Differences Between Pour-Over and Espresso Coffee Beans Can Espresso Blend Coffee Beans Be Used for Pour-Over Coffee?

With the development of specialty coffee, more and more people have come to appreciate single-origin coffee. Two types of coffee have emerged on the market: single-origin coffee beans and blended coffee beans. Single-origin coffee beans are typically used for pour-over coffee, though many specialty coffee shops also use them for espresso. Blended coffee beans are generally used for espresso preparation, providing flavor stability to the espresso. This time, FrontStreet Coffee will discuss the differences between single-origin and blended coffee beans.

The Importance of Freshness

Before discussing single-origin and blended coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee has always adhered to one crucial point—the freshness of coffee beans.

First, whether choosing single-origin or blended coffee beans, select products that clearly indicate the roasting date (not expiration or best-before date), have brand credibility, and emphasize fresh roasting from professional coffee roasters. Additionally, high-quality coffee packaging bags typically feature a "one-way degassing valve" (a small button-like hole on the coffee bag) design, allowing coffee beans to release naturally produced carbon dioxide.

Point the one-way degassing valve toward your nose and gently squeeze the coffee bag, smelling the released gas. If it emits a rich, captivating coffee aroma, the freshness is still good. Conversely, if it lacks fragrance or even has a rancid oil smell, this indicates the coffee has already deteriorated and lost its flavor, and should be avoided. Every bag of coffee beans sold by FrontStreet Coffee uses packaging with one-way degassing valves, ensuring each bag reaches enthusiasts in the freshest state possible. The reason FrontStreet Coffee emphasizes fresh roasting so much is that over time, once coffee is roasted for more than 50 days, it has basically lost most of its aroma. Some might ask, is fresher always better? Not necessarily—during the first two days after roasting, the aroma hasn't yet stabilized.

Single-Origin Coffee Beans

Single-origin coffee refers to coffee from a specific origin, region, or even estate, possessing unique characteristics that reflect the local terroir. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Flower Queen coffee comes from the Buku processing plant in the Guji region of Ethiopia.

What makes single-origin coffee unique is that during the sourcing process, the quality of each batch, and even each individual green coffee bean, can be inspected. This process can be compared to picking strawberries: "Imagine you can only pick a small bowl of the ripest, most fragrant, and tenderest strawberries." Single-origin coffee is the same—because quality is monitored throughout the process, you can extract more sweetness, floral notes, and syrup-like flavors from the coffee while avoiding defects and negative taste characteristics, which is why single-origin coffee is relatively more expensive. The roast levels of single-origin coffee beans vary, with different roast levels bringing out different flavor profiles in the roasted beans.

Blended Coffee Beans

Also known as mixed coffee or espresso beans, these are created by combining various single-origin coffee beans to fully leverage the strengths of each variety. Blended beans are made from coffee beans of different origins to create a more balanced flavor profile. For example, if one coffee bean is smooth but lacks aroma, another more aromatic bean can be added. This approach combines the strengths of individual coffee beans, complementing or enhancing flavors to create a richer new taste experience. Sometimes beans are mixed before roasting (called "raw blending"), and sometimes they are mixed after roasting (called "post-roast blending"). Whether pre-mixing raw beans or mixing after individual roasting, both methods depend on the characteristics of the coffee in the blend and are acceptable. Post-roast blending allows for different roast levels for each bean, enabling each component to perform at its best.

FrontStreet Coffee wants to remind you that before creating blends, one must first understand the flavor characteristics of different coffee varieties from around the world. Beans have different characteristics depending on their origin, which requires roasters to have a clear understanding of the properties of coffee beans from multiple regions in order to adjust roasting curves accordingly. Different coffee beans have different personalities due to different varieties and origins, with subtle differences in acidity, bitterness, sweetness, aroma, and body. Single-origin coffee beans often focus more on highlighting the unique characteristics of a particular type of coffee.

Is Single-Origin Espresso (SOE) Just Pour-Over Coffee Beans Made into Espresso?

Conceptually speaking, making espresso from pour-over single-origin coffee beans does indeed create SOE "Single-Origin Espresso," but in practice, it's not as simple as one might imagine.

Compared to traditional blended espresso, SOE should be an espresso that highlights flavors more prominently. This characteristic affects the selection of coffee beans for SOE, which should preferably be coffee beans with high and distinctive flavor recognition. If coffee beans with slightly weaker flavor intensity are chosen for SOE, the resulting espresso will be weak and insipid. Imagine such an SOE that lacks distinctiveness while losing the balance and stability of blended beans—wouldn't that be counterproductive?

Secondly, the roast level should neither be too dark nor too light. A darker roast will significantly diminish origin characteristics, while a lighter roast will cause the espresso machine to amplify the acidity of light-roasted coffee under high pressure, making the espresso sharply acidic and difficult to enjoy. Additionally, lighter roasts make coffee beans harder and prone to under-extraction. Both scenarios—diminishing origin characteristics and creating sharp, imbalanced acidity—violate the original intention of highlighting single-origin flavors. Therefore, the roasting curve for producing SOE from the same bean should theoretically be different from the curve for producing pour-over coffee.

Can Blended Coffee Beans Be Used for Pour-Over Coffee?

Blending refers to mixing two or more different coffee beans. In many people's minds, the stereotype of blends still停留在 the traditional blended coffee beans used for espresso. However, the reality is that blending doesn't equal espresso beans—blending is simply the concept of mixing different coffee beans for certain reasons, not exclusively for espresso. In other words, blended beans ≠ espresso beans. Pour-over coffee is just an extraction method, while blending is just a type of coffee bean. There's no direct mutually determining relationship between the two. Can blended coffee beans be used for pour-over coffee? The answer is yes.

FrontStreet Coffee's Espresso Blends:

Creating blended coffee beans by mixing coffee beans from different regions is also a very common blending method from earlier times.

1. Stable Flavor

Because coffee beans are an agricultural product, even the same type of coffee bean will have different flavors each year. Therefore, mixing several types of coffee beans together solves this problem well, allowing the flavor to remain basically consistent each year.

2. Balanced Taste

Since espresso machines have a characteristic of amplifying the most prominent flavor characteristic of coffee beans, we almost never use single-variety coffee to make espresso. Otherwise, if the coffee bean is more bitter, the resulting espresso will be exceptionally bitter; if it leans toward acidity, it will be very acidic. Therefore, we need to use blending to balance various flavors.

FrontStreet Coffee's own roasted Warm Sun Blend combines coffee beans from two regions: Honduras and Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. FrontStreet Coffee's Honduras Sherry coffee beans bring rich whiskey aroma and chocolate liqueur aftertaste to this coffee, with intense fragrance. FrontStreet Coffee's natural-processed Red Cherry brings fermentation notes and berry aromas, with a smooth mouthfeel. Flavor characteristics: Distinct fruit acidity, subtle berry aroma lingering, rich whiskey and chocolate flavors, comfortable sweet aftertaste.

Pour-Over Single-Origin Blends:

Created by blending different varieties of coffee beans from the same growing region. As the name suggests, these are blends created by mixing different varieties. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's popular Panama Flower Butterfly Geisha blend is famous for mixing approximately 70% Geisha variety with 30% Caturra and Catuai. Another recent example is FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica Mira珠庄园 Geisha blend, which mixes half Geisha variety with half SL28, ET47, and Maico.

However, FrontStreet Coffee believes that calling coffee beans made from mixing different varieties "blends" is just to highlight a particular variety, not in the traditional sense of blending.

Interestingly, if we consider coffee beans that mix different varieties as "blends," then most of the common coffee beans we encounter would actually be blends. For example, Kenyan coffees often mix SL28 with SL34, and Ethiopia has many local native varieties.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473