Front Street Espresso(Espresso) is a coffee drink with a strong taste. It is made by using hot water at about 92 degrees Celsius and passing it through very finely ground coffee powder at a high pressure of 9 bar to extract the coffee liquid. Many customers are at a loss when buying coffee beans and don’t know how to choose. FrontStreet Coffee will discuss how to choose coffee beans.
Front Street Italian Coffee BeansSelection ideas
Roasting degree: Let’s start from this perspective. Whether it is single-origin coffee beans or blended coffee beans, we should first pay attention to its roasting degree. It is not suitable to use some lighter roasted coffee for Italian coffee. Lightly roasted coffee retains more acidity and less oil. If used as espresso, it will be a cup of acidic and thin coffee. For example, many single-origin coffee beans on the market that are specially designed for Pour over(V60) coffee are actually not very suitable for Italian coffee.
When purchasing, please check clearly the degree of roasting on the coffee beans or whether it is marked as suitable for espresso machines.
Blend coffee and SOE coffee: SOE's full name is "Single Origin Espresso", which translates as single-origin espresso. This concept exists relative to blended espresso. Although SOE represents single-origin espresso, it does not necessarily equal specialty coffee. If you select single-origin coffee beans with easily identifiable and strong flavors as SOE, you can create espresso with a unique and typical flavor.
At the same time, the characteristic of "single origin" is also a disadvantage. If you choose coffee beans with insufficient flavor intensity or unpleasant taste, it will be amplified in the espresso, making it easier to drink the defects and bad taste. Therefore, the requirements for the barista's senses and SOE bean selection need to be stricter.
Blend coffee: Blend coffee, also known as blended coffee, is to mix various single-origin coffee beans together, so as to give full play to the characteristics of various single-origin coffee beans. The blended beans are mixed from coffee beans from different origins to create a more balanced taste.
Coffee is a crop, so even if it is the same coffee bean, its flavor will vary from year to year, so blending several coffee beans together can solve this problem very well. When a certain coffee bean in the blend does not taste as expected or is in short supply in the new production season, it can be adjusted by replacing coffee beans with similar flavor.
The advantage of blending coffee is that it can use the flavor characteristics of the origins to complement each other to form a stable flavor, and it will also have obvious advantages in price.
Front Street Italian Coffee BeansMixing plan
Depending on the type of coffee, the blended espresso beans will have different characteristics in taste and flavor.
1. Front Street’s basic Italian blended coffee beans that are characterized by economical benefits
Recipe: Brazilian red bourbon beans (70%), Yunnan arabica coffee beans (30%).
This espresso coffee beans focus on high cost performance. Front Street uses a blend of all-Arabica beans from Brazil and Yunnan, China, to ensure that the extracted espresso has the classic nutty cream aroma and dark chocolate flavor while taking advantage of the price. It is suitable for personal daily ration consumption or low-cost coffee beans. It is also suitable for shop owners and home users who prioritize cost and have average taste requirements.
2. Front Street Commercial Italian-style blended coffee beans characterized by strong aroma and rich oils
Recipe: Colombian (30%), Brazilian (60%), Robusta (10%).
Taking into account the diversity of the audience, Front Street needs to use strong-flavored coffee beans to create strong-flavored blended beans. These coffee beans include Colombian coffee beans with a strong nutty chocolate flavor, Brazilian coffee beans with a soft bitter taste, and Robusta coffee beans with a mellow taste and rich oil. The coffee beans prepared in this way have a strong bitter taste, are deeply loved by coffee lovers, and can meet the daily needs of opening a shop.
3. High-quality classic Front Street boutique Italian blended coffee beans
Recipe: Brazil (70%), Colombia (30%).
The traditional classic Italian coffee flavor is a rich nutty chocolate tonality. Front Street takes this classic flavor as the taste target of this blending recipe. If you want to have an excellent flavor, you must choose high-quality Arabica coffee beans. Front Street uses a blend of Brazilian and Colombian Arabica coffee beans. The balance and nutty tone of Brazilian coffee beans and the mellowness of Colombian coffee beans give this blended beans a good performance. The priority of blending is both stability and flavor. The espresso beans produced are rich in oil and delicate, with a mellow taste and nutty main notes with a slightly acidic flavor. It is suitable for use with some specialty coffee beans and can also meet the daily production needs of coffee shops.
4. Front Street Sunflower Warm Yang Italian blended coffee beans with specialty coffee flavor
Recipe: Front Street Honduran sherry (70%), Front Street Yirgacheffe red cherry (30%).
Front Street named this unique Front Street Italian coffee bean Sunflower Warm Sun. As its name suggests, the aroma of this Front Street Italian blended coffee bean is as comforting as the warm sun, and its taste and flavor are eye-catching. Mainly based on Front Street Honduran sherry coffee beans with a fragrant fermented wine aroma, and paired with Front Street Yirgacheffe red cherry coffee beans known for their sour taste, a comprehensive coffee with rich aroma can be prepared.
Like the extraction parameters of Pour over(V60) coffee, espresso coffee pays more attention to the extraction parameters. The following will explain the amount of coffee powder, powder-to-liquid ratio, extraction time, flow rate, extraction pressure, and extraction temperature for analysis.
Amount of coffee powder
The amount of coffee powder is determined by the capacity of the powder bowl. For example, some coffee machine manufacturers will provide double powder bowl capacity specifications such as 16g, 18g, 20g, 22g, etc. These specifications are recommended capacities, and the maximum error in the filling powder amount is ±1g. For example, using an 18g powder bowl, the reasonable powder amount range can be 17-19g.
Front Street does not recommend the amount of powder that is much less or much more than the size of the powder bowl. The amount of powder will affect the density of the powder cake. Under the same filling pressure, too little powder will be sparse, resulting in a faster flow rate and insufficient extraction. On the contrary, the density will be denser, the flow rate will be slower, and it will even be difficult to extract the coffee liquid.
Powder to liquid ratio
Espresso uses the ratio of coffee powder to espresso liquid, because you can't deduce how much water is used for extraction. Of course, there are new coffee machines with a turntable installed on the water inlet to display the amount of water. The initial extraction ratio is a single powder concentration standard, and 7-8g of powder is used to extract 25-30ml of concentrated coffee liquid. The former is a unit of weight, and the latter is a unit of capacity (volume). When the density is the same, the two are equal. However, we all know that the extracted espresso contains golden oil, and the thickness of this layer of oil depends on the roasting degree and freshness of the coffee. Therefore, using this measurement method will cause the product to be unstable.
All have the ratio of powder weight to liquid weight. Generally, it will be between 1:1.5 and 1:2.5. It is more common to use a ratio of 1:2, such as 20g of coffee powder to extract 40g of coffee liquid. The ratio is affected by two factors, one is the amount of powder and the other is the amount of water. If the ratio is too low, the coffee will taste very rich and heavy, and it is easy to have a bitter taste caused by over-extraction. On the contrary, if the ratio is too high, the drink will taste dull and sour due to insufficient extraction.
Extraction time
Time refers to the entire extraction time from buttoning up the handle and pressing the extraction button to the end of extraction. The factors that affect the extraction time are grinding degree and ratio. The ratio is easier to understand. If the ratio is higher, more water is needed for extraction, and the time will naturally be longer. The grinding degree affects the thickness of the coffee powder, and the thickness will directly affect the density of the coffee powder. The finer the coffee powder, the denser the powder cake will be after filling, making it difficult for water to pass through, and the time will be lengthened and easily lead to over-extraction. Generally speaking, the time to brew an espresso is about 20-30 seconds.
flow rate
The flow rate is the speed at which the coffee liquid flows down. The final goal of our extraction parameters is actually a result of the flow rate. Normal espresso needs to start dripping the first drop of coffee liquid about five seconds after pressing the extraction button, and the subsequent flow rate is relatively uniform. The speed of the flow rate will directly reflect whether the grinding degree and proportion are appropriate. If it takes more than 10 seconds (excluding pre-soaking) before the first drop of coffee liquid comes out, then the powder may be too fine, or the powder may be too dense. If the flow rate is too fast or the jet phenomenon occurs, the powder is too thick, or a channel effect occurs.
Extraction pressure
Generally speaking, the extraction pressure of semi-automatic coffee machines is around 9bar, which is determined by the performance of the coffee machine. Now some coffee machines have a variable pressure extraction function. Low pressure results in low extraction efficiency, while high pressure results in high extraction efficiency.
Extraction temperature
The water temperature for extracting espresso coffee is generally between 90 and 94 degrees Celsius. If the water temperature is too high, it will easily be over-extracted and the coffee will taste bitter. If the water temperature is too low, it will be under-extracted, resulting in a sour coffee taste.
Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account cafe_style)
For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat, WeChat ID: kaixinguoguo0925
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
