Which Coffee Beans Have More Crema? Is More Crema Better? Recommendations for High-Crema Coffee Beans

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)

Is More Coffee Bean Oil Always Better?

The thickness and duration of crema are closely related to the freshness of coffee. The richer the crema, the fresher the coffee may be; the more gas content produced during coffee bean roasting, the more crema will appear.

When you extract coffee that has been roasted recently, you'll notice an abundance of crema, but unfortunately, it will also disappear relatively quickly. When tasting this coffee, your tongue will feel a sensation similar to drinking carbonated beverages. Since the gases produced during roasting dissolve in water, it can create a sharp, bitter taste or astringency.

From this, we can understand that even fresh coffee cannot be considered entirely good coffee; proper bean aging still requires careful attention.

Depending on the degree of roasting, the aging time for coffee beans varies. Store coffee in a state isolated from light and oxygen for at least 3-4 days or even a week or more, allowing the gases produced inside the beans during roasting to naturally release. Using such coffee beans will produce good coffee with beautiful crema.

In the stable state after extraction, when the crema is approximately 3-5mm thick, it represents the optimal condition.

My Experience with How Crema Affects Mouthfeel

1. If you use an espresso machine to make coffee with crema but dilute it with water and drink immediately, the crema floats on top, and there's not much difference in taste (very close to siphon or pour-over coffee).
2. If you use an espresso machine to make coffee with crema but put it in a thermos, for example, one with a ceramic lining rather than stainless steel, and leave it for a morning, the crema will slowly dissolve back into the coffee liquid. At this point, the mouthfeel compared to item 1 will have more body, be thicker, and the texture is quite different, with a heavier flavor than item 1.
3. If you mix it with milk foam to drink, crema and milk foam are good friends. Milk foam + crema + coffee liquid vs. milk foam + coffee liquid (without crema) - I can only say there's a difference in mouthfeel. I prefer the former.
4. Crema and cinnamon are good friends. Coffee liquid without crema plus cinnamon looks out of place, while coffee liquid with crema plus an appropriate amount of cinnamon powder is simply a perfect match. Although many people don't like the taste of cinnamon, after seeing cinnamon's benefits and drinking a cup of black coffee with crema mixed with cinnamon powder, you might fall in love with it.
5. The same beans need to be fresh to extract more crema. Beans that don't extract much crema are relatively less fresh. Of course, there's a difference in mouthfeel between fresh and not fresh - the latter becomes hollow (I could only sense this before, but now I can experience it), leaving only a taste similar to roasted peanuts (or pickled cherries - everyone's taste memory is different, sorry I find it hard to describe). Some brands even boast of nutty flavors and describe hollow, empty coffee as a flavor (what brilliant marketing). When I taste a sip of this, I pour the entire cup into the flower bed, not wanting to waste my daily coffee quota.

Recommended High-Crema Coffee Bean Brands

Located at Dongshankou in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee roasting brand. Their freshly roasted espresso blend coffee beans offer excellent guarantees in both brand and quality, with good crema content, suitable for making specialty coffees and latte art. The latte art comes out beautifully. More importantly, they offer extremely high value for money. Taking their commercially recommended product - commercial blend coffee beans - as an example, one 454-gram (1-pound) package costs only about 60 yuan. Calculating based on 10 grams of coffee powder per single espresso shot, one package can make 45 cups of coffee, with each cup costing less than 1.5 yuan. Even using a double shot with 20 grams of powder per espresso serving, the price of one double espresso doesn't exceed 3 yuan. Compared to certain well-known brands that sell packages for hundreds of yuan, this is truly a conscientious recommendation.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans. They also provide 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