Can Single-Origin Pour-Over Coffee Beans Be Used for Espresso? What is SOE and How to Make It?

Using Single-Origin Coffee Beans for Espresso: A Comprehensive Guide

There's often a group of coffee enthusiasts who consider pouring pour-over (single-origin) coffee beans into espresso machines to diversify the flavor of espresso. This idea is certainly feasible, after all, that's exactly what SOE (Single Origin Espresso) is - just that it tends to be a bit more expensive!

However, many people overlook the extraction difficulty of pour-over single-origin beans! From a 227g bag of beans, you might only get one enjoyable cup! Because except for beans like Mandheling that are close to espresso dark roast, most conventional single-origin roasting levels fall within the medium-light roast range. Beans in this range not only require careful adjustment of grind size, but the taste of the espresso is also a challenging difficulty to overcome! This often results in only one finished cup from an entire bag of beans, or sometimes none at all! So, how can we extract suitably flavored espresso using the least amount of pour-over single-origin beans?

How to Make Espresso with Single-Origin Coffee Beans?

Even with dark roast coffee beans, when under-extracted, they will still exhibit sharp, acidic flavors, let alone medium-light roast beans that possess abundant acidity! After undergoing pressurized extraction in an espresso machine, the acidic substances contained within the beans will be concentrated into this small cup of coffee, making it incredibly acidic. If you're a beginner, it will be difficult to distinguish whether this is the bean's inherent flavor or sharp acidity caused by under-extraction!

Therefore, we can first control its extraction parameters within the principles of espresso extraction: The principle of espresso extraction is a parameter that applies to all roast levels - a coffee-to-liquid ratio of 1:2, with a time between 25-35 seconds. When the values reach these parameters, under-extraction rarely occurs, greatly increasing the margin for error. Then, making small flavor adjustments around these parameters will quickly help you achieve your desired espresso!

1. Adjusting Grind Size

When switching from medium-dark roast beans to medium-light roast beans, the first major challenge you'll face is grinding! If you apply the original grinding parameters for dark roast espresso beans to light-medium roast single-origin beans, you'll observe during extraction that the coffee liquid flows down like a fountain! The target liquid volume can be extracted in about 10 seconds.

This is because single-origin beans are lighter roasted and harder in texture, so the gas expansion caused by hot water won't be as high as with dark roast coffee beans, naturally reducing resistance and allowing water to pass through the gaps quickly. As you can imagine, this will inevitably lead to under-extraction! Therefore, our first step is to adjust the grind! To ensure light roast beans get sufficient extraction, the setting needs to be adjusted finer, allowing hot water to penetrate more quickly, thus achieving the target extraction rate!

For example, FrontStreet Coffee uses the Galileo Q18 grinder. When we need to switch from the medium-dark roast Warm Sun Blend to medium-light roast beans, we adjust the grind two notches finer (if switching from dark roast to medium-light, it requires at least 4 notches), and then make adjustments based on the target extraction time (adjusting one notch at a time) until reaching the parameters within the desired range!

2. Adjusting Dose

Without adjusting the grind, with the same dose, the puck of medium-light roast beans will be smaller than that of dark roast beans. When you adjust the grind finer, the puck of medium-light roast beans will become even smaller! The reduction in volume will create a larger gap between the puck and the shower screen. During extraction, this excessive gap will increase the impact of water! In severe cases, this will lead to channeling! A too-thin puck will also shorten the time it takes for water to pass through, thereby increasing flow rate!

Therefore, we can increase the dose appropriately. Since medium-light roast beans are ground into smaller particles, they can use a dose that exceeds the capacity range of the portafilter itself: For example, when tamped, a puck that aligns with the portafilter's ridge line would be 20g (for dark roast), while medium-light roast beans would require a 21g dose to reach this ridge line.

After you've made these adjustments and all values meet the parameters on the extraction template, but there are still some negative flavors in the espresso (sharp acidity, bitterness, etc.), we can make minor adjustments to the coffee dose, liquid weight, or pressure to obtain the most perfect drinking experience! (Friends who are just trying this out can ignore this part~)

What About Using Pour-Over Coffee Beans for Espresso?

As mentioned at the beginning, medium-light roast beans contain more acidity, so the extracted espresso will have very rich acidic flavors, and the crema will be relatively thin! However, they are very suitable for making Americanos! The acidity is bright and full-bodied, refreshing, with a high sweetness in the middle to late stages! If you're using some light roast beans with rich floral aromas, this Americano will have even more complex layers!

However, they are not very suitable for making milk-based drinks! Because the character of medium-light roast coffee is mainly fresh flavors like acidity and floral notes, they will either be covered by the flavor of milk (this point might be more suitable for friends who drink less coffee) or they will conflict with the milk (for example, acidity doesn't pair well with milk, creating a strange taste)!

Therefore, if you're a fan of milk-based drinks, we recommend using anaerobic pour-over beans for making them, because they have more defined (prominent, obvious) flavors that won't be easily masked by the taste of milk~

Conclusion

In summary, using pour-over beans to make espresso can be quite a good experience (essentially, it's SOE)! But FrontStreet Coffee suggests keeping records of all the data from each time you do this, so next time you want to make espresso with similar beans, you can directly apply this template and make minor adjustments!

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FrontStreet Coffee
No. 10 Bao'an Front Street, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

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