The Fundamental Logic of Espresso Blends: What Are Coffee Bean Blending Concepts? Can Pour-Over Coffee Be Blended Too?

Recently, more and more friends have been asking FrontStreet Coffee about their approach to coffee blending. Those who ask generally fall into two categories: one is pour-over enthusiasts who have tried many conventional beans and want to find something different for a fresh experience; the other is espresso lovers who want to develop their own signature coffee blends. So today, FrontStreet Coffee will briefly share their philosophy on coffee blending!

What is Coffee Blending?

Coffee blending, as the name suggests, is the process of combining multiple different beans to create an entirely new blend. Historically, people blended coffee beans for several reasons: first, to achieve a stable flavor profile. By combining several different coffee beans, the importance of each individual bean is diluted. This is because coffee beans are agricultural products, and new beans each year are affected by that year's climate, resulting in slight flavor variations. When one coffee bean becomes unavailable or doesn't meet quality standards, it can be replaced with another bean!

Second, blending helps reduce costs. When the importance of each bean is reduced, even if a small amount of lower-quality, cheaper beans is mixed in—combined with dark roasting—people can barely taste the difference in quality, thus lowering costs! This is precisely what has formed the stereotype that blends are inferior to SOE (Single Origin Espresso). However, with the popularization of specialty coffee, people are no longer limited by cost control. Instead, like the examples mentioned at the beginning, they want to combine strengths and create entirely new flavors to satisfy their palates. These blends can be crafted for espresso extraction or for single-origin pour-over brewing!

Should You Blend Before or After Roasting?

Blending is also divided into pre-roasting and post-roasting methods. Pre-roasting blending means combining all beans according to proportions before roasting, then putting them into the roaster together. This approach saves considerable time and effort, but the disadvantage is that it's easy to create roasting variations due to differences in density and size among the various beans. When roasting degree differences occur between beans, it can cause certain extraction problems, which we'll discuss later~

Post-roasting blending involves planning the beans to be used in advance, then roasting them separately before mixing and blending after roasting is complete! The disadvantage of this method is that it's more troublesome, but the advantage is: they can all be roasted to a consistent degree! This prevents situations where roasting degrees vary due to differences in density and size.

Prerequisites for Blending

The primary condition for blending is that all beans used should have similar roasting degrees. If beans with significantly different roasting degrees are used for blending, their different textures will result in different extraction strengths under the same brewing parameters. For example, if you blend a light roast bean with a dark roast bean, then when you use it for pour-over brewing, a 92°C water temperature will fully extract the light roast beans in the blend, but will cause the dark roast beans in the blend to be over-extracted!

When you use it for espresso extraction, the default pressure of an espresso machine might fully extract the dark roast beans in the blend, while the light roast beans will be under-extracted (and if they constitute a large proportion, it will also cause the dark roast beans to be under-extracted). Both of these scenarios mentioned above not only fail to achieve complementary effects but also create negative impacts due to the textural differences between them. Therefore, the primary condition for blending is that the beans used must have similar roasting degrees!

Besides roasting degree, before blending, we also need to understand the characteristics of the beans: texture, flavor, and special qualities. Only with this understanding can we more quickly combine the ideal blend in our minds. Alright, next FrontStreet Coffee will share their blending approach for your reference~

Blending Philosophy

The simplest blending approach is to use multiple beans with different flavor profiles, allowing their most prominent flavors to combine and create entirely new tastes. For example, we could use a Sidra with prominent grape flavors, paired with a Guoding Ding with fresh green tea sensations. Their grape and tea flavors combine to become grape oolong tea! Then, for beans with more prominent flavors like Sidra, we can appropriately reduce their proportion, so the resulting flavor will be more balanced~

The above is a very simple flavor blending approach. Besides flavor combinations, if we want to be more refined, we also need to focus on texture and usage compatibility! For example, we might want the flavor of Bean A, some flavors from Bean B, and a rich body. Therefore, we need to increase the proportion of Bean A to half or more, making it the dominant flavor base to ensure its flavor isn't overpowered by Bean B's flavor~ So, how does FrontStreet Coffee do this?

Let's take FrontStreet Coffee's "Warm Sun" blend as an example: it's made from Honduras Sherry combined with Yirgacheffe Red Cherry. Since it's intended for espresso, it's roasted to medium-dark! The medium-dark roasted Sherry offers whiskey aroma, creamy nut flavors, but it's somewhat thin. So the Red Cherry serves as the finishing touch. When medium-dark roasted, it brings some berry acidity and a relatively rich body. When the two combine, they transform into a bean with whiskey aroma, berry, chocolate flavors, and a rich body! Now, recalling the blending principles FrontStreet Coffee mentioned earlier, the Red Cherry needs to enhance the body without masking the Sherry flavors, so what should their proportion be???

70% Sherry × 30% Red Cherry, did you guess correctly? The above is FrontStreet Coffee's shared blending approach. We can apply these principles to beans with different flavors and textures! We can also focus on highlighting a particular aspect that surprises people. However, we can't let that one aspect make the entire cup of coffee feel jarring! This is the fundamental logic of blending. Why not give it a try? - END -

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