What Are Single-Origin Coffee Beans: How to Distinguish Between Single-Origin and Espresso Coffee Characteristics

Before the rise of specialty pour-over coffee in China, people's understanding of coffee was mostly limited to coffee with milk. As time passed, people gained more knowledge about coffee and began to recognize espresso blend coffee beans and single-origin coffee beans. However, at some point, people started viewing single-origin coffee beans as superior to blend coffee beans, even competing to order SOE when drinking coffee at cafés.

Understanding SOE and Single-Origin Coffee

Actually, SOE stands for Single Origin Espresso, which translates to single-origin espresso coffee. Many people have experienced pour-over coffee, and basically each single-origin pour-over coffee has its own unique characteristics, such as the small tomato acidic aroma of FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya coffee and the rich nutty notes of FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon.

The principle of making espresso involves using extremely high pressure to force near-boiling hot water through coffee grounds as fine as flour, extracting rich coffee liquid in a short time. The high pressure, high temperature, and fine grinding allow more flavor compounds from the coffee beans to be extracted. Pour-over coffee beans, under specific roasting curves and brewing parameters, combine regional terroir with processing methods to create their unique flavor profile. Coffee beans used for pour-over coffee are typically roasted to a lighter degree. If subjected to the relatively extreme extraction parameters of espresso, some flavor expressions may become exaggerated, resulting in sharp acidity.

Additionally, when making SOE, each coffee bean requires different grinding degrees, and parameters such as brewing water temperature vary accordingly. Environmental temperature and humidity also significantly affect the grinding degree, making the final product inconsistent. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee's stores do not offer SOE.

FrontStreet Coffee's Espresso Blend

Instead, FrontStreet Coffee uses a carefully crafted Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend for making espresso coffee. Since wine-like aromas are uncommon in espresso coffee, and when used for milk coffee, the appropriate acidity of coffee can better highlight the sweetness of milk. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee's daily store-use Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine Blend Coffee Bean uses 70% Frontsteet Honduras Sherry coffee beans blended with 30% Frontsteet Ethiopia Natural Red Cherry coffee beans.

Frontsteet Honduras Sherry coffee beans undergo refined washing after coffee cherry harvesting, then are placed in sherry whiskey barrels for low-temperature fermentation for 30 to 40 days, finally followed by shade drying. Anyone familiar with whiskey knows that there are many types of whiskey barrel aging or maturation - port barrels bring savory flavors, while sherry barrels offer more fruit and honey sweetness. Similarly, Frontsteet Honduras Sherry coffee beans share the same characteristics as sherry barrel whiskey - equally sweet and delicious, imparting whiskey aromas along with rich vanilla and cream flavors to this espresso coffee bean.

The 30% Frontsteet Ethiopia Natural Red Cherry consists of natural process coffee beans from Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe region's Red Cherry Project. This Frontsteet Natural Red Cherry coffee bean contributes bright African acidity to Frontsteet's Sunflower Warm Sunshine blend, making a significant contribution to enhancing the sweetness of milk coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee · Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend

Origin: Honduras & Ethiopia
Varieties: Caturra, Catuai, Pacas, Local Native Varieties
Processing: Washed & Natural

Many friends, upon learning FrontStreet Coffee's espresso blend formula, considering they usually drink more pour-over coffee, think about purchasing Frontsteet Honduras Sherry pour-over coffee beans and Frontsteet Ethiopia Natural Red Cherry pour-over coffee beans to blend at home as needed. However, this approach is not scientific. Even if done this way, it cannot achieve the taste of Frontsteet's Sunflower Warm Sunshine blend. This is because with different brewing methods and parameters, the roasting degree and roasting curves are completely different, and the final taste might be bitter, astringent, and difficult to swallow.

Misconceptions About Single-Origin Coffee

Speaking of single-origin coffee beans, many people have misconceptions about them. Take FrontStreet Coffee's Panama Natural Flower Butterfly, for example:

FrontStreet Coffee · Panama Natural Flower Butterfly Coffee Beans

Origin: Panama Boquete Region
Altitude: 1600 meters
Varieties: 70% Geisha, Caturra, Catuai
Processing: Natural Process

When people hear about single-origin coffee beans, many assume that single-origin coffee beans mean single-variety coffee beans. However, Flower Butterfly contains three varieties, so some might think Flower Butterfly is not single-origin coffee. FrontStreet Coffee needs to remind everyone that this understanding is incorrect. Although Flower Butterfly contains Geisha, Caturra, and Catuai varieties, every coffee bean here comes from the same origin and same region, so it qualifies as single-origin coffee beans.

However, there are various reasons for blending different varieties from the same region. Some are for more balanced flavor profiles. Frontsteet's Panama Flower Butterfly coffee beans result from the historical circumstances of the producing farm itself. In early planting periods, to pursue yield, coffee trees of Geisha, Caturra, and Catuai varieties were mixed together. For convenient harvesting, coffee farmers did sort the three varieties during picking, but they were directly mixed for export processing. The purpose was also to express the rich, mellow taste of the coffee.

After all this discussion, the meaning of single-origin coffee actually refers to coffee from a single origin or single region, not necessarily a single variety.

Brewing Recommendations

Friends who want to taste Frontsteet's Sunflower Warm Sunshine espresso blend's wine-like aromas at home without wanting to waste coffee beans can confidently purchase this espresso blend. When Frontsteet developed this formula, they already considered the desire to drink both espresso and pour-over coffee, but not consuming large amounts of espresso. This Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine espresso blend can also be used for making pour-over coffee.

Since Frontsteet uses a medium-dark roast for Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine coffee beans, when brewing this coffee bean, FrontStreet Coffee suggests using 88°C water temperature, KONO dripper, and medium-coarse grinding degree.

Brewing Parameters:

Dripper: KONO Dripper
Water Temperature: 88°C
Coffee Amount: 15 grams
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: 70% pass-through rate on China #20 sieve

First, pour 30g of water to wet the coffee grounds and let bloom for 30 seconds. Continue with a small water stream from the center, slowly circling to 125g. When the water level in the dripper drops to just above the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225g. Total extraction time should be approximately 2 minutes.

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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