanding, single-origin coffee that emphasizes the flavor of the place of origin was initially extracted only in normal pressure methods such as hand brewing, siphoning, and French press. In 2007,world barista competitionAt the scene, contestant James Hoffmann made a single-origin coffee bean into espresso and won the championship. Immediately, SOE gradually became popular along with the international competition stage and the wave of specialty coffee.
Nowadays, in addition to more and more coffee shops adding SOE to their menus, we can also find "SOE" on major shopping platforms. Most of these coffee beans have very detailed flavor descriptions such as floral aroma, fruit, tea flavor, fermented wine flavor, etc., as well as detailed origin information. It can be seen that SOE has become one of the indispensable products in the coffee market. Coupled with the publicity and promotion of major chain brands, single-origin espresso coffee is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Why does it cost extra to replace SOE? How expensive is it?
For the definition of SOE, E = EspressoThere is no doubt about it, but the explanation of Single Origin is somewhat ambiguous. In theory, coffee beans harvested in the same batch from a certain production country, region, cooperative, estate or farm are all single-origin coffee. For example, on the blackboard on the left side of the front street bar, there are dozens of single-origin coffee beans from different origins, all of which can be used as SOE coffee beans.
But what is different from blending is that in order to make SOE different from traditional "bitter coffee", merchants will give priority to single-origin beans with higher reputation and more prominent flavor for production, especially coffee with a light to medium roasting degree, because this can show personalized flavors through concentration, such as the sour citrus of Front Street Yirgacheffe, the berry tone of Front Street Oiran, the sweetness of Front Street Honey-treated Geisha, the tomato aroma of Front Street Kenya...
All in all, the higher the recognition of coffee, the easier it is for people to remember the characteristics of the SOE. From a cost perspective, the price of higher-quality single-origin beans will be more expensive than ordinary blends, so naturally additional money will be required.
Why doesn’t Front Street sell SOE coffee?
Many friends think that SOE is nothing more than moving single-origin beans directly to make espresso. There are so many single-origin beans on Front Street, why not provide SOE coffee?
In fact, it is not easy for baristas to ensure that SOE tastes delicious and can be produced stably at the same time. Unlike hand brewing, espresso is a supercharged extraction, so it is easier to multiply the characteristics of coffee beans.SOE coffee is mostly lightly roasted, and the beans are harder in texture, requiring finer grinding and longer extraction time., so if you are not careful, it will lead to over-extraction or under-extraction, and the coffee will be either bitter or sour.
I once encountered this situation on Front Street Street. I drank a very good one in a coffee shop.SidamoSOE Australia White, I ordered the same coffee after a while, but it was not as delicious as the one I drank before. After asking, I learned that the batch of beans was not changed, and the roasting curve was not changed. In other words, the main reason was the extraction of espresso, which made the final taste better.SOE Australian white productionchanged.
From the perspective of Front Street, the stability of the product is very important, which is reflected in the adjustment parameters before opening the store every day and the stable extraction on the day. If all the items on the Front Street Bean List are applied to SOE, not to mention whether the equipment can keep up, it is already a very tedious task to find the corresponding parameters (grinding degree, powder-to-liquid ratio) for concentration. In the end, it also has to be customized for different flavor types of coffee.SOEAmerican,SOElatte,SOE Dirty...just think about itHeadache.
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
