Which Coffee Beans Are Best for Making Latte Coffee and Latte Art with Rich Crema

More and more people now enjoy starting their morning with a rich espresso to refresh the mind. The perfect combination of concentrated espresso and rich milk creates a heartwarming experience. Many customers frequently come to FrontStreet Coffee to ask about the espresso blends we use and for advice on how to combine coffee beans to create the espresso recipe they want. So today FrontStreet Coffee will introduce you to the methods of blending espresso beans.

Understanding Espresso Bean Blending

FrontStreet Coffee's espresso beans are typically created by blending several types of coffee beans together to achieve a complementary effect or to highlight specific flavors. Some baristas, for example, enjoy using beans from Kenya, Mandheling, Brazil, and Colombia as a base blend, because coffee beans from different origins, when roasted to different degrees, can create unique textures and aromas in the resulting espresso. The ultimate standard for selection is simply whether the extracted espresso flavor suits your personal preference.

Espresso places great emphasis on the degree of roasting, unlike pour-over coffee, where beans of various roast levels can be adjusted through water temperature or coffee-to-water ratio to draw out the flavor of a single origin. FrontStreet Coffee therefore generally avoids lightly roasted coffee beans, because lightly roasted beans extract more acidity and less oil. When added to milk to make milk coffee or cappuccino, the coffee's primary flavor would be acidic, creating an unpleasant taste experience.

Evaluating Espresso Quality

If you use properly roasted espresso beans, you can extract a perfect cup of espresso. How can you tell whether your espresso is successful? FrontStreet Coffee will share a small secret: observe the appearance and color of the crema. You may not initially understand these professional terms, so FrontStreet Coffee will explain that crema is the dense, light reddish-brown foam on the surface of espresso. During roasting, coffee beans produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, most of which dissipates during cooling while a small amount remains trapped inside. When the beans are ground, these gases are released — which is why FrontStreet Coffee recommends making coffee as soon as possible after grinding.

First, everyone should remember one principle: even in a successful espresso, the crema should have a mirror-like sheen and a thickness of about 3mm. At FrontStreet Coffee we typically use 20 grams of coffee powder to extract 40 milliliters of espresso, though this can vary depending on the flavor of the espresso on a given day. FrontStreet Coffee's baristas adjust the extraction time to brew a perfect espresso.

Of course, FrontStreet Coffee has another simple method for judging whether extracted espresso is successful — taste it yourself! FrontStreet Coffee recommends drinking espresso within two sips to keep the flavor at its freshest. Italians typically drink their coffee in one go, without even sitting down. If you can't finish your espresso or don't like it yourself, then that espresso definitely won't be good. Have you noticed that when FrontStreet Coffee prepares each cup of single-origin coffee, our baristas first taste it from their own small cups? Only when the brewing is successful does it reach the customer's table. This principle applies equally to tasting espresso.

Espresso Blend Recommendations

Once you understand some basic concepts about espresso, FrontStreet Coffee can help you select suitable espresso blends based on the flavor profile you want.

Balanced Flavor Blend

For instance, FrontStreet Coffee will first introduce a balanced espresso bean option. You can try blending dark roasted beans from Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, and Tanzania in a 3:3:2:1 ratio. This blend is particularly suitable for beginners to espresso, because it achieves good balance across acidity, bitterness, and aroma. It features the acidity of Tanzania's Kilimanjaro coffee beans, the rich fruity and smoky notes of Guatemala, and the full-bodied nutty and chocolate flavors of Colombia. FrontStreet Coffee combines these beans in proportion to create a very balanced espresso blend.

Intense Bitterness Blend

If you want to emphasize the bitterness of espresso, you can add some Robusta coffee beans to increase the richness of the crema. Robusta beans play a significant role in espresso blending. FrontStreet Coffee uses a 3:6:1 ratio of Colombia, Brazil, and Robusta beans to create our commercial espresso blend. This commercial blend features rich nutty and chocolate flavors combined with the full-bodied texture of Robusta beans, making it popular among coffee lovers who enjoy bitter flavors and well suited to daily café production.

Bright Acidity Blend

Of course, for espresso with bright acidity, African beans must be considered. FrontStreet Coffee, for example, uses Tanzanian and Yirgacheffe coffee beans, adding Brazilian and Colombian beans to temper the acidity of the African beans. Using a 4:2:2:2 ratio, you can create an espresso with more pronounced acidity.

Special Fermented Flavor Blend

FrontStreet Coffee has also created a special fermented-flavored espresso blend, primarily featuring wine-like aromas. The espresso blend currently used at FrontStreet Coffee stores is exactly this one, which we named "Sunflower Warm Sunshine." It mainly uses fermented wine-flavored FrontStreet Honduras Sherry coffee beans combined with FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Natural Red Cherry coffee beans in a 7:3 ratio. This special FrontStreet Sunflower Warm Sunshine espresso blend has rich, intense wine-like aromas. Paired with milk coffee, it creates an exceptionally rich latte.

Conclusion

The above are just FrontStreet Coffee's suggestions for selecting espresso beans. To brew a perfect espresso, you also need to adjust according to your espresso machine's parameters. Just as FrontStreet Coffee pays great attention to water temperature, grind size, extraction time, and brewing equipment when preparing each single-origin coffee, espresso also requires attention to extraction parameters including coffee dose, coffee-to-water ratio, total extraction time, flow rate, and more. If you want to learn more about these topics, you can visit FrontStreet Coffee at Dongshankou, Guangzhou to exchange coffee knowledge with us, or follow FrontStreet Coffee's official account for related coffee information.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For a milk-based drink with a deep, low-acid backbone, Mandheling is hard to beat. Both of FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling selections come from Sumatra in Indonesia, where the wet-hulled process — a technique developed because the local rainy season overlaps with the harvest — produces the variety's famously bold, earthy character. The FrontStreet Lintong Mandheling comes from the traditional Lintong region around Lake Toba in North Sumatra and is roasted medium-dark to mute the acidity and foreground dark chocolate, caramel, clove, woody, and herbal notes with a minty edge. The FrontStreet PWN Golden Mandheling is the top grade, from the Aceh region: only beans of 18 mesh and above are selected, fewer than 3 defective beans are allowed per 300 g green sample to meet the G1 standard, and the coffee is hand-sorted three times for a cleaner, sweeter cup. Either one extracts a rich, full-bodied espresso with plenty of crema and is ideal for anyone who dislikes acidic coffee.

To get the most from these beans, FrontStreet suggests pouring at 87-88°C with 15 g of coffee and a 1:15 ratio, ground to a coarse-sugar consistency, using a three-pour method: a 30ml bloom to fully saturate the grounds and let them degas, a 100ml second pour to lift the bed and bring out the golden foam, and a gentle 95ml center pour at the end to build sweetness. The result is a thick, full body with caramel sweetness and chocolate and nut flavors.

If you want a Mandheling-forward option built specifically for espresso and milk drinks, reach for the FrontStreet Classic Blend, our most frequently repurchased coffee. It adds medium-dark roasted Mandheling to a creamy, nutty Brazilian base, so butter, roasted chestnut, and caramel flavors come to the fore while the Mandheling lifts the body and contributes distinctive sandalwood, herbal, and spice notes; a small amount of Robusta is added to boost the richness of the crema. It pours an easy latte for latte art and handles Dirty layering with ease.