For more knowledge about specialty coffee, please pay attention to: Front Street Coffee (Frontsteet Coffee）
SOE is a single-origin Italian style, origin is a single-origin Italian style, and Blend means a blend of coffee beans.
FrontStreet Coffee has discovered that more and more coffee stores have SOE options on their menus. So what is SOE? Why do some baristas recommend SOE coffee? In this article, Front Street will take you to find out.
What is SOE?
SOE is actually the abbreviation of Single Origin Espresso, which translates to: single origin espresso. That is to say, it emphasizes the espresso coffee made from a single origin. This term is relative to the traditional Italian blended coffee. It emphasizes the characteristics of the espresso from a single origin and makes it easier to identify the flavor of the origin, making it easier to increase the connection between the origin and consumers.
The rise of SOE is also closely related to the specialty of coffee. In the past, coffee production and export were based on a bulk commodity model, and the quality of coffee beans could not be well guaranteed for a long time. Therefore, if espresso is extracted from coffee beans from a single production area, the good flavors will be well expressed, while the negative flavors will also be clearly exposed. Therefore, Italian blended coffee came into being, using coffee from different production areas to carefully complement each other's advantages to form a balanced and stable flavor.
As the process of specialty coffee gradually deepens, coffee from some specialty coffee producing areas has excellent performance and has a clearly identifiable flavor. When used as SOE, you can taste its unique flavor and have a different experience. But what Front Street added is that there is no distinction between SOE and blended coffee. SOE can create amazing flavors by using the right beans. If used improperly, it will be another story. So don't oversell SOE. The key to the flavor performance of these two is the quality and appropriateness of the beans selected.
What are the advantages of SOE?
The biggest advantage of SOE is its single origin. The single-origin factor allows baristas to connect the flavor of the coffee to its origin, just as pour-over coffee does with single-origin coffee. At the same time, because there is only one coffee bean, the taste is not as complex as a blend, that is, compared with a blend, there will be a clearer flavor level (the difference between orange juice and compound juice, a single orange juice can better describe the taste of an orange, but compound juice is more difficult to describe the taste of all the fruits contained).
Therefore, many roasters will choose coffee beans from producing areas with obvious and easy-to-identify flavors to roast SOE, such as sun-dried Ethiopia, washed Kenya, washed Colombia, etc., which are all common SOE coffee bean producing areas.
What are the difficulties of SOE?
Although SOE is very common nowadays, and the method of making it is very simple: you only need to change the coffee beans from blended beans to single-origin coffee beans, but is it really that simple? FrontStreet Coffee believes that making SOE is simple, but extracting delicious SOE is not simple, and can even be said to be difficult. What's the difficulty? Just like its characteristics of a single origin, the purpose is to better display a clearer taste, which requires the combination of roasting and extraction.
In terms of roasting, because the flavor of the coffee origin must be reflected, the roasting degree cannot be too dark. Once it is too dark, the flavor of the origin itself will be wiped out. However, it cannot be too shallow, which will increase the acidity of the SOE espresso and cause an imbalance, which increases the difficulty of extraction. In terms of extraction, constant adjustments are required to achieve the ideal state. First, coffee is an agricultural product, and there are differences in each batch of coffee every year. Secondly, the coffee beans after roasting will exhaust gas, and the pressurized extraction of espresso is also very sensitive to many factors, and the freshness of the coffee beans is also a factor that affects the extraction SOE.
Because espresso will amplify the flavor in the coffee, whether good or bad, and single-origin coffee comes from a single origin, so its shortcomings are relatively easy to amplify. Therefore, factors such as roasting and particle size will affect the flavor. Therefore, if you want to make a delicious cup of SOE, you need to have certain requirements for various technologies. At this point, blended coffee beans can have a more stable performance.
The difference between SOE and Italian blended coffee beans
The superficial difference between the two is that SOE coffee highlights the coffee flavor of a single origin, while Italian blending maintains balance and stability, focusing more on the espresso itself. It follows that if SOE wants to make high-quality coffee, it must use good-quality coffee beans, which is also the reason why SOE's unit price is expensive.
The blended coffee is also divided into grades, and some use single-origin beans for blending. The blended coffee is not inferior to SOE in terms of flavor and price. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's sunflower warm sun blended beans use boutique-grade Yirgacheffe sun-dried red cherries and Honduran sherry. There are also blended coffees with a balanced taste that focus on price advantages, usually using Brazilian, Yunnan, or Robusta beans as the base.
In terms of roasting, in order to highlight the flavor, SOE usually does not bake it too darkly, usually between the first crack and the second crack. The blended coffee focuses on a balanced taste and is usually roasted darker.
What coffee beans are suitable for SOE?
Fresh and sweet flavor: FrontStreet Coffee recommends using Yirgacheffe sun-dried red cherries. Yirgacheffe is the most common SOE formula bean. This coffee comes from the Aletaland estate in Yirgacheffe, at an altitude of 1700-2200 meters. It uses whole red fruits and is sun-dried. It has a very rich fruit sweetness and floral aroma.
Because this bean is a red cherry project initiated by the Dutch Green Bean Company, it is known for its high quality during the processing process, which reduces the common problem of high sun-drying defects in the past. The sun-dried Yirgacheffe is full of sweetness and full of berry flavor, making it the best choice for making SOE coffee.
FrontStreet Coffee—Yirgacheffe Sun-Dried Red Cherry Coffee Beans
Production area: Yirgacheffe Aletaland estate
Altitude: 1700-2200 meters
Variety: Heirloom local native species
Treatment method: Sun treatment
Winey and fruity flavor: It is recommended to use Front Street Colombian Hija coffee. You can place an order directly through Front Street Taobao store or Front Street Tmall flagship store. This coffee comes from the boundary line estate of the Cymbidium production area. It is grown at an altitude of 1,700 meters. It uses double anaerobic sun treatment. It has a very rich grape, passion fruit, and citrus flavor. The soe Hija Americano coffee has a refreshing and clear grape juice tone, which is refreshing and pleasant.
FrontStreet Coffee—Colombia Hija coffee beans
Region of production: Colombia's Divide Estate
Altitude: 1700 meters
Breed: Cicada
Treatment method:Double anaerobic sun treatment
Balanced and mellow flavor: Front Street recommends the yellow bourbon from Brazil’s Queen’s Estate. This is one of the few coffees produced in the Brazilian manor model. It has a nice mellow taste, sweet nutty and sucrose flavors. It is very stable for producing SOE. It performs very well in terms of taste, with flavors of almonds, walnuts and cane sugar.
FrontStreet Coffee—Brazil Queen’s Manor Coffee Beans
Production area: Brazil Morgiana production area
Altitude: 1400-1900 meters
Variety: Yellow Bourbon
Treatment: Semi-sun drying
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
