Why is SOE Coffee More Expensive Than Blended Beans? What Do SOE and Blended Coffee Mean and Which Tastes Better?

As coffee drinking habits gradually integrate into the daily lives of Chinese people, the demand for coffee has become increasingly sophisticated. To create their own unique characteristics, major chain brands have successively introduced personalized SOE coffees, forming a new trend.

What are the differences between SOE and blends?

Before the specialty coffee wave emerged, the raw materials used for making espresso were typically blends of coffee beans from two or more origins, without much emphasis on the coffee's origin and batch. Producers would use dark roasting to eliminate unpleasant flavors and acidity, so even if the quality of individual batches from certain origins was lower, these defects could be masked through dark roasting. The extracted espresso has relatively rich crema, with a smooth, mellow, and balanced taste, primarily featuring roasted hazelnut, chocolate, and caramel flavors.

In the 1980s, people began to emphasize the concept of specialty coffee, and roasters realized that coffee from each origin possesses different characteristics. Thus, they began to continuously adjust the roasting degree of some coffee beans to lighter levels to highlight the regional flavor characteristics of coffee, while also "discovering" more fruit flavors. Originally, single-origin coffees were mostly extracted using pour-over, siphon, French press, and other methods, and people began to study how to bring out various flavors in coffee. Some baristas, in order to shine in competitions, would select various personalized coffee beans for brewing. James Hoffmann, the 2007 World Barista Championship (WBC) winner, applied single-origin coffee beans to espresso machines, and SOE gradually became popular as a result.

SOE stands for Single Origin Espresso, which is the abbreviation for single-origin espresso, referring to espresso made from coffee beans from a single origin. The "origin" can be a producing country, region, cooperative, estate, or farm, and coffee harvested in the same batch all belongs to single-origin coffee. For example, the dozens of coffees from different origins on the small blackboard to the left of FrontStreet Coffee's counter are all single-origin, which FrontStreet Coffee typically serves in pour-over form. Single-origin coffee is proposed based on the concept of specialty coffee, aiming to emphasize the regional flavors of coffee, such as the citrus acidity of Yirgacheffe, the herbal notes of Indonesia, and the rich chocolate of Colombia.

Therefore, espresso made from single-origin beans can all be called SOE. Both SOE and espresso blends belong to the category of espresso terminology. SOE needs to highlight the unique flavors of the origin, requiring a lighter roast. For example, the SOE extracted from Ethiopian natural Yirgacheffe Red Cherry coffee beans on FrontStreet Coffee's menu presents berry and citrus sweet and sour notes. Due to its relatively smooth mouthfeel and clearer flavor profile, merchants tend to emphasize the adopted flavor characteristics when serving.

Why is SOE more expensive than blends?

Some coffee shops require customers to pay an additional price difference for SOE coffee beans, leading many friends to believe that SOE is more premium and has better flavor than blends. As can be seen from the above text, SOE only indicates that the coffee beans come from a single origin, so it does not represent better coffee quality, nor does it necessarily mean the taste is better than blends.

Single-origin beans for pour-over need to present the unique regional flavors of the origin and the inherent aroma of the coffee beans themselves, just like Yirgacheffe having fresh, bright citrus and lemon acidity, while Blue Mountain coffee should have sweet chocolate and caramel aromas. Similarly, SOE also needs to express the flavor characteristics that the origin should have. If the roast is too dark, the flavor and aroma can be masked by the heavy substances created during roasting; if the roast is too light, it can easily lead to under-extraction, resulting in sharp acidity and thin taste. Therefore, whether a cup of SOE coffee tastes good greatly tests the "interpretation" of SOE by both the roaster and the barista.

Pressurized espresso extraction typically uses blend beans as raw material. Producers combine coffee beans from different origins and use dark roasting to highlight rich, mellow, and bitter-based tastes, with flavors basically fixed in tones of caramel, dark chocolate, nuts, and cocoa. To make espresso different from traditional blend beans, single-origin SOE will use lighter roasting to present a light mouthfeel different from traditional bitter notes, such as Ethiopian beans with primarily fruity and floral flavors. The higher recognizability makes it easier for consumers to remember the characteristics of SOE, but from a cost perspective, higher-quality single-origin beans are naturally more expensive, so the additional charge is justified.

SOE has a higher difficulty coefficient in production

To present the unique style of SOE, high-quality coffee beans, appropriate roasting degree, corresponding grinding parameters, and proper extraction are all indispensable links. The extraction adjustment for espresso needs to consider subtle fluctuating factors such as environmental humidity, extraction time, coffee grind size, amount of coffee grounds, and liquid-to-solid ratio, making it more difficult to ensure stable output.

If we are making SOE at home, FrontStreet Coffee suggests using medium-dark roasted or flavor-profile single-origin coffee beans for production, which can avoid the strong, stimulating taste caused by roasting factors. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Queen Estate coffee beans, using medium-dark roasting, produce SOE with chocolate, roasted hazelnut, cream, and sugarcane-like sweet aftertaste. Or FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica Mozart coffee beans, processed using raisin honey method, the SOE will have dried fruit, tropical fruit, and light floral notes.

No matter what method is used to extract a coffee bean, FrontStreet Coffee believes that freshness is very crucial. If coffee beans roasted more than a month ago are used, some aroma may have been lost, and unpleasant woody flavors may have developed. FrontStreet Coffee hopes that every customer who places an order can taste the aroma of coffee during its optimal flavor period, so it ensures only beans roasted within 5 days of freshness are shipped. If everyone wants to produce SOE coffee with better flavor, FrontStreet Coffee recommends choosing freshly roasted single-origin coffee beans.

When we use lighter roasted coffee beans to extract SOE, due to the shorter roasting time of the coffee beans, the internal texture is still relatively hard, making it more difficult to extract flavors. Therefore, extraction parameters need to be adjusted to increase extraction rate, such as extending extraction time, increasing water temperature, adjusting to finer grind size, and increasing dosage. Since the fineness of espresso grinding is much higher than that of pour-over drip grinding, adjustments cannot be too large, as this can easily lead to excessive variables and more unstable extraction. FrontStreet Coffee's daily production in stores is based on accumulated experience, but if we have lower output at home, it's more difficult to grasp. FrontStreet Coffee suggests recording and summarizing the relationship between extraction parameters and flavor performance, which is more conducive to our quick adjustments and also saves unnecessary waste.

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