what isBlended coffee beans？Front Street Italian Coffee Bean BlendWhat's the ratio?Blended coffee beansWhich beans are best to use?
Recently, a friend asked FrontStreet Coffee: "Are all coffee beans suitable for making espresso?" No, not all coffee beans are suitable for extracting espresso. Lightly roasted coffee beans are especially suitable for pressurized extraction, which can easily amplify the acidity of the coffee beans, and finally give the coffee a sour taste. So what coffee beans are suitable for making espresso?
When FrontStreet Coffee recommends beans suitable for Italian coffee, it usually recommends that you use Italian blended coffee beans because they are specifically designed to "serve" Italian coffee machines. Its biggest feature is that the degree of roasting is darker than that of coffee beans used for hand brewing, and at the same time, the flavor and quality of Italian coffee are stabilized to the greatest extent.
Generally speaking, single-origin coffee beans for hand brewing are not suitable for espresso machines. This is because single-origin coffee beans cannot guarantee the stable production of every cup of Italian coffee. Coffee beans are used as concentrates as crops. Even if it is the same coffee bean, there will be certain differences in the expression of coffee flavor due to the influence of climate and soil cultivation, different roasting ideas, and the different conditions of the coffee beans every day.
So what is SOE (Single Origin Espresso)? Although SOE uses single-origin coffee beans to extract espresso, the roasting degree of the single-origin coffee beans used in SOE and the single-origin coffee beans used for hand brewing, French pressing, ice dripping, cold brewing, etc. is darker. This is because light roasted coffee beans generally have obvious sourness. The dripping/immersion extraction method may have just the right sourness, and the final coffee powder level will be richer.
However, an espresso machine pressurizes water at a higher temperature than that of Pour over(V60) coffee to quickly pass through the coffee particles to extract a very rich coffee (generally, the powder-to-liquid ratio of Pour over(V60) coffee is 1:13, and the powder-to-liquid ratio of espresso coffee is 1:2). Therefore, the acidity in the coffee beans will be more obvious, but the coffee will have unpleasant flavors such as sourness and astringency. Lightly roasted coffee beans have a hard texture, and soluble substances are not easily released in water. The fast-passing water flow of pressurized extraction cannot dissolve mellow substances, but can only dissolve sweet and sour substances. Therefore, the final espresso coffee will be very thin.
The practice of blending coffee beans appeared because coffee people in the past felt that single-origin coffee beans could not maintain a stable coffee flavor for a long time, and not every single-origin coffee bean could extract good-tasting coffee, so they blended coffee beans to improve the flavor of the coffee. In addition to improving the flavor of extracted coffee and making espresso production more stable, there is another important reason, which is to reduce costs.
The reason why most Italian coffee beans are dark roasted is to reduce the amplification of acidity in the pressurized extraction process, increase the release of soluble substances (the darker the roast, the looser the beans, and the easier it is to taste), increase the mellowness of the coffee, and require longer roasting to allow more carbon dioxide to be stored in the coffee beans to form more concentrated oil.
"Ah! What is the relationship between the oils in espresso and carbon dioxide??" The oils in espresso are not all coffee oils! During the extraction process, the espresso machine will generate a pressure of more than 9 bar to "squeeze" the coffee powder. Because the pressure of carbon dioxide in the coffee is too high, the water becomes supersaturated with carbon dioxide, so there is no way for the carbon dioxide to be released and can only be directly integrated into the coffee liquid. During the extraction process, the fat in the coffee will be emulsified, and the fat will be wrapped with carbon dioxide and released together. Since oil is lighter than water, golden oil will float on the surface of the extracted espresso.
After reading this, I believe you can roughly understand why FrontStreet Coffee recommends that you use special Italian blended coffee beans when making espresso. So what are some recommendations for good Italian blended coffee beans? Front Street currently sells these four Italian blended coffee beans, which are:
Warm Sun Blend: Ethiopian sun-dried red cherry coffee beans + Honduras coffee beans, with rich fermentation aroma, vanilla cream, sweet and sour berries, and roasted nut flavor, suitable for friends who like coffee with rich layers.
Front Street's premium blend of 100% Arabica: Colombian washed coffee beans + Brazilian semi-dried coffee beans, with flavors of nuts, dark chocolate, and caramel, suitable for those who like mellow coffee.
Front Street Commercial Blend: Robusta washed coffee beans + Colombian washed coffee beans + Brazilian semi-dried coffee. It has the flavor of nuts, cocoa, and caramel, and is suitable for those who pursue cost-effectiveness.
Front Street Dark Cocoa Blend (100% Arabica):Yunnan washed arabica coffee beans +Brazilian semi-sun-dried coffee beans have soft fruit acid, caramel, and nutty flavors. They are suitable for friends who have a high demand for coffee.
The coffee beans sold at Front Street are all freshly roasted coffee beans shipped within 5 days of the roasting date. You should not rush to use the espresso beans after receiving them, because too much carbon dioxide will affect the overall extraction of espresso, prone to uneven extraction, prolonging the extraction time, and eventually causing the coffee to have unpleasant flavors such as bitterness. Although carbon dioxide is the key to whether the coffee oil is rich, too much carbon dioxide will make the oil very thick. If used to make hot latte coffee, the excessively thick oil will affect the fusion of milk and coffee, ultimately affecting the formation of the pattern and the overall taste of the coffee.
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
