Coffee Beans Suitable for Espresso - What Coffee Beans to Use for Espresso Coffee & Characteristics of Espresso Extraction Ratios

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With the development of specialty coffee, more and more people have come to love single-origin coffee. Two types of coffee have appeared on the market: single-origin coffee beans and blended coffee beans. Single-origin coffee beans are generally used for pour-over coffee brewing, and of course, many specialty coffee shops also use single-origin coffee beans to make espresso. Blended coffee beans are generally used for making espresso, as blended coffee beans can provide stable flavor for espresso. This time, FrontStreet Coffee will talk about the differences between single-origin coffee beans and blended coffee beans.

Freshness: The Foundation

Before discussing single-origin coffee beans and blended coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee has always adhered to the most important principle—freshness of coffee beans.

First, regardless of whether choosing single-origin beans or blended coffee beans, products should have clearly marked roasting dates (not expiration dates or shelf life), brand reputation, and should be purchased from professional coffee roasters who emphasize fresh roasting. Additionally, quality coffee packaging bags usually feature a "one-way degassing valve" (a small button-like hole on the coffee bag) design to allow coffee beans to release naturally produced carbon dioxide.

Align the one-way degassing valve with your nose, gently squeeze the coffee bean bag, and smell the aroma of the gas that comes out. If it's a delightful, rich coffee fragrance, the freshness should be fine. Conversely, if it doesn't smell rich enough, or even has a rancid oil smell, it indicates that this bag of coffee has long since deteriorated and lost its flavor, and should be avoided. Every bag of coffee beans sold by FrontStreet Coffee uses packaging with one-way degassing valves, ensuring that every bag of coffee beans reaches enthusiasts in the freshest state possible. The reason FrontStreet Coffee emphasizes fresh roasting so much is because as time passes, once coffee is roasted for more than 50 days, it basically has no aroma left. Some might ask, is fresher coffee always better? Not necessarily—during the first two days after roasting, its aroma hasn't stabilized yet.

Single-Origin Coffee Beans

Single-origin coffee refers to coffee produced from a specific origin, specific region, or specific plantation, possessing a unique flavor that reflects the local terroir. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Hawaucha coffee, which comes from the Buku processing plant in the Guji region of Ethiopia.

The uniqueness of single-origin coffee lies in the fact that during the sourcing process, they can inspect the quality of each batch, even each individual green coffee bean. This process is compared to picking strawberries: "Imagine you can only pick a small bowl of the ripest, most fragrant, and softest strawberries. Single-origin coffee is the same—because quality is monitored throughout the process, you can get more sweetness, floral notes, and syrup-like flavors from the coffee while avoiding defects and negative tastes, which is why single-origin coffee is relatively more expensive. The roasting degree of single-origin coffee beans varies, and different roasting levels will present different coffee flavors from the roasted single-origin coffee beans.

Blended Coffee Beans

Also known as mixed coffee or espresso beans, blended coffee beans are created by mixing various single-origin coffee beans together to fully utilize the strengths of each type. Blended beans are made from coffee beans of different origins to create a more balanced flavor. For example, if one type of coffee bean is smooth but lacks aroma, another type with rich aroma can be added to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, either complementing or enhancing each other in taste, thereby creating a coffee with richer new flavors. Sometimes the beans are mixed before roasting, which is called green blending; sometimes the coffee beans are mixed after roasting, which is called post-roast blending. Whether pre-mixing green beans or individually roasting before mixing, both methods are acceptable, depending on the characteristics of the coffee in the formula. Post-roast blending allows different roasting degrees for each bean so that each component performs at its best.

FrontStreet Coffee would like to remind you that before blending beans, you must first understand the different flavors of coffee varieties from around the world. Beans have different characteristics depending on their origin, which requires the roaster to have a clear understanding of the characteristics of coffee beans from multiple regions to adjust the roasting curve accordingly. Different coffee beans have different personalities due to different varieties and origins, with subtle differences in acidity, bitterness, sweetness, aroma, and body. Single-origin coffee beans often focus more on expressing the unique characteristics of a particular type of coffee.

Single-Origin Espresso (SOE): Is It Just Using Pour-Over Coffee Beans to Make Espresso?

Conceptually, making espresso from pour-over single-origin coffee beans is indeed SOE "Single-Origin Espresso," but in practice, it's not as simple as imagined.

Compared to traditional blended espresso, SOE should be an espresso that highlights flavors more prominently. This characteristic affects the selection of coffee beans for SOE, which should preferably choose coffee beans with high and strong flavor recognition. If coffee beans with slightly weaker flavor intensity are chosen to make SOE, the resulting espresso will be weak and powerless. Imagine such an SOE that neither has distinctive characteristics nor loses the balance and stability of blended beans—wouldn't that be more trouble than it's worth?

Secondly, the roasting degree should not be too deep nor too light. A deeper roasting degree will significantly diminish the origin flavors, while a lighter roasting degree will cause the coffee machine to amplify the acidity brought by light roasting under high pressure, easily making the espresso excessively sharp and sour. Additionally, lighter roasting also makes the coffee beans harder, leading to insufficient extraction. Both the elimination of origin flavors and the imbalance caused by excessive sharpness violate the original intention of highlighting single-origin flavor, so the roasting curve for SOE from the same beans should theoretically be different from the curve for pour-over coffee.

Can Blended Coffee Beans Be Used for Pour-Over Coffee?

Blend refers to mixing two or more different coffee beans. In many people's minds, the stereotype of blends still remains stuck in the blended coffee beans used for traditional Italian espresso. In fact, blending is not equivalent to espresso beans—it's simply the concept of mixing different coffee beans for certain reasons, not exclusive to espresso, i.e., blended beans = espresso beans. Pour-over coffee is just an extraction method, and blending is just a type of coffee bean—the two have no direct mutually determining relationship. Can blended coffee beans be used for pour-over coffee? The answer is yes.

FrontStreet Coffee's Frontsteet Espresso Blend Coffee Beans:

Creating blended coffee beans by mixing coffee beans from different regions is also a very common blending method from the past.

1. Stable Flavor

Because coffee beans are an agricultural product, even the same type of coffee bean will have different flavors each year. Therefore, mixing several types of coffee beans together solves this problem well, allowing the taste to remain basically consistent year after year.

2. Balanced Taste

Since espresso machines have a characteristic of amplifying the most prominent flavor characteristics of coffee beans, we almost never use a single variety of coffee to make Espresso. Otherwise, if that coffee bean is more bitter, the resulting Espresso will be exceptionally bitter; if it's more acidic, it will be very acidic. Therefore, we need to balance various flavors through blending.

FrontStreet Coffee's self-roasted Frontsteet Warm Sun Blend is made from coffee beans from Honduras and Ethiopia Yirgacheffe regions. Frontsteet's Honduras Sherry coffee beans bring rich whiskey aroma and chocolate-filled liquor aftertaste to this coffee, with rich fragrance. Frontsteet's Natural Red Cherry brings fermentation and berry aroma to this coffee, with a smooth mouthfeel. Flavor characteristics: obvious fruit acidity, lingering light berry fragrance, rich wine and chocolate flavors, comfortable sweet aftertaste.

Pour-Over Single-Origin Coffee Blends:

Blending different varieties of coffee beans from the same production region. As the name suggests, these are blends created by mixing different varieties. For example, Frontsteet's very popular Frontsteet Panama Mariposa Geisha Blend, famous for mixing about 70% Geisha variety with 30% Caturra and Catuai, and Frontsteet's recently launched Frontsteet Costa Rica Mirazu Manor Geisha Blend, which mixes half Geisha variety with half SL28, ET47, and Maico.

However, FrontStreet Coffee believes that calling coffee beans made from mixing different varieties "blends" is just to highlight a particular variety, not in the traditional sense of blending.

Interestingly, if we also call coffee beans made from mixing different varieties "blends," then most of the common coffee beans we see would also be blends, such as common Kenyan coffees that often mix SL28 with SL34, and Ethiopia's local heirloom varieties, etc.

Important Notice :

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