Introduction to Specialty Coffee Essentials: Flavor Profile and Brewing Tutorial for Premium Espresso

At FrontStreet Coffee, you can truly be overwhelmed by choice, making it difficult for those with decision paralysis to select just one coffee. This is because there are so many types of coffee here that you'll find it hard to commit to ordering just one cup, as there are many factors to consider. FrontStreet Coffee's espresso is made from high-quality single-origin coffee blends. Have you heard of specialty espresso?

Understanding Specialty Coffee

Specialty coffee refers to coffee made from beans grown in extremely ideal geographical environments that produce exceptional flavor characteristics. Depending on their specific soil and climate conditions, they exhibit outstanding flavors. These coffees undergo strict selection and grading, and only those with hard texture, rich taste, and excellent flavor are considered specialty coffee beans. Specialty espresso is made from specialty coffee beans to create either blended espresso or single-origin espresso.

FrontStreet Coffee Espresso

Espresso Blends

Espresso blend roasting generally falls into two camps: one prefers to blend before roasting, while the other roasts beans from various origins separately before blending. Of course, the resulting flavors will be different.

Let's first discuss the blend-then-roast method. Its advantage is more complete mixing because roasting one batch takes about 10-25 minutes using either drum roasters or hot-air agitation methods. During such a long roasting time, all coffee varieties should be thoroughly mixed. When grinding and brewing, this ensures that every coffee bean type is represented in each dose of coffee grounds, resulting in more consistent flavor and texture. Additionally, the bean color is more uniform and aesthetically pleasing, making this one-step roasting method convenient regardless of batch size.

Now for the advantages of roasting-then-blending: this method allows control over each origin's bean characteristics - understanding their hardness, moisture content, and the aromas released at different roast levels such as nutty, floral, cocoa, fruity notes, acidity, and bitterness. By roasting them individually, these characteristics can be highlighted. A skilled roaster must master each bean's characteristics to fully showcase the unique flavors of this blending approach, resulting in richer layers of complexity than the former method.

Single Origin Espresso (SOE)

SOE stands for "Single Origin Espresso." This concept exists in contrast to blended espresso.

While SOE represents single-origin espresso, it doesn't necessarily equal specialty coffee. If you select single-origin coffee beans with easily identifiable flavors as SOE, you can create espresso with unique and distinctive characteristics.

For example, Yirgacheffe's citrus flavors or Kenya's small tomato notes - when espresso is extracted under high pressure in an espresso machine, the coffee flavors are amplified, making the flavor expression more prominent compared to pour-over brewing.

Using single-origin beans for espresso is essentially to allow espresso and milk coffee lovers to appreciate the inherent flavors of single-origin beans. If a single-origin bean lacks distinctiveness, most people won't detect its unique characteristics.

Blended coffee beans, on the other hand, can create balanced espresso with strong body.

Demonstration: Making Specialty Espresso

FrontStreet Coffee Warm Sun Blend Espresso Beans

Varieties: Caturra, Catuai, Pacas, Heirloom

Flavors: Chocolate, cream, vanilla, fermented wine aroma, citrus

When people think of blend beans, they typically associate them with espresso making. Blends mainly select two or more coffee beans that are combined either before or after roasting. The purpose of blending is to achieve pleasant and rich aromas, distinctive flavors, enhanced balance and mellow richness, and a thick, substantial texture, allowing the beans' strengths and weaknesses to complement each other to achieve balance.

In this warm winter sun season, I wanted to create a blend suitable for both pour-over and espresso. In terms of taste, I wanted this blend to have an immediately pleasant aroma, a substantial mouthfeel with gentle fruit acidity, and a medium-high sweetness in the finish.

Blending Philosophy

Ethiopian regional beans have thousands of varieties with flavors worth exploring. Washed beans offer bright fruit acidity and clean mouthfeel, while natural processed beans have richer tropical fruit notes with complex and substantial texture. When unsure where to start, I recalled that previous barrel-fermented beans and natural processed Yirgacheffe beans had both been used for SOE, with excellent extraction results - aromas with fruit acidity, balanced yet non-monotonous mouthfeel, and ample sweetness.

Now let's use it to make an espresso and a latte to see how different the results are~

Espresso

Parameters

Grind: Feima 600N grinder #1.6, Dose: 14g, Yield: 20g espresso, Ratio: 1:1.4, Time: 26s

Espresso Flavor

Smooth mouthfeel, medium body, with distinct fruit acidity upon entry accompanied by subtle berry aromas, whiskey notes, rich chocolate flavors, and a prominent sweet aftertaste.

Latte

Parameters

Grind: Feima 600N grinder #1.6, Dose: 20g, Yield: 40g espresso, Time: 28s, Ratio: 1:2

Latte Flavor

The espresso with added milk shows distinct liqueur chocolate flavors, ample sweetness, and a long-lasting finish.

Espresso Making Tips

1. Espresso beans that are too fresh release gas vigorously, easily causing channeling effects, resulting in unstable espresso. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends letting the beans rest (using coffee beans that have rested for about ten days).

2. Adjust grind settings. (Recommend making fine adjustments in increments of 0.1). Adjust your grind based on extraction results. Finer grind particles lead to longer extraction times and burnt, bitter flavors, easily causing over-extraction - recommend coarser adjustment. Conversely, coarser particles lead to shorter extraction times and sour flavors, easily causing under-extraction - recommend finer adjustment.

3. Increase or decrease dose (depending on basket capacity).

Adjust the water-to-coffee ratio by increasing or decreasing the dose to achieve the desired espresso concentration. Adjust in 0.5g increments. More dose means smaller water-to-coffee ratio, resulting in richer, thicker coffee. Less dose means larger ratio, resulting in thinner, lighter coffee. Make slight adjustments to find the appropriate coffee concentration, ultimately determining the optimal espresso extraction parameters.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473