Is Pour-Over Coffee with Blend Beans Delicious? FrontStreet Coffee's Autumn Blend Tells You

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Autumn has arrived, and following this line of thought, I also wanted to create a pour-over blend suitable for autumn consumption. I hope this blend can embody a clean and clear flavor profile with a soft entrance and varied acidity, and a medium-high sweetness in the aftertaste.

Background on Coffee Blends

Blended coffee beans are generally perceived as being used for making espresso. Using 2 to 5 types of beans either blended before roasting or roasted separately and then combined, the strengths and weaknesses of each bean complement each other, creating coffee that is rich and aromatic.

From the existing beans, several were selected for consideration in the blend: FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Washed, FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica SHB Caturra Washed, FrontStreet Coffee's Sun-dried Yirgacheffe Red Cherry, FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Huaguoshan Typica Washed, and FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha Village Sun-dried Geisha. All these beans scored around or above the specialty coffee line in cupping tests.

Blending Concept

At the beginning of development, we first needed to determine what flavors the autumn theme should express: its body shouldn't be too heavy, it must have autumn harvest fruit flavors, and it needs to be sweet! Our consensus was to choose one main bean, supplemented by 1-2 supporting beans to harmonize the flavors; if too many beans are used, the main theme would be lost, and the flavors would be too complex and difficult to balance.

Determining the Main Coffee Bean

The main bean for the formula needs to be versatile, high in sweetness, have good body, and its quality must be sufficiently stable. To meet these requirements, we searched back and forth in our database—each coffee has at least 3 roasting curves and cupping scores. By comparing their evaluations and pros and cons, we finally chose our Yunnan Typica from dozens of beans. FrontStreet Coffee's Huaguoshan is our local coffee, where we can control quality at the source, and it's a bean that combines both body and flavor, with balanced mouthfeel and long sweet aftertaste, suitable as a blend base.

However, FrontStreet Coffee's Huaguoshan is slightly lacking in acidity and unique flavor. In terms of flavor, Ethiopian beans would naturally be the first choice. Ethiopian coffee is also known as the "coffee gene bank," with over 2000 known coffee varieties native to Ethiopia—absolutely diverse enough in terms of flavor! Among so many Ethiopian beans, which one should we choose? This led to our next work...

Chormon, Floral Champion, Aricha, Kochere, Wolka... various varieties with floral notes, berry notes, and citrus notes are dazzling.

Finalizing Supporting Beans

Generally, single-origin Arabica coffee is sufficient to make very tasty coffee; with fresh fragrance, soft mouthfeel, and sweet aftertaste. "Blending" means combining coffees from different origins, each with unique flavors, aromas, and textures, mixed according to your preferred flavors to create your own exclusive coffee.

We tested the following recipes using post-roast blending:

1. Yunnan: Kochere 5:5

2. Yunnan: Kochere 7:3

3. Yunnan: Kochere 8:2

First round testing of pour-over blend: The most satisfactory result was 7:3, Yunnan: Kochere, with mild citrus acidity, chocolate in the finish, though slightly lacking in sweetness.

After cupping comparisons and coffee character studies, we chose FrontStreet Coffee's Washed Yirgacheffe Kochere—which shares a black tea finish with FrontStreet Coffee's Huaguoshan. Its lemon acidity and orange flavors can add layers and brightness to the formula, enhancing the Yunnan component.

Pre-roast or Post-roast Blending?

If we blended post-roast according to the most suitable roasting degree for these 2 beans, it obviously wouldn't work. Yunnan uses medium-dark roast, while Kochere uses light roast. When making pour-over coffee, this would result in over-extraction of Yunnan while Kochere would be under-extracted.

This led to the complete collapse of the entire coffee's flavor profile, so we decisively chose pre-roast blending!

Roasting Approach and Adjustments

In terms of moisture content, these two washed beans are quite similar. In terms of bean density, Typica is softer, but the relatively large Yunnan beans are similar in heat transfer to the harder but smaller Kochere beans. Mixing these two beans for roasting wouldn't easily cause uneven roasting. We also used a stepwise heat reduction roasting method, with a longer Maillard reaction time after dehydration and homogenization to help the two beans develop more synchronously.

In determining the roast level, we also used the "middle value" approach. This development time and bean drop temperature effectively removed the acidity and excessive grassy notes that appear when Yunnan coffee is roasted too lightly, while well preserving the floral and fruit aromas of Yirgacheffe.

Yangjia 600g roaster

300g bean charge, charge temperature 170°C, turn off heat when charging beans. After 30 seconds, turn heat to 140, damper at 3. When bean temperature reaches 140°C, reduce heat to 120, open damper to 4. Dehydration and yellowing at 4 minutes 30 seconds, when reaching 168°C, reduce heat again to 90. First crack starts around 8 minutes, open damper to 5, first crack development for 1 minute 45 seconds, drop at 195°C.

In terms of ratio, we first chose FrontStreet Coffee's Huaguoshan: FrontStreet Coffee's Kochere—6:4 ratio. Cupping results: good clarity, sweet, with fresh apple fragrance, plum acidity, and orange aroma in the aftertaste. Overall impression: good mouthfeel but slightly thin in flavor.

Adjusting Supporting Beans

After cupping discussions, we decided to add a flavor-enhancing bean—FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha Village Geisha sun-dried. This time we used FrontStreet Coffee's Huaguoshan: FrontStreet Coffee's Kochere: FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha—6:3:1 ratio.

Reducing the proportion of FrontStreet Coffee's Kochere made the overall bean's acidity smoother than before, while 10% Geisha Village brought more fruity notes and enhanced floral aromas and tea-like notes in the finish.

To preserve more floral and fruit aromas, the drop temperature was slightly reduced; the time from dehydration to first crack was slightly shortened to preserve more reactive substances and increase first crack development time to develop flavors.

Yangjia 600g roaster

300g bean charge, charge temperature 170°C, turn off heat when charging beans. After 30 seconds, turn heat to 140, damper at 3. At 140°C, reduce heat to 120, open damper to 4. Dehydration and yellowing at 4 minutes 30 seconds, when reaching 168°C, reduce heat again to 90. First crack starts at 7 minutes 46 seconds, open damper to 5. When reaching 188°C, reduce heat to 50 to extend development, bake for 2 minutes 5 seconds, drop at 193°C.

This roasting extended the first crack time to develop flavors, while making the development degree of the three beans tend toward uniformity, and a slightly lower drop temperature preserves the floral and fruit aromas of FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha.

The pre-roast blend is set at a medium-light roast level, with Yunnan Typica as the majority component. Because this Yunnan can show obvious brown sugar aromas at medium-light roast, along with black tea and a bit of cream flavor, with clean cup performance and high sweetness.

Since the three beans have relatively high moisture content and hardness, although they are different varieties, fortunately the size difference isn't significant, so pre-roast blending doesn't add much difficulty to the roasting process.

After several rounds of pour-over brewing and cupping, this pre-roast blend met my expectations. The entrance acidity is soft yet varied, the acidity gradually connects with sweetness in the mid-section, with long and lingering sweet aftertaste. It has a feeling of fresh green plants, with aromas of black tea, cocoa, caramel, jackfruit, orange, and nuts. The flavor is transparent and clean, with medium body and a slightly effervescent mouthfeel.

At this point, we have a preliminarily determined [Autumn Pour-over Blend]. This coffee combining Asian and African bean characteristics basically meets the requirements in terms of theme and flavor characteristics, and everyone is quite satisfied with the cupping and actual brewing results.

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Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473