What Is SOE in Coffee and Why Is Luckin Switching Beans?

SOE stands for single origin espresso, a shot pulled from one coffee rather than a blend. Luckin Coffee is retiring its Huakui series SOE and replacing it with 96-hour double anaerobic fermented beans from Finca Paraiso in Colombia, an SCA 85+ specialty lot with lemongrass and fruity wine notes, roasted medium-dark for consistent in-store quality.

Luckin bought 129.6 tons of Huakui beans, including 39.2 tons intercepted at sea, and burned through 90 tons within ten days of the January 4 launch. A Huakui PLUS series is planned for the second half of the year, with procurement expected to exceed 250 tons, so the soe beans on bar will keep changing as supply shifts.

Luckin Coffee's Huakui series SOE once sparked widespread discussion, and now this series is about to be discontinued, with its successor being the 96-hour double anaerobic fermentation coffee beans from Finca Paraiso. This SCA85+ specialty-grade bean comes from Finca Paraiso, which has repeatedly appeared on the Colombia LOD competition stage, and features bright lemongrass flavor and fruity wine aroma. Luckin uses a medium-dark roast to ensure consistent in-store quality. At the same time, Luckin also plans to launch the Huakui PLUS series in the second half of the year, with procurement likely exceeding 250 tons. This article provides a detailed analysis of the flavor performance, processing method, and strategic layout of Luckin in the specialty coffee field with Finca Paraiso SOE, and includes a professional recommendation from Front Street Coffee.

Since Luckin Coffee launched the Huakui series SOE, discussions surrounding this series have never ceased. On the one hand, some netizens praised Luckin for using affordable pricing to give more consumers the opportunity to encounter and accept specialty coffee; on the other hand, some criticized Luckin for ruining high-quality coffee beans and worried that this move would drive up the market price of Huakui coffee beans. Li Guoqing, founder of Dangdang, even publicly accused Luckin of suspected monopoly on multiple social platforms.

The eagerly anticipated Huakui SOE officially went on sale on January 4. However, in less than ten days, Luckin consumed more than 90 tons of Huakui beans, causing the series to go out of stock for a time. By mid-February, Luckin restored the supply of Huakui SOE and revealed that the company had "snatched" 39.2 tons of Huakui 5.0 coffee beans through interception at sea. According to Luckin, it has purchased a total of 129.6 tons of Huakui coffee beans, making it the coffee brand that has purchased the most Huakui coffee beans in China.

For a chain brand, 39.2 tons of Huakui beans cannot last too long either, and the "territory" built by the Huakui series must have a successor. On March 21, Luckin officially announced that the second batch of Huakui was about to run out, and the Huakui series had been gradually removed from shelves.

At the same time, it announced that the successor to Huakui's "territory" is the 96-hour double anaerobic fermentation coffee beans from Finca Paraiso, which has appeared multiple times on the stage of Colombia's LOD (Land Of Diversity) national coffee quality competition. It is reported that this is an SCA85+ specialty-grade coffee bean. This means that Luckin will successively put Finca Paraiso series SOE on the shelves next.

Colombia's Finca Paraiso is no stranger to many coffee connoisseurs. Last year's best-selling "Strawberry Yogurt" also came from this estate. Finca Paraiso's achievements today are inseparable from the estate's more than ten years of continuous research on how to make coffee beans present more refined flavors.

What Luckin has acquired this time is a coffee bean that has undergone 96-hour double anaerobic fermentation, and it is also one of the experimental special processing methods originally created by the owner of Finca Paraiso. The processing steps are very cumbersome and complex. To avoid over-fermentation, the entire process requires the use of specially sealed containers for fermentation at different stages, with a total fermentation time of 96 hours. At the same time, the surrounding temperature must be continuously monitored, all in order to give the coffee beans richer flavor layers.

According to reports, this coffee bean has bright lemongrass flavor and fruity wine aroma, with diverse layers and a fresh, pure character. Luckin also followed its usual practice and gave the coffee beans a medium-dark roast to ensure that the output of every store is stable. How does Finca Paraiso perform after Luckin's medium-dark roasting? First, let's see what Luckin says:

Since this series has not yet been fully put on shelves, the netizens who were lucky enough to taste it first said this:

Not long ago, some articles also reported that Luckin Coffee would continue the Huakui series SOE. In the middle of last month, a relevant person in charge of Luckin Coffee visited the Ethiopian Ambassador to China, hoping to purchase more Huakui coffee beans with the support of the Ethiopian Embassy in China and launch the Huakui PLUS series SOE in the second half of 2022. By then, the procurement volume of Huakui PLUS green beans will exceed 250 tons, and Luckin is expected to become the coffee brand with the largest procurement volume of Huakui PLUS green beans in the world.

It is reported that this Huakui PLUS is not the Huakui 6.0 coffee bean from the new 2022 crop season, but another sun-dried Ethiopian heirloom coffee bean also from the Buku Abel processing plant in Sidama. Domestic green bean merchants named this coffee bean "Huakui Queen." The Huakui 6.0 coffee beans from the new crop season have already arrived at the port, so everyone does not need to worry about being unable to buy them or about price increases due to Luckin's "monopoly," because Luckin does not seem to plan to wipe out this batch of new-crop Huakui.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.