What Are Coffee Blends? Can Espresso Blends Be Pour-Over? Can You Create Your Own Espresso Blends?

What is Coffee Blend?

Can espresso blends be brewed by hand? Can you create your own espresso blend?

Blend

Because single-origin beans vary in character and people's tastes differ, most coffee shops don't rely on a single variety from a single source. Instead, they mix several beans of different types and flavor profiles, processed at different roast depths, to create a blend. Since people from different regions have different expectations of coffee taste, the flavor of each shop's blend varies greatly, but everyone aims to balance the various flavors and the body, so their own blend is broadly appealing. The Italian milk-foam coffee series found in most cafés is usually made from blends, while a few shops also serve single-origin coffee, generally without sugar or milk. Based on each bean's character, roast level, and ratio, roasters create differently flavored blends to increase mouthfeel, aroma, and complexity.

Single Origin

The full name is "single origin coffee," meaning beans from the same region and the same estate. Beans from each producing area have their own character, and "drinking single origin" means tasting coffee brewed from a single estate's beans, usually as black coffee without sugar or milk, to appreciate the distinctive flavor of that variety.

Seasonal Blends

In the traditional commercial world, mixing beans from different origins into blends is mainly about achieving a balanced taste and consistent flavor while also reducing costs. When third-wave specialty shops began to notice that green coffee doesn't keep as long as once believed (1-2 years), they set stricter requirements, giving rise to the idea of "seasonal blends." Since coffee-producing countries mature and harvest at different times, it is actually possible to buy fresh green coffee from different origins throughout the four seasons. Selecting the best beans available in a given season and mixing them into a formula suited to espresso means customers may notice subtle differences in taste when visiting the shop in different seasons. In summer, for example, you might enjoy an espresso with strawberry and pineapple aromas, while in winter you might taste toffee or muffin flavors. Coffee is a natural product and cannot be as consistent as an industrial good. Being able to taste such rich, varied coffee is surely part of its charm.

With blended coffee, even seasonal blends (shops usually change their blend about every 3 months), it is hard to avoid the aroma and taste becoming less good than when the blend was first launched. The overall quality of green coffee declines with storage, and for different beans the rate of decline varies.

Dry Aroma

The aroma released after coffee beans are ground. Generally there are nutty, oily, fruity, roasted, and floral aromas, and their intensity is affected by the roast level.

Wet Aroma

The aroma released after coffee is brewed. The categories are similar to dry aroma, but with the addition of hot water and steam, the types and intensity of aromas released by the same beans change significantly. One can imagine dry aroma is generally oil-soluble, while wet aroma tends toward water-soluble fragrances.

Flavor

Every single-origin coffee from every estate has its own flavor, usually dominated by fruit, floral, and nutty notes, which are further subdivided into types of fruit such as citrus, berries, plums, roses, jasmine, kernels, and cocoa. Each single origin carries anywhere from several to dozens of different flavors, which combine to form the variety's unique taste. These flavors express themselves differently under different brewing methods and extraction temperatures. Generally, flavors leaning bitter appear first at high temperatures, and as the temperature drops, sweet and sour flavors slowly emerge. The so-called complexity of flavor refers to how many different flavors a bean can produce under the same brewing method; the more flavors, the more complex the coffee.

Fruity Acidity

This can be considered a type of flavor, but fruity acidity holds a relatively important place among them. These fruity acids are completely different from the coffee acidity usually tasted in tea restaurants. The coffee in tea restaurants turns sour from over-extraction, producing an irritating acidity; the acidity of high-quality beans, by contrast, is a fragrant acidity that, combined with the coffee's own flavor, becomes a delicious, aromatic fruity sweetness. All single-origin beans have fruity acidity to different degrees, and the difference can be enormous, from nearly imperceptible to a prominent, distinct fruity acidity that is the main character. How the fruity acidity expresses itself is adjusted by the bean's processing method (natural or washed) and roast level, and baristas can also control acidity through the extraction temperature.

Body

Often mentioned as "body," this is the mouthfeel some drinkers dislike. Just as wine tasters weigh red wine on the tongue, coffee cuppers measure the body of coffee the same way. Body is affected by the beans' own oil content (crema) and the roast level, and different brewing methods also influence it.

Bright

This is a relatively abstract concept. Some beans have inherently strong flavor character, with distinct, prominent layers, appearing so vivid they seem to leap off the page; we say the coffee has a bright flavor. Conversely, if certain flavors are relatively gentle and composed, with no particularly dominant character, we say the coffee is gentle and deep.

Aftertaste

Also called the "finish." When coffee slides down the throat, some flavors remain on the taster's tongue tip for quite a while; this is the aftertaste. Compared with the coffee's overall flavor, the aftertaste is relatively simple, but it is perceived for an extremely long time, and its impact is no less than the overall flavor.

Off-Flavors

Off-flavors are relatively wild notes such as burnt, charcoal, earthy, bitter, and herbal tastes. They usually arise from improper roasting or over-extraction, and some are inherent to the beans themselves. Sometimes small amounts of off-flavors can be a bean's unique signature, and baristas will try different brewing techniques to reduce the beans' inherent undesirable notes, or to make the off-flavors and the flavors harmonious.

Cupping

Cupping is the method baristas use to test beans. Many coffee competitions around the world score hundreds of coffees using cupping. Generally, beans are lightly roasted, ground, and hot water is poured directly on. After the grounds settle, the surface residue is skimmed off, and the coffee is tasted with a spoon to score the overall flavor; usually the same bean is cupped five times in a row. Baristas believe this extracts the most original flavors of the coffee, including off-flavors. Like wine tasters, becoming a cupper requires a series of certification procedures. Note, though, that unlike wine tasting, the purpose of cupping is not to enjoy coffee but to measure the performance and stability of a bean's flavor through repeated testing and assign scores, an important gateway to maintaining specialty coffee quality. The Cup of Excellence (CoE) announced annually is selected by the World Specialty Coffee Association through cupping, from hundreds of coffees, to choose the top ten with the best flavor stability.

Recommended Brewing by FrontStreet Coffee:

Filter cup: Hario V60

Water temperature: 88 degrees

Grind size: Fuji grind size 4

Brewing method: water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, 15g of coffee, first pour 25g of water, bloom for 25s, second pour to 120g then stop, wait until the water level in the coffee bed drops to half before pouring again, slowly pouring until reaching 225g, extraction time around 2:00

Analysis: a three-stage brew clearly distinguishes the front, middle, and back-end flavors. Because the V60 has many ribs and drains quickly, stopping the water flow can extend the extraction time.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The V60's fast, controllable flow is what makes it the classic tool for showcasing the delicate, layered flavors described above, and FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Small Tomato is a great test of it. A washed Kenyan single origin from the Thika region at 1,550-1,750 meters, grown from SL28 and SL34 and given a 72-hour double-wash fermentation, it shows cherry tomato and dark plum acidity with a full, juice-like body, and a light roast is used to preserve the lively acidity and complex fruit.

For a fruit-forward Ethiopian single origin, FrontStreet Coffee's Flower Queen from Guji Hambella carries abundant tropical-fruit aromas of strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, and even lychee, with high sweetness and very little bitterness. And if you want to experience the blend concept in a cup, FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy is a blend of a Costa Rica honey-processed coffee and a Panama washed Geisha, combining fine florals with sweet fruit; it works as pour-over, moka pot, espresso, and cold brew, and shows how two origins can be combined into a flavor neither has on its own.