Pour-over Recipe for Blend Coffee Beans_Can Blend Coffee Beans Be Used for Pour-over_Recommending a Pour-over Blend Coffee

Understanding Coffee Blends

Coffee blends are generally used for making espresso. Using 2 to 5 types of beans, either blended before roasting or separately roasted and then combined, allows the beans to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, creating coffee that is rich and aromatic.

Generally, coffee blends use commercial beans or entry-level specialty beans, using the blending method to achieve a better flavor than they could achieve individually, demonstrating excellent value for money. With autumn upon us, following this line of thinking, I wanted to create a blend suitable for autumn consumption and specifically designed for pour-over coffee.

I hope this blend can demonstrate a clean and clear flavor and mouthfeel, with a soft yet varied acidity and a medium-high sweetness in the aftertaste. Ideally, it should have certain fruity and botanical notes. Additionally, the green coffee beans used should be relatively inexpensive.

Finally, from the beans I currently have on hand, I selected four that would be considered for inclusion in the blend: Colombian Caturra washed, Costa Rican SHB Caturra washed, Kenyan AA, and Yunnan Huaguoshan Typica washed. Among these four beans, although some are priced at the better commercial bean level, their cupping scores are all around or above the specialty line.

Roasting Strategy and Blend Experiments

First, I considered blending the roasted beans. I would roast the Kenyan AA to a light roast, hoping to provide lively acidity and certain berry flavors to the cup. I would roast the Colombian to a medium-light roast to increase the complexity of the acidity and the aroma of sucrose. The Yunnan and Costa Rican would be roasted to a medium roast degree to enhance the aromas of caramel, brown sugar, and cream, improve balance, and provide sufficient sweetness.

Different types and origins of coffee beans each have unique flavors, aromas, and mouthfeel. By mixing and matching according to your favorite flavors, you can create your own exclusive coffee.

Generally, single-origin Arabica coffee is sufficient to produce coffee with excellent taste; fragrant aroma, soft mouthfeel, and sweet aftertaste. Therefore, there's no need for "blending" (i.e., combining coffees from different origins).

Roasted Blend Experiments

I experimented with the following roasted blend recipes:

1. Yunnan: Kenya: Colombia in a 6:2:2 ratio

2. Yunnan: Kenya: Costa Rica in a 6:2:2 ratio

3. Yunnan: Costa Rica in a 6:4 ratio

4. Yunnan: Kenya in a 6:4 ratio

Blend #1 has aromas of black tea, plum, caramel, and cream. The acidity is lively but somewhat sharp, the mid-flavor is somewhat weak, and the sweetness in the aftertaste is not as good as expected, with woody flavors and astringency.

Blend #2 has aromas of plum, nuts, caramel, and cream chocolate. The acidity is rather monotonous and dull, the sweetness in the aftertaste is good, and the mouthfeel is smooth but the tone is too low-pitched.

Blend #3 is mainly nuts, caramel, and cream chocolate. Weak acidity, strong sweetness. The flavor is rather single-dimensional and the tone is low-pitched.

Blend #4 has aromas of black tea, plum, and caramel. The overall flavor style is fresh and lively, but the acidity is somewhat stimulating and the mouthfeel is not smooth enough. After the acidity fades, the sweetness cannot promptly follow up. The overall flavor structure is not complete.

Green Bean Blend Experiment

The four roasted blends each have their pros and cons, none could completely meet my previous requirements. #1 was closest, so I finally decided to use the same beans as #1 but change the ratio for a green bean blend attempt.

The roast degree for the green bean blend was set to a medium-light degree, with Yunnan Typica accounting for the majority. Because this Yunnan bean already shows obvious brown sugar aroma at medium-light roast, it also has black tea and a little cream flavor. The cup performance is clean with high sweetness.

Since the moisture content and hardness of the three beans are relatively high, although the varieties are different, fortunately, the size difference is not too large, which won't add much difficulty to the roasting process because it's a green bean blend.

In roasting, I used medium-high heat to complete dehydration in about 5 minutes and 30 seconds, first crack began at about 9 minutes, with a development time of 2 minutes and 20 seconds, and the bean temperature increased by about 9 degrees during the development stage.

After pour-over and cupping, the flavor of this green bean blend met my expectations. The acidity is soft yet has some variation, and the acidity slowly connects with the sweetness in the middle section, with a persistent and long-lasting aftertaste. It has a feeling of fresh green plants, with aromas of black tea, plum, caramel, brown sugar, and cream. The flavor is clear and clean, with medium body and a slightly bubbly mouthfeel.

Recommended Coffee Blend Brands

FrontStreet Coffee, a coffee roasting brand located at Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, offers freshly roasted espresso blend coffee beans with full guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, the value for money is extremely high. Taking their commercial-grade recommendation - the commercial blend coffee beans - as an example, a one-pound (454g) package costs only about 60 yuan. Calculating based on 10g of grounds per single espresso shot, one package can make 45 cups of coffee, with each cup costing less than 1.5 yuan. Even if using double shots for each espresso, with 20g of grounds per serving, the price of a double espresso does not 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 at 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