What is Blend Coffee Beans? Espresso Blend Coffee Bean Formula Espresso Coffee Bean Aging Time

Recently, regular customers who frequently come to FrontStreet Coffee to buy FrontStreet Coffee's espresso blend coffee beans have noticed that new visitors to FrontStreet Coffee are quite puzzled, wondering why FrontStreet Coffee's baristas mix several types of beans together for sale. In fact, these are blended coffee beans, also known as mixed coffee. So in this article, FrontStreet Coffee will explain what blended coffee beans are!

What is Blended Coffee

Coffee enthusiast friends all know that single-origin coffee comes from coffee beans of a single producing region, such as FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopian Yirgacheffe or FrontStreet Coffee's Indonesian Mandheling. These are single coffee beans, and their brewed flavors carry the unique characteristics of their local regions. Blended coffee, on the other hand, mixes single-origin coffee beans from different producing regions together. However, FrontStreet Coffee wants to emphasize that these blends are not mixed randomly—strict requirements for blending ratios and flavor harmony must be met to create a delicious-tasting coffee.

Take FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and FrontStreet Coffee's Indonesian Mandheling as an example—the flavors of these two coffee beans are completely opposite. One has fresh lemon and citrus notes, while the other has herbal and earthy aromas. If mixed 1:1, FrontStreet Coffee can't imagine how dark such a flavor would be. Therefore, coffee blending requires skill and cannot be done casually.

Moreover, FrontStreet Coffee believes that blending coffee beans is an art form. First, coffee blenders must understand the different flavor characteristics of major producing regions to create enticing aromas and make coffee more delicious. This not only requires extensive coffee experience and inspiration but also precise ratio calculations. Therefore, saying that the process of blending coffee beans is an art is no exaggeration.

Since blending naturally refers to combining two or more types of original beans, a special case is blending the same coffee beans at different roast levels, or even blending new crop with aged coffee or old crop of the same coffee beans. Therefore, the types referred to in blending are no longer narrowly defined coffee varieties but have been broadly extended to coffee flavors. Generally, 2 to 6 types of coffee beans are used in blending—too many varieties would make it impossible to express the unique flavor of the coffee.

Why Blend Coffee

Certainly, some coffee enthusiast friends might ask FrontStreet Coffee: single-origin coffee flavors are already excellent enough, so why blend coffee beans?

In fact, the origin of coffee blending comes from Italy. The espresso commonly found in cafés, whether lattes, mochas, or cappuccinos, all uses blended beans. This is because blended coffee beans can make coffee that isn't rich enough become richer. Where there's demand, there's naturally a market. The initial emergence of Italian coffee blending was due to the popularity of rich, bitter Italian espresso at the time, while single-origin coffees had flavor imbalances—meaning advantages and disadvantages coexisted. Additionally, high-quality single-origin coffee beans were expensive, while blended coffee offered better value, being cheaper than single-origin coffee but with unique flavors. Therefore, many Italians at the time chose blended coffee over single-origin coffee, and blended coffee developed and became popular.

The main purpose of blended coffee is to maintain stable flavors and balanced taste. Because coffee beans are always an agricultural product, their flavor can vary each year due to climate and environmental issues—perhaps sweeter this year, not as sweet next year. Mixing several types of coffee beans together can solve this problem well, at least keeping the coffee flavor consistent year after year.

Another point that puzzles coffee enthusiast friends is why espresso can't be made with single-origin coffee beans. This is because espresso machines have a characteristic of amplifying the most prominent coffee flavors. For example, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe's main flavor is citrus and lemon acidity, so an espresso machine will amplify its acidity. Indonesian Mandheling's main flavor is herbal, earthy, and bitter, so an espresso machine will amplify the bitter flavors. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee does not use single-variety coffee beans to make espresso, otherwise the resulting coffee would be very unbalanced and affect the taste. This is also why espresso must be made with blended coffee beans.

How to Blend Coffee Beans

Coffee blending is divided into raw blending and roasted blending. Raw blending means mixing coffee beans before roasting, while roasted blending means roasting first, then mixing. FrontStreet Coffee believes the advantage of raw blending is that it can use the same roast level to make coffee flavors more stable and uniform, and it can be done in one roast. The same roast level also greatly reduces quality control difficulty and improves efficiency. However, it's not perfect—raw blending has significant limitations. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee generally recommends using coffee beans with similar densities for raw blending, otherwise the flavors won't be as good as their original regional flavors. For example, beans suitable for light roast must be roasted with other light roast beans to achieve double the good effect, while roasting a light roast bean with a dark roast bean would be incompatible, leading to poor flavors.

FrontStreet Coffee believes the advantage of roasted blending is that each bean can be roasted to its optimal roast level, maximizing the characteristics of each bean. But the disadvantage of roasted blending is that daily quality control and management become more difficult—inconsistent roast dates require more attention to different resting periods. Imagine using 4-5 types of coffee beans for roasted blending—one product would need to track 4-5 different roast dates. Therefore, both raw and roasted blending have their pros and cons, but the goal is the same: to make coffee flavors more delicious.

Of course, there are also two blending methods for coffee. One is blending coffee beans from different regions. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Sunflower Warm Sunshine Blend uses FrontStreet Coffee's Honduran Sherry mixed with FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopian Natural Red Cherry. The Sherry provides most of the flavor, while the natural red cherry provides aroma and acidity.

Another blending method is blending between different coffee varieties. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Flower Butterfly is famous for mixing about 70% Geisha variety, and FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica Mirazu Estate Geisha Blend mixes half Geisha variety with half SL28, ET47, and Maico. However, FrontStreet Coffee believes that calling coffee beans mixed from different varieties "blends" is just to highlight a particular variety, not traditional blending in the true sense. Interestingly, if we also call coffee beans mixed from different varieties "blends," then most of the common coffee beans we see would also be blends, as Kenya often mixes SL28 with SL34.

FrontStreet Coffee's Four Blended Coffee Beans

As FrontStreet Coffee mentioned above, blending coffee beans is an art form—not something that can be done casually, but requires coffee blenders to constantly experiment and test repeatedly to create a cup of coffee with excellent flavor. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee's roasters have also gone through continuous ratio testing to create the four blends currently available at FrontStreet Coffee: FrontStreet Coffee's Sunflower Warm Sunshine Blend, FrontStreet Coffee's Specialty Blend, FrontStreet Coffee's Commercial Blend, and FrontStreet Coffee's Basic Blend. The difference between these four blends is that they offer balanced, high-quality blended flavors for different price points. Below, FrontStreet Coffee will introduce these four blended coffees in detail.

FrontStreet Coffee Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend

For this espresso blend, FrontStreet Coffee uses FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Natural Red Cherry and FrontStreet Coffee's Honduran Sherry. FrontStreet Coffee's design concept for this blend is that it can be used for both espresso and pour-over. When used to make espresso, it emits obvious fermented wine aromas. When tasted, citrus and berry acidity immediately emerges, with whiskey aroma and a dark chocolate aftertaste.

When brewed by pour-over, the flavors of FrontStreet Coffee's Sunflower Warm Sunshine Blend are not as rich as when making espresso. After brewing, there are fermented wine aromas and a little citrus aroma. When tasted at high temperature, there are only obvious wine aromas and dark chocolate aftertaste. As the temperature cools down, the citrus and berry acidity are slightly revealed. The overall experience is clean and fresh, without vanilla cream texture.

FrontStreet Coffee Specialty Espresso Blend

For this blend, FrontStreet Coffee uses Brazilian and Colombian coffee beans. It tastes with a light roasted grass aroma, fresh fragrance with a slight bitterness, sweet and smooth, with a pleasant aftertaste. This is because Colombian Huilan region coffee beans have pleasing acidity, fragrant aroma, moderate acidity, and rich sweetness that is intriguing. Brazilian Cerrado region coffee beans have comfortable bittersweet flavors and are extremely smooth when tasted. So the combination is simply wonderful and can meet the daily production needs of coffee shops.

FrontStreet Coffee Commercial Espresso Blend

For this blend, FrontStreet Coffee uses Brazilian and Colombian coffee beans with 10% Robusta coffee beans. The taste is classic. FrontStreet Coffee thinks this blend tastes with rich crema and texture and caramel sweetness, also with nut and cocoa flavors, dark chocolate flavors, balanced sweet and sour, with a slight bitterness and lasting aftertaste. This FrontStreet Coffee Commercial Blend, like FrontStreet Coffee's Specialty Blend, uses Colombian and Brazilian coffee bean ratios, but the difference is the addition of Robusta, which provides rich crema, making the coffee texture richer, suitable for daily shop opening needs.

FrontStreet Coffee Basic Espresso Blend

For this blend, FrontStreet Coffee uses Brazilian and Yunnan coffee beans. FrontStreet Coffee thinks it tastes with soft fruit acidity and caramel sweetness, as well as nut and dark chocolate flavors, smooth and thick, but the taste is relatively light. This is because Yunnan's natural conditions are very similar to Colombia's—high altitude, large day-night temperature differences, mellow flavor type, moderate acidity, rich and mellow taste, uniform particles, high oil content, with fruit aroma. Its quality and texture are similar to Colombian coffee. However, the taste is slightly lighter than Colombian's, while Brazilian Cerrado region coffee beans have comfortable bittersweet flavors and are extremely smooth when tasted. Therefore, the flavor of mixing these two coffee beans is also good, and this basic blended coffee bean offers excellent value, suitable for espresso beginners and small coffee shops, as well as coffee shops and home users who prioritize cost and have general flavor requirements.

Pour-Over Use of Blended Coffee

Blended coffee is not only for espresso use—it can also be used for pour-over, but the brewed flavor will always be somewhat different from that brewed by an espresso machine. However, FrontStreet Coffee thinks that the different flavor when brewed by pour-over isn't that special too, so choosing either pour-over or espresso machine is fine—just make it according to your preference.

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will share pour-over parameters for coffee enthusiast friends who want to brew it themselves.

FrontStreet Coffee Pour-Over Parameters: Kono dripper, 15g coffee dose, 90°C water temperature, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, grind size (80% pass-through rate on #20 standard sieve, coarser than espresso grind)

Brewing method: FrontStreet Coffee uses segmented extraction. Bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds. Using small water flow, pour in circles to 125g, then segment. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225g and stop. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, remove the dripper. Extraction time is 2'00" (starting from bloom timing).

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473