What Are Blend Coffees Suitable for Coffee Shops? Definition and Benefits of Coffee Blends

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What Are Coffee Blends?

Coffee blends are also known as formula coffee beans, mixed coffee beans, or blended coffee beans. In English, they are called "blend coffee." This concept is relative to single-origin coffee beans. The simple distinction is:

Single-origin coffee beans: All coffee beans in a single package come from the same producing region.

Blended coffee beans: A single package contains coffee beans from two or more different producing regions.

What Exactly Are Blended Coffee Beans?

Let's use a simple example:

1. Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Worka: This product name refers to coffee beans produced by the Worka Cooperative within the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia. Every coffee bean comes from Worka, which is clearly a single-origin bean. When brewed, you can fully experience the unique characteristics of Yirgacheffe Worka.

2. Red Velvet: This type of product name, which shows neither country nor producing region, is typically a blended coffee. However, shops generally follow no specific rules when naming. Most prefer to choose beautiful-sounding names based on the coffee's flavor profile and taste characteristics. Some simply use experimental numbers, while others have completely incomprehensible names—it really depends on the shop's preferences. Fortunately, most shops will specifically note that these are blended coffee beans, and some will even indicate which single-origin coffees were used in the blend.

The definition of blended coffee beans is extremely simple, but as specialty coffee becomes increasingly refined, there are now some variations in the definition of blended coffee beans.

For example, consider three different Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffees: Flora, Alimu, and Worka. According to the definition, any blend containing two or more different producing regions is a blended coffee. However, all three coffees are produced in Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, just from different estates. So should this be called Ethiopian Yirgacheffe single-origin coffee or Ethiopian Yirgacheffe blended coffee?

Defining Blended Coffee Beans

Generally, this would still be called a blended coffee bean. After all, when developing this formula, the three Yirgacheffe coffees were treated as independent works with different flavors, and the three beans were mixed and roasted in different proportions to stack different tastes. Therefore, calling it a blended coffee is more appropriate.

Purposes of Creating Coffee Blends

Blended coffee beans are typically formulated for the following four purposes:

1. Specifically for Espresso-based Drinks

In specialty coffee today, espresso-based drinks still dominate the market. Espresso necessarily requires the addition of dairy products, while overly acidic or thin-tasting single-origin coffees are less suitable for mixing with milk.

Therefore, specialty coffee shops usually develop specialized blended coffee beans for their espresso drinks. Common characteristics include: more crema, higher sweetness, emphasis on aftertaste performance (chocolate, honey, nuts, etc.), and balanced flavors without particularly prominent acidity. These are commonly referred to as "espresso beans."

Of course, this is just a general assumption. The expression of espresso beans varies greatly depending on the flavor profile each coffee shop wants to interpret. Here are two special examples:

♥ Espresso beans that especially emphasize crema, so rich that ordinary people would be shocked, yet with an extremely obvious bitter chocolate aftertaste for an adult flavor profile

♥ Espresso beans that don't emphasize crema, using a light texture to achieve a subtle balance where sweet and sour fruit flavors harmonize with milk

From these two examples, you can see that espresso beans vary widely, and achieving the ideal flavor through roasting extremely tests a coffee shop's understanding and combination of flavors. Therefore, judging the quality of espresso beans is one of the standards many people use to evaluate a coffee shop. However, I personally suggest not being too critical—instead, savor, appreciate, and imagine others' espresso beans more, as this will be more helpful to yourself.

2. Suitable for Long-term Supply

This point is still related to espresso coffee. Generally, coffee shops maintain strict proportions for all materials in their espresso drinks to ensure consistent cup quality. Among these, coffee beans have the greatest impact and are also the most problematic material—especially when using single-origin beans for espresso. You often face the problem of certain single-origin beans being out of stock, and temporarily switching to another single-origin bean creates the major trouble of having to readjust the formula.

Therefore, to maintain long-term stable supply of espresso beans, using larger-quantity producing region coffee beans (which may not be estate beans) for formulation can avoid problems with certain specific coffees running out of stock.

Additionally, because it's originally a blended coffee bean, if one of the coffees has quality issues, you can quickly use other similar coffee beans for correction and replacement. Because the proportion is smaller, the replacement can better maintain flavor consistency, unlike single-origin beans where characteristics are obvious and account for 100%, so once replaced, everything changes.

3. Simulating Special Flavors

This purpose is generally less common in specialty coffee shops. Most commercial coffees use blended coffee beans for flavor correction to simulate certain famous brand coffees.

The most common examples are so-called "Blue Mountain flavor" coffee, "Kopi Luwak flavor" coffee, and "Gukeng flavor" coffee. These products with flavor names often contain no Blue Mountain beans in the entire package—they just use other coffees to imitate the imagined taste of Blue Mountain. Of course, they might mix in a small amount of coffee from the original region. For example, Gukeng coffee sold on the market often contains less than 10% actual Gukeng beans, with large quantities of beans from other regions used as substitutes.

Of course, if you could truly use cheaper coffee beans to create Blue Mountain flavor, that would be quite impressive. But generally, commercial coffees use such names mainly to leverage the fame of brand-name coffees to attract consumer attention. From my experience, these have nothing to do with the true flavor of Blue Mountain.

Moreover, famous coffee names like Blue Mountain, Kopi Luwak, and Gukeng are actually no longer mainstream in today's specialty coffee market—they may not even fall within the specialty coffee category. They are mainly commercial hype, and there are many fakes. Unless you're truly confident, there's no need to spend big money buying them.

And I personally believe that even real Blue Mountain isn't necessarily better than estate coffee—the value for money is too low. Not to mention commercial coffee beans that simulate Blue Mountain flavor, which are generally neither fish nor fowl.

4. Challenging Flavor Compositions

If a specialty coffee shop has the capability to formulate blended coffee beans, they sometimes create several different flavored blends to make the shop's various drinks more diverse in taste.

For example: some coffee shops, besides the blended coffee beans used for espresso, will specially formulate a blend specifically for drinking espresso straight. This might not emphasize crema or balance like espresso beans, but instead challenge strong fruit acidity, refreshing tea-like sensations, and citrus flavors, allowing consumers who love straight espresso to indulge. Of course, besides beans specifically for straight espresso, there are also coffee beans designed for syphon, pour-over, cold drip, moka pot, and drip bag brewing methods.

Perhaps for most specialty coffee shops that develop blends, the main focus isn't targeting specific brewing equipment. The key is to challenge their own imagination of flavors and roasting skills, allowing consumers to brew black coffee using the shop's specially formulated blended coffee beans in addition to single-origin beans, tasting the uniquely crafted blends developed with the shop's ingenuity.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse variety of beans, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, while also providing online store services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473