Blended coffee beansAs a commonly used coffee bean for Italian coffee, its rich coffee flavor has been praised by many coffee drinkers. Hot recentlySOEIn contrast to blended coffee, what are the advantages of blended coffee now? In this article, FrontStreet Coffee will express its views on blended coffee.
What is a coffee blend?
Blend coffee, also known as blended coffee, is to mix various single-origin coffee beans together to fully bring out 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. For example, if a kind of coffee bean is smooth but lacks aroma, you can add another bean with rich aroma. The advantages of individual coffee beans can be used to complement each other and complement or enhance the taste, thereby creating a new and richer taste of coffee. Blended coffee is divided into raw blending and cooked blending. Raw blending refers to mixing coffee from different origins before roasting. Cooked blending refers to mixing the roasted coffee beans separately.
Which one is better, SOE or blended coffee?
Maybe some customers don’t understand why the coffee beans are put together. Isn’t single coffee the best? In fact, in Front Street’s view, each bean has its own advantages and disadvantages. Maybe the coffee liquid extracted by the espresso machine from this bean does not have enough oil, so you can add coffee beans with rich oil to complement it: if the espresso extracted from this bean is too sour, too bitter, and too sweet, then you can find a complementary one to blend with each other to achieve the desired coffee flavor. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
Whether it is pre-mixed with raw beans (raw blend), or roasted separately and then blended (cooked blend). Both methods are acceptable depending on the characteristics of the coffee in the recipe. Post-roast blending provides a different degree of roasting for each bean so that each ingredient brings out the best in it.
We often like to pair Italian coffee withSOEIt's not really fair to compare the flavors of the two. It's very simple. Italian blended coffee has a purpose. There are many purposes, which can be roughly divided into three types.
1. Reduce costs
Some cafes will use lower-quality coffee beans mixed with better-quality coffee beans to reduce costs and increase sales profits.
2. Create long-term and stable flavor
We have to admit that coffee is an agricultural product. Different production seasons in the same production area or even different batches within a year will produce different flavors. The disadvantages of a single origin are exposed here. You cannot confidently guarantee that you will be able to drink coffee from a single origin next year that tastes good this year (except for coffee beans that are processed in a way that dominates the coffee flavor, and other factors between the origin and the cafe will also cause the coffee beans you buy to taste different from the past).
So one of the purposes of blending is to create a product that can be supplied for a long time and has a long-term flavor stability. When the quality of one of the coffee beans cannot meet the requirements or changes in the new production season, you can find similar coffee beans to replace them to achieve the purpose of stability.
3. Create flavors that cannot be produced by a single coffee bean
Sometimes coffee beans from a single origin are like a person, with both strengths and weaknesses, and blending is like organizing a team to use their strengths to make up for each other's weaknesses, so as to achieve the effect of complementing each other.
It's like using a coffee bean with a higher sweetness and a coffee bean with a higher acidity to achieve a sweet-sour balance, or adding a certain amount of Brazilian beans to the coffee beans to improve the overall body. These are the purposes of blending.
Each of these purposes also represents the flavor trend of the blended coffee. For example, to reduce costs, it is impossible to use better quality coffee beans, and there is no need to delve into its flavor. FrontStreet Coffee believes that in order to create a flavor that cannot be produced by a single coffee bean or to blend coffee beans using high-quality and distinctive single-origin coffee beans at any cost, if the formula is appropriate, it is not a big problem to be better than SOE. Therefore, the focus of blending coffee depends on its blending purpose and unit price. We can’t compare the flavor of coffee blends worth 50 yuan per pound and SOE worth 100 yuan per pound!
Front Street’s current Italian blended coffee drink uses the Sunflower Warm Sun blend. This blend uses sherry from Honduras and red cherry coffee from Essaya Gacheffe. Through constant blending by FrontStreet Coffee baristas, a perfect blending ratio of 7:3 was obtained. The espresso produced has obvious acidity, berry flavor and wine aroma, with a pleasant aftertaste. Front Street confidently believes that its flavor is completely comparable to SOE.
Espresso can also be made into single-origin coffee. If coffee beans from a single origin are used, the coffee produced can be referred to as SOE coffee. The coffee produced in this way can taste the most basic flavor of the production area.
According to Front Street, the characteristics of Italian blended coffee can amplify the advantages of a certain coffee bean, cover up its own shortcomings, and make full use of each coffee bean. Why not do it. Of course, it does not mean that the more coffee beans are blended, the better the flavor will be. The more coffee beans you put in, the harder it will be to consider every detail, and the more complex the flavor will be. Therefore, in Front Street’s opinion, it is enough to limit the types of blended beans to two to four types of coffee beans.
How to drink Italian coffee?
Few Chinese people choose to drink these Italian blended beans in the form of espresso. They are usually used as a base with milk or water added to make latte or Americano.
The espresso extraction plan uses sunflower warm sun blended coffee beans, and 20g of coffee powder extracts 40g of espresso liquid in 26 seconds.
Hot Latte: The ratio used in Front Street is 40g espresso and 240g steamed milk.
Hot Americano: The ratio used in Front Street is 40g espresso and 200g hot water.
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
