Can Pour-Over Coffee Use Blended Coffee Beans? What is Espresso Blend? Blend Formulas for Espresso Cold Brew

Erna Knutsen's introduction of specialty coffee concepts not only made people around the world pay attention to coffee quality, but also began to emphasize the regional flavors of coffee growing origins! Therefore, these single-origin coffees that showcase regional flavors have come to be known as "Single-Origin Coffee."

Although there are many ways to brew coffee, if we want to conveniently make coffee that can "express itself" (with prominent flavors), then pour-over, with its highest error tolerance, is undoubtedly the best choice. Therefore, after the concept of single-origin became popular, pour-over gained favor for its excellent capabilities. Whenever people prepare to "cook" a single-origin bean, the first brewing method that comes to mind is likely pour-over; and whenever pour-over coffee is mentioned, what likely comes to mind is the brewing of single-origin coffee. The two are closely related and gradually became "bundled" together.

But recently, many coffee enthusiasts have noticed that more and more people are using pour-over to brew blended beans! Whether in ubiquitous specialty coffee shops or on world-class coffee competition stages. This naturally makes people curious - aren't blended beans exclusive to espresso? Why has pour-over coffee started using blends?

What is a Blend?

First, let's briefly explain what a blend is! "Blend" is short for blended coffee beans! We can understand its meaning directly from the literal interpretation - "a completely new bean created by combining multiple beans with different characteristics!" The factors covered by different characteristics include:

Coffee beans from different countries
Coffee beans from the same country but different regions
Coffee beans from the same region but different processing mills/origins
Coffee beans from the same processing mill/origin but with different processing methods

It should be noted that the following condition does not fall under the category of blended coffee beans: different varieties from the same origin with the same processing. Although coffee beans will produce flavors with their unique personalities due to their own genes, it should be noted that a variety can undergo natural mutations under specific circumstances, such as "Bourbon being a variant of Typica," "Caturra being a variant of Bourbon," and so on. Without human intervention, the number of varieties in a coffee origin may continuously increase. Therefore, it is difficult to avoid the situation where different varieties are mixed in the same coffee origin. Although they will have their characteristic flavors, the differences under the same land and same processing will not be too significant, and more of the flavor characteristics are still given by the origin and processing. Therefore, beans created by combining two different varieties from the same origin with the same processing cannot be called traditional blends. (For example, Panama's Flower Butterfly or Costa Rica's Strawberry Candy, although they are both created by mixing Geisha with other varieties, they still belong to single-origin beans because the origins where different varieties are planted and the processing used are completely consistent.)

Traditional blended beans were initially mainly used for making espresso because early on, the need for blending was largely due to the instability of coffee beans themselves! Coffee beans are agricultural products, crops that depend on nature. Even for the same variety planted in the same land, its taste and quality will change with annual climate variations, making it unstable. Therefore, to ensure product quality and maintain taste stability, merchants would use several beans from different regions to blend together, creating a completely new bean! The advantage of this approach is that it can dilute the importance of each bean. When a certain region cannot deliver coffee beans of the same quality the following year, they can find other beans with similar flavors to replace them. Since the proportion is not large, the taste will not change significantly after replacement. This also allowed for great development in cost control, so blended beans quickly spread and became mainstream for espresso.

Why Has Pour-Over Started Using Blends?

First, we need to know that pour-over has never been an exclusive brewing method for single-origin coffee. As mentioned at the beginning, using pour-over to brew single-origin coffee not only has more expressive power but also has a very high error tolerance. Second, "stability" and "high cost-effectiveness" are just two advantages of blended coffee beans, but for previous coffee shop owners, these two advantages were more important. Because some merchants would use these two advantages to add inferior beans to blends, diluting the negative flavors of inferior beans with other beans to obtain high profits, which also led to most people having unfavorable impressions of blended beans. However, this situation is long past, and blended beans are no longer synonymous with inferior quality. With the quality of coffee beans guaranteed and people's living standards continuously improving, people have begun to no longer be satisfied with just stable flavors! Whether for espresso or pour-over, people expect to obtain more excellent coffee experiences! And blended coffee beans can more easily achieve this, so people began to use blends to create more extreme and excellent coffee experiences. Many merchants have started using high-quality single-origin beans for blending to obtain more premium coffee flavors, and the same logic applies to pour-over coffee! Next, let's share the advantages that blending can bring!

Strengths and Weaknesses

There is no absolutely perfect thing in the world, let alone coffee beans which are agricultural products. For example, some coffee beans have excellent flavors but weak body and mouthfeel! Then, we can use beans with less prominent flavors but excellent mouthfeel to blend and compensate. Another example: some coffee beans have high sweetness but lack layering due to too weak acidity! Therefore, we would use a coffee bean with full acidity to blend and supplement, making the final coffee not only high in sweetness but also layered!

Innovative Flavors

The advantages of blended beans are not just in compensating for mouthfeel and taste; we can also create unprecedented flavors exclusive to you by integrating the characteristic flavors of different coffee beans. This is also why many competition participants choose to use blended coffee beans.

So we can understand why the use of blended coffee beans is no longer limited to espresso making. Other coffee brewing methods such as pour-over and cold brew will be, and already are, new stages for blended beans! That's all for now. If friends want to try blending coffee beans themselves, you can refer to this article "The Underlying Logic of Blended Coffee Beans" from FrontStreet Coffee in the link. It will tell you how a qualified blended coffee bean should be made! Happy blending~

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