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

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What is Coffee Blend?

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

Blend

Due to the varying characteristics of single-origin coffee beans and people's different taste preferences, most coffee shops do not simply use a single variety and source of coffee beans to make coffee. Instead, they mix several different types and flavor characteristics of coffee beans, processed with different roasting depths, to create a blend, which is what everyone calls "Blend beans." Since people from different regions have different requirements for coffee taste, the flavor of beans blended by each coffee shop will vary greatly, but everyone will aim to balance various flavors and body as the ultimate goal, making their own blends acceptable to the public. The Italian milk foam coffee series often found in coffee shops are mostly made from blended beans; while a few coffee shops also serve coffee made from single-origin coffee beans, generally served without sugar or milk. Based on the characteristics, roasting degree, and ratio of each coffee bean, different flavored blended coffees are created to increase mouthfeel, aroma, and complexity.

Single Origin

Full name "single origin coffee," meaning coffee beans from the same region and same estate. Coffee beans from each producing area will have different characteristics, and "drinking single origin" means tasting coffee brewed from beans from a single estate, usually in the form of black coffee without sugar or milk, to appreciate the unique flavor of that coffee bean variety.

Seasonal Blends

In the traditional commercial field, mixing coffee beans from different origins to create blends is mainly to achieve balanced taste and uniform flavor, while also reducing costs. When specialty coffee shops representing the third wave began to notice that the storage period of green coffee beans was not as long as previously understood (1-2 years), they proposed stricter requirements, thus giving rise to the concept of "seasonal blends." Since the maturation and harvest seasons of coffee-producing countries worldwide are different, it's actually possible to buy fresh green coffee beans from different origins throughout the four seasons. Selecting the best coffee beans available in the season and mixing them to create a formula suitable for espresso, the result is that customers may experience subtle differences in coffee taste when visiting the shop in different seasons. For example, in summer you might enjoy an espresso with strawberry and pineapple aromas, while in winter you might taste rubber muffin cake or toffee flavors. Coffee is a natural product and cannot be as consistent as industrial manufactured goods. Being able to taste such rich and diverse flavored coffee should be the charm of coffee.

Making blended coffee, even seasonal blends (usually coffee shops change blends about every 3 months), it's difficult to avoid the aroma and taste of the blend becoming less good than when it was first launched. This is because the overall quality of green coffee beans declines with storage, but for different coffee beans, this quality decline rate varies.

Dry Aroma

The aroma released after coffee beans are ground. Generally, there will be aromas of nuts, oils, fruits, roasted notes, floral notes, etc., and the intensity is affected by the roasting degree.

Wet Aroma

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

Flavor

Each single-origin coffee from each estate will have its unique flavor. Usually dominated by fruit flavors, floral aromas, and nutty tastes, which are further subdivided into different types of fruits, such as citrus, berries, plums, roses, jasmine, kernels, cocoa, etc. Each single-origin coffee will have several to dozens of different flavors, combined to form the unique flavor of that variety. These different flavors will have different expressions under different brewing methods and extraction temperatures. Generally speaking, flavors leaning toward bitter taste will appear first at high temperatures, and as the temperature decreases, sweet and sour flavors will slowly emerge. The so-called flavor complexity refers to how many different flavors a bean can produce under the same brewing method. The more flavors it has, the more complex the coffee's flavor.

Fruity Acidity

It can be considered a type of flavor, but fruity acidity holds a relatively important position among various flavors. These fruity acids are completely different from the coffee acidity usually tasted in tea restaurants. The coffee in tea restaurants becomes sour due to over-extraction, which is what everyone calls "overcooked," producing irritating acidity; while the acidity of high-quality coffee beans has a unique fragrant acidity, and combined with the coffee's own flavor, it becomes a very delicious and aromatic fruity acidity sweetness. All single-origin coffee beans will have different degrees of fruity acidity, and the difference in degree can be enormous, from almost indiscernible to prominent and distinct fruity acidity as the main character. The expression of fruity acidity will be adjusted according to the processing method of fresh beans (sun-dried? washed?) and roasting degree, while baristas can also control the coffee's acidity through controlling the extraction temperature.

Body

Often mentioned in Chen Hao's program as "body," which is also the mouthfeel that Susie Huang says she hates. Just as wine tasters measure the weight of wine with their tongue when tasting red wine, coffee cuppers also measure the body of coffee in this way. Body is affected by the oil content (crema) of the coffee beans themselves and the roasting degree, and different brewing methods will also have an impact on body.

Bright

This is a relatively abstract concept. Some beans have inherently strong flavor characters, with distinct and prominent layers, appearing vividly as if leaping off the page, and we would say that coffee has a certain bright flavor. Conversely, if certain flavors of the coffee are relatively gentle and composed, without a particularly prominent main character feeling, we would say it has a certain gentle, deep flavor.

Aftertaste

Also what wine lovers call "aftertaste." When coffee slides down the throat, some flavors will remain on the taster's tongue tip for quite some time, which is the aftertaste. Compared to the overall flavor of the coffee, the aftertaste flavor is relatively single, but the perception time is extremely long, and the impact it brings is no less than the overall flavor.

Off-Flavors

Off-flavors refer to relatively wild flavors such as burnt taste, charcoal taste, earthy taste, bitter taste, herbal taste, etc. These flavors are usually produced during improper roasting processes or from over-extraction, and some are inherent flavors of the coffee beans themselves. Sometimes small amounts of off-flavors can be the unique signature of that coffee bean, and baristas will try to use different brewing techniques to reduce the inherent undesirable off-flavors of the beans, or attempt to make the off-flavors and flavors harmonious.

Cupping

Cupping test, the method used by baristas to test beans. There are many different coffee bean competitions worldwide that score hundreds of coffee beans from around the world, using cupping as the method. Generally, beans are lightly roasted, ground, and hot water is directly poured on. After the grounds settle, the surface residue is skimmed off, and coffee is tasted with a teaspoon to score the overall flavor of the beans, usually cupping the same bean five times repeatedly. Baristas believe this can extract the most original flavors of the coffee, including off-flavors. Just like wine tasters, becoming a cupper also requires a series of certification procedures. But it should be noted that, unlike wine tasting, the purpose of cupping is not to taste coffee, but to measure the performance and stability of coffee bean flavor through repeated testing and make scores, which is 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 coffee beans to select 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 coffee, first pour 25g water, bloom for 25s, second pour to 120g water then stop pouring, wait until the water level in the coffee bed drops to half before pouring again, slowly pour until reaching 225g water, extraction time around 2:00

Analysis: Using three-stage brewing to clearly distinguish the front, middle, and back-end flavors of the coffee. Because V60 has many ribs and drains faster, stopping water flow can extend the extraction time.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473