What is Combo Coffee? What Does "Two Drinks from One Bean" Mean?

Since last year, when Combo became popular in the coffee circle, FrontStreet Coffee has always been asked by customers if they offer Combo. When FrontStreet Coffee informed them they don't, one customer retorted: "Isn't Combo just extracting with a split portafilter, then adding milk to one cup and water to the other? Why don't you offer it?"

What is Combo?

The full name of "Combo" should be "Coffee Combo" - a coffee combination, which is a way of serving espresso coffee. It involves splitting one dose of coffee grounds to extract 2 or 3 small cups of espresso, then using them to make different types of coffee respectively, and combining them into a set meal. In short, it's one bean, two drinks, or one bean, multiple drinks. Children make choices, adults want it all.

Nowadays, these combination sets on the market are mainly presented in the form of "one black, one white" - that is, one black coffee and another milk coffee, with cup sizes generally around 150ml. Some coffee shops will also divide the espresso into three portions and make an additional specialty coffee. The two or three drinks on the small tray look delicate and exquisite, and even if you taste all three cups, you don't have to worry about excessive caffeine intake, without too much burden.

From an operational perspective, it seems really as that customer said, as long as you use a split portafilter to extract two portions of espresso, then add water and milk separately. But if it's just that simple, then you're underestimating Combo.

What are we tasting in Combo

In fact, Combo originated from the WBC (World Barista Championship), where each competitor has 15 minutes to present espresso, milk coffee, and creative coffee to the judges during their performance.

Combo can be said to be closely related to the core concept of the third wave of specialty coffee - "Taste of Terroir", which focuses on a series of source information that can be changed, such as the origin, variety, cultivation, and processing method of coffee beans, and tastes the aroma expressed by beans under such conditions. As a result, the roast degree is no longer centered on dark roast.

It should be noted that the darker the roast, the more small molecular aromatic substances that express floral and fruity sour aromas in coffee beans are lost, and the flavor will gradually tend towards bitter notes such as nuts and chocolate. The Combo serving method of one bean, multiple drinks, not only allows you to taste the aroma of the coffee itself, but also to try the taste when paired with milk. Therefore, in order to showcase the unique flavor of a bean through Combo, coffee shops often choose relatively lightly roasted coffee beans, and even use SOE (Single Origin Espresso) for production.

Different coffee beans express different flavors. It's possible that this bean makes a wonderful Americano, but when combined with milk, it's disappointing; it's also possible that this bean is suitable for making milk coffee, but its expression in Americano lacks distinctive characteristics. Therefore, in the selection of coffee beans for Combo, it's necessary to consider the flavors of both black coffee and milk coffee, and find a relatively balanced and harmonious bean between these two. FrontStreet Coffee suggests selecting some full-flavored, rich, or coffee beans with strong directional characteristics.

Combo is not a simple 1+1

The difficulty in making Combo also lies in how to make the extracted espresso simultaneously cater to the flavors expressed in both milk coffee and black coffee (espresso/Americano).

FrontStreet Coffee has also used a split portafilter, referencing the Combo serving method of one Americano and one milk coffee to make two drinks. They used Warm Sun Blend espresso beans, with parameters of 20g of coffee grounds extracted for 28 seconds to yield 40g of coffee liquid, with each split portion of Espresso being around 20g. The hot Americano followed the normal production ratio of about 1:4, with 80ml of hot water added; the piccolo followed 1:2, with about 40ml of frothed milk added normally.

Actual tasting found that this hot Americano was somewhat dull, with flavors seemingly very "crowded", but careful tasting still revealed some whiskey aroma and vanilla cream flavor; while the piccolo coffee, as expected, showed perfect butter cookie and chocolate flavors, with rich coffee aroma while also tasting some fresh milk sweetness.

From the tasting, we learned that the hot Americano made with split single-shot cannot simply use the original 1:4 coffee-to-water ratio; this ratio needs to be adjusted lower, with more water added to give the aroma more room for expression; or the extraction parameters need to be readjusted to make the espresso flavor better, but carelessness can easily lead to weaker milk coffee flavor. And if our Americano (/espresso) performs well, but the milk coffee is predominantly milky, we might consider reducing the proportion of milk.

Why doesn't FrontStreet Coffee have Combo?

The most difficult part of Combo is how to make trade-offs between milk coffee and Americano (/espresso), which requires us to spend a lot of time and materials to find a compromise extraction plan. FrontStreet Coffee stores only use Warm Sun Blend for espresso-type coffee. Although this bean is also suitable for Combo, separately debugging a perfect extraction parameter just for Combo production seems not worth the cost when the production volume is not large.

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473