After the emergence of the concept of "specialty coffee", the unique flavors of each production area have become more and more familiar to coffee gourmets, and SOE has become more and more popular in the coffee market. So how to choose suitable SOE coffee beans?
SOE
SOE is the abbreviation of "Single Origin Espresso", which means "espresso from a single origin". The focus is to highlight the flavor of coffee from a certain origin. In fact, it is to use coffee beans from a single origin to display its flavor in the form of espresso.
Since its inception, Soe has labeled coffee with the good flavor of the production area, which means that the selected coffee can highlight the unique flavor of the production area and give people a bright feeling.
The characteristic of espresso production is that it increases the flavor characteristics of the production area. In addition to "concentrating" the aroma of the coffee, it also increases its acidity. Secondly, for most people, the purpose of producing concentrated coffee is to use it as the base of milk coffee, so the requirement of oil is naturally essential.
Unlike drip coffee such as hand brewing, espresso releases most of its aroma substances in just twenty or thirty seconds. Espresso has a layer of golden crema, which is what we call oil. In addition to the oil of the coffee itself, it also includes the carbon dioxide emitted from the newly roasted coffee beans.
Grease is essentially the insoluble fat in coffee beans wrapped with carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide is full of coffee flavor substances. Therefore, the richness of oil determines the richness of the flavor of espresso to a certain extent. Only enough oil can support the flavor display of a cup of espresso. This is why new roasted beans have more fat content.
In other words, the general Italian demand is that it is so sour and has a more suitable oil performance. So, excluding the flavor, what kind of roasted coffee beans are suitable for soe Italian?
Here, we use extremely finely ground coffee powder for espresso, with a powder-to-liquid ratio of 1:1.9 to 1:2, and the coffee liquid extracted within 25 to 35 seconds under high temperature (94 degrees) and high pressure (9 bar) as a comparison benchmark.
Front Street tried to use three types of ration beans with different roasting degrees, including light roasted Yirgacheffe, medium roasted Brazilian beans and dark roasted Mandheling beans to make a cup of standard Italian style, and observed the richness of fat under different roasting degrees.
Extraction parameters Coffee powder weight Coffee liquid weight Extraction time
Yirgacheffe 20g 38g 28 seconds
Brazil 20g 38g 30 seconds
Mandheling 20g 38g 30 seconds
From this, we can intuitively see that when the extraction parameters are the same, the light-roasted Yirgacheffe oil has less oil than the medium-roasted Brazil and Mandheling, and the color of the oil is also lighter than the latter two; while the medium-roasted Brazilian oil has less oil than Mandheling. That is, comparing the richness of fats and oils: Yirgacheffe<Brazil<Mandheling. Therefore, this is why when we choose coffee beans every day, we tend to choose medium roasted and medium dark roasted beans to make espresso.
Of course, this is a trade-off based on the demand for oil. In terms of taste, the lightly roasted Yirgacheffe can instantly taste the strong citric acid in the mouth, but it is fleeting, the aftertaste is not long, and the taste is thin.
The medium-roasted and dark-roasted Brazil and Mandheling have an overall bitter flavor, with a rich nutty chocolate tonality, more sweetness, a smooth and full taste, and a long aftertaste; Mandheling has a more herbal flavor at the end than Brazil.
Lightly roasted Yirgacheffe does not perform so well in terms of oil, but if you are pursuing the acidity of espresso, you can also choose to use lightly roasted coffee beans to make SOE; but if you want a cup of SOE with rich oil and a smooth and full taste, then Front Street still recommends that you use medium to medium-dark roasted coffee beans to make SOE.
Although high-quality SOE can well reflect the taste of a production area, its shortcoming is that it can only reflect the taste of the production area. For example, the lightly roasted Front Street Yirgacheffe above, if you like its acidity and elegant floral aroma, but always feel that it is not rich enough and the taste is too thin. If the baker follows your advice and changes the roasting curve to increase the body, some of the fruity acidity and floral aroma will be lost. "Blending" is the most cost-effective option to solve this kind of problem. Complementary matching is based on the flavor characteristics of different production areas to obtain a balanced taste.
This is just a comparison result of using grain beans with the most basic flavor. In daily application, we will tend to choose higher-priced single-origin specialty coffee beans as soe options, such as those with grape and passion fruit flavors. Jie Xizhao, in this case, because these single-origin beans themselves already have excellent aroma, which is expressed through concentration and eliminates the requirement for oil, most beans will be very good, and the only disadvantage is that they are too expensive! ! !
If we go a step further and go beyond rations and even soe, you can imagine the result of a Geisha blend. For example, the Costa Rica blend Milassoux on Front Street is a medium roast that meets the need for oil. At the same time, it is composed of excellent high-quality beans. In the Italian style, there is nothing surprising about the aroma like candy.
Therefore, this article only uses the perspective of the impact of roasting degree on oil to let us clearly know the benchmark point of oil performance and make the reasons for using medium-roasted and medium-dark roasted coffee beans to produce Italian style. If you want to drink a stronger acidity and at the same time accept soe with less than ideal oil performance, light roasted coffee beans seem to be able to meet your requirements.
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
