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"Passing by a coffee shop, under the espresso menu it says [Add 3 yuan for SOE]." So what is this SOE? Will it taste better if I replace it with SOE? This article on how to become a barista will help you understand what SOE is.
What is SOE?
SOE is the abbreviation of "Single Origin Espresso", which means "single origin espresso". The focus is to highlight the flavor of coffee from a certain origin. To put it bluntly, it means using single-origin coffee beans to make espresso.In contrast, Italian coffee beans are blended. Front Street has repeatedly emphasized that coffee bean blends are a balance between taste, stability and price. That is, if you want to gain the advantages of taste and stability, the price will be high; while on the premise of price and stability, you have to sacrifice taste.
But SOE is different. First, let’s understand the background of its birth. SOE has only begun to rise in recent years. The application of single-origin coffee beans in hand brewing can show a variety of flavors with regional characteristics. In addition, with the diversity of information communication media in recent years, information such as the use of single-origin coffee beans to participate in competitions in the World Barista Competition has been widely disseminated. Therefore, using single-origin coffee beans in espresso is also a trend.
Is SOE coffee a specialty coffee?
In fact, this question is equivalent to whether single-origin coffee is specialty coffee? The answer is not entirely equal. When the concept of specialty coffee was first proposed in the 1970s and 1980s, yield was the primary goal. Coffee beans were collected and processed centrally in the production areas, and exported to the country to earn foreign exchange. Imagine that coffee beans of varying quality are mixed together. It is lucky that there is no obvious negative flavor.
At that time, Ms. Erna Knutsen proposed that specialty coffee is "coffee beans with the flavor of the production area cultivated under the unique microclimate and geographical conditions of the production area." The essential meaning is that good coffee should not be mixed into large quantities of commodity beans, but should be independent. Designed to differentiate from bulk commercial coffee in the New York futures trading market.
Therefore, specialty coffee beans are high-quality and good-tasting coffee beans that require good varieties, good environment, and intensive cultivation, while single-origin coffee beans only refer to coffee beans with the flavor of a single production area. There are no requirements on quality. For example, Front Street Indonesia's Lindong Mandheling G2 is a single-origin coffee bean, but not necessarily a specialty coffee bean (specifically, it still depends on the cupping score). Of course, the single-origin coffee we drink in coffee shops is almost 100% specialty coffee beans.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of SOE coffee?
From Front Street’s point of view, SOE has been labeling coffee with the good flavor of the production area since its inception, which means that the quality of the coffee beans selected must be guaranteed. How to highlight the advantages of SOE coffee is of course to highlight the flavor and make your eyes shine. This means that having good beans is not enough, you also need to roast them properly.
Like Italian blended beans, in order to meet the stability and lack of quality of coffee beans, the roasting degree will be deepened, so that the flavor will be stable. In order for SOE coffee to show an eye-catching flavor, it cannot be blended like beans, nor can it be made directly from lightly roasted single-origin coffee beans for hand brewing. If the roasting is shallow, the extracted concentrate will be extremely sour. Therefore, SOE beans need to develop a uniquebakingcurve.
Making delicious SOE is not just about choosing a good quality single-origin coffee bean. It requires countless roasting tests and extraction adjustments before you have a chance to achieve the desired effect (sometimes after several roastings and extractions, it is found that this bean is not suitable for making espresso). Espresso can amplify the flavor of a single-origin coffee bean, and it can also amplify the flaws of the coffee bean. For example, some coffee beans with good flavor will be lacking in taste. Therefore, in some stores that provide SOE, only 1-2 SOE single-product beans can be found for customers to choose.
Of course, a cup of latte or Americano made with SOE will have a flavor that cannot be matched by blended coffee. For example, an Americano made with properly extracted Yirgacheffe SOE from Front Street can clearly taste the tones of citrus, floral, and honey, especially the residual aroma in the cup after drinking. This is something that some bitter-based coffee blends cannot achieve.
Is SOE better than blended coffee beans?
A common phenomenon on the market is that most blended beans are for the purpose of achieving price advantage and stable flavor, and are relatively average in taste. SOE is originally intended to distinguish this type of blended beans and present a memorable taste, so it will give priority to flavor, and of course the price will be higher.
But this common phenomenon does not prove that SOE is completely superior to blending. When Front Street was developing the Sunflower Warm Sun blend, they also thought about making sherry SOE coffee beans. When I tasted it, it showed a full flavor of wine, but lacked sweetness and texture. So I thought of adding front street Yirgacheffe red cherries to increase the sweetness.
In the end, through different blending tests, it was finally confirmed that 70% of Shirley and 30% of Yirgacheffe combined to create a new-tasting Nuanyang blend. The espresso produced not only has a better flavor than Sherry SOE, but also has an aroma layer not found in conventional dark roast blends.
All in all, the emergence of SOE also means that the quality requirements of Italian coffee beans are getting higher and higher, which is beneficial to the development of Italian coffee on the whole.
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
