Espresso Extraction Time and Dose Standards: Italian Blend Coffee Bean Recipe Tips and Sharing

When introducing coffee beans to customers, some might ask, "Can these coffee beans be used to make espresso?" When encountering such customers, FrontStreet Coffee's staff would often pause and suggest that it's best not to use single-origin coffee beans to extract espresso. Through this article, FrontStreet Coffee shares three reasons for this advice:

First: High Cost

As everyone knows, the price of single-origin coffee is much higher than that of espresso beans. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe coffee beans generally cost around 88 yuan for half a pound, and FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe is also known as the most cost-effective coffee bean. Meanwhile, FrontStreet Coffee's premium blend coffee beans on the menu cost 75 yuan per pound, using a common approach of blending Brazilian and Colombian beans found in the market. Now do you understand the difference between the two?

Some friends might not realize that before daily business hours, what coffee shops do most often is calibrate their espresso extraction. Even experienced baristas need at least two adjustments to extract good coffee, let alone newly opened coffee shops. Cost control is very important. Even if it's not for commercial use but just making coffee at home, pursuing good flavor means wasting more money.

Second: Inconsistency

When using lightly roasted single-origin coffee beans to extract coffee, the extraction parameters will be inconsistent daily. This relates to various issues. If you regularly extract light roast coffee, that's one thing, but suddenly switching from commonly used extremely dark roast coffee beans to light roast beans requires many adjustments: grind size, dose, extraction time, etc. These are all major changes and adjustments.

Third: Thin Crema

Crema actually refers to the "oils" attached to the surface of espresso. In fact, this is the foam layer covering the espresso surface, composed of countless carbon dioxide bubbles containing a large amount of volatile aromatic compounds. The "oils" are maintained as bubbles by melanoidins and proteins that act as surfactants, enclosing carbon dioxide. Due to the uniqueness of these "oils," many coffee professionals believe that the richness of crema affects latte art. Therefore, if you're passionate about milk-based coffee and enjoy visually appealing milk coffee, traditional rich-crema coffee beans would be more suitable for you. Light roast coffee beans extracted for espresso will have less "crema."

Single-origin coffee beans with light roasts are not suitable for making espresso, but can espresso beans be used for pour-over? Yes, FrontStreet Coffee believes that any coffee bean can be used for pour-over coffee as long as it suits your taste and needs. However, it's worth noting that generally, the flavor complexity when using espresso beans for pour-over will be much less than that of regular single-origin coffee.

First, because espresso beans are roasted darker, you can at most taste chocolate flavors, and more often, a bitter burnt taste will emerge. Second, because most espresso beans are blends, and the main purpose of blending is for flavor balance, using them for pour-over coffee will lose the应有的 complexity that coffee should have.

The formula for espresso blend coffee beans is also a field of study. FrontStreet Coffee believes that coffee blending should also be adjusted and changed according to coffee growing seasons, because new beans and aged beans have flavor differences. Below, FrontStreet Coffee shares their approach to blended coffee.

Coffee bean creation is blending. To show respect for the dedication to coffee beans, calling it "creation" is more appropriate, though this way of speaking is different from Kong Yiji's "stealing" versus "borrowing." Before discussing specific blending ratios, let's do some preparation work. First, we need to understand the basic points of creative blended coffee.

First: Choose High-Quality Coffee Beans

This is very important. Because using poor-quality coffee beans will greatly diminish the coffee's flavor. Even if you create a perfectly balanced single coffee, you can't make delicious coffee. Choosing high-quality coffee beans is the most important point.

Take FrontStreet Coffee's store-used "Sunflower Warm Sun Premium Blend" coffee as an example: 70% Frontsteet Honduras Sherry coffee beans and 30% Frontsteet Ethiopia Natural Red Cherry coffee. Even when sold as single-origin coffee beans, both are quite competitive. However, FrontStreet Coffee has lowered the price somewhat to change people's misconception that espresso blends are low-quality coffee. With the goal of letting everyone drink good and special FrontStreet Coffee espresso blend.

Second: Remove Defective Beans

When defective beans are mixed in, the taste will become worse. So we should generously remove defective beans—it's better to have less than to have bad quality. Worm-infested ones with holes, abnormally developed ones, shells without kernels—all should be picked out. Even for FrontStreet Coffee's relatively inexpensive basic espresso blend beans, FrontStreet Coffee is never lenient in the bean selection process.

Third: Understand Coffee Bean Characteristics

If you don't understand the individual characteristics of the coffee beans you're blending, FrontStreet Coffee believes you'll find it difficult to blend delicious coffee beans. At this point, you're like a team manager who must understand your team members well to make the most of their abilities. Actually, blending coffee beans is the same—your various coffee beans are your soldiers. You must first understand which are more acidic and which are more bitter. If you want to use naturally acidic Mocha to dilute acidity, it will only backfire.

Many people in the coffee circle look down on Robusta coffee beans, but FrontStreet Coffee includes Robusta coffee beans in their commercial espresso blend coffee beans. At this point, we need to understand the characteristics of Robusta coffee beans. Robusta coffee beans have very high body and low acidity. After dark roasting, the bad flavors in Robusta coffee beans are removed, and the crema is exceptionally rich. Isn't this a perfect choice for commercial coffee that pursues "crema"? Moreover, its price is low, so adding a small amount of Robusta coffee beans is actually not a bad thing.

Fourth: Understand Coffee Bean Properties

You need to know that roast level has a huge impact on coffee. The variety of green coffee beans and their growing environment are different, so roasting will also differ. But under normal circumstances, most physical changes are related to differences in roasting time and degree. During the roasting process, green beans lose weight and expand on the surface, causing density to decrease. After the green beans' moisture evaporates, gas is produced, pressure increases, and the originally tight cell structure expands and makes sound. Therefore, experienced roasters can determine the roast degree by sound.

FrontStreet Coffee used a small roaster in the store when they first opened, but due to increased customer traffic, more coffee bean varieties, and considerations of design plans, they built a larger roasting facility in the Qingyuan area. Experienced roasters there carefully roast coffee beans for everyone, design new roasting plans when new beans arrive, and after FrontStreet Coffee's baristas cup them, the best plan is adopted as the fixed roasting plan.

After discussing so much about espresso beans, does someone want to understand the extraction of espresso beans? Actually, everything has a standard, and espresso extraction is no exception. Espresso is extracted by applying 8-10 bars of pressure with 90-95°C hot water to coffee grounds. The espresso extraction method uses water's gravity to dissolve soluble components on the surface of coffee particles, while espresso uses high temperature and pressure in a short time to let water penetrate coffee cells and extract coffee components. The time and amount of coffee extraction should be controlled between: time 25-35 seconds, weight 22-44 grams.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style). For more premium coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee's private WeChat: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473