What isblended coffee beans?Front Street Italian coffee bean blendWhat is the ratio?blended coffee beansWhich beans are best to use?

Recently, a friend asked Front Street Coffee: "Are all coffee beans suitable for making espresso?" No~ Not all coffee beans are suitable for extracting espresso, especially lightly roasted coffee beans used for pressurized extraction, which easily amplifies the acidity of the coffee beans, ultimately giving the coffee a sharp sour taste. So what coffee beans are suitable for making espresso?

When Front Street Coffee generally recommends beans suitable for Italian coffee, it usually suggests using Italian blend coffee beans, because they are specifically "designed" for espresso machines. Their biggest feature is that the roast level is darker than coffee beans used for pour-over, while maximizing the stability of the flavor and quality of Italian coffee.

Generally, single-origin coffee beans used for pour-over are not suitable for espresso machines. This is because single-origin coffee beans cannot guarantee a stable output for every cup of Italian coffee. As a crop used as a concentrate, even for the same coffee bean, differences in climate, soil cultivation influences, roasting approaches, and the daily condition of the coffee beans can lead to certain differences in coffee flavor expression.

So what is SOE (Single Origin Espresso) about? Although SOE uses single-origin coffee beans to extract espresso, the single-origin coffee beans used for SOE are roasted darker than those used for pour-over, French press, ice drip, cold brew, and other single-origin coffee beans. The reason is that lightly roasted coffee beans generally have obvious acidity. With drip methods or immersion methods, the acidity may perform just right, and the final coffee powder layers will also be relatively rich.

But an espresso machine is a device that uses pressure to make water hotter than that used for pour-over pass quickly through coffee particles to extract very concentrated coffee (generally the powder-to-water ratio for pour-over is 1:13, and the powder-to-liquid ratio for espresso is 1:2). Therefore, the acidity in the coffee beans will be more obvious, and the coffee may present unpleasant flavors such as sharp sourness or astringency. Lightly roasted coffee beans have a harder texture, and soluble substances are not easily released in water. The fast-flowing water in pressurized extraction also cannot dissolve mellow substances, and can only dissolve sweet and sour substances, so the final espresso will also be very thin.

The practice of blended coffee beans appeared because coffee people in the past felt that single-origin coffee beans could not maintain stable coffee flavor over the long term, and not every single-origin coffee bean could extract delicious coffee. Therefore, they improved the coffee flavor through blending coffee beans. In this way, they could solve the problem of overly large differences in espresso flavor at the same shop regardless of harvest time, slight differences in roasting approach, or the failure of a certain coffee bean crop. At the same time, it could also reduce serious output differences caused by different extraction approaches among baristas. In addition to improving the flavor of coffee after extraction and making espresso output more stable, there is another important reason, which is that it can reduce costs.

The reason most Italian coffee beans use dark roasting is, first, to reduce the amplification of acidity during pressurized extraction and enhance the release of soluble substances (the darker the roast, the looser the bean texture, and the easier it is to extract flavor), increase the body of the coffee, and, through a longer roasting time, allow more carbon dioxide to remain in the coffee beans, forming more crema.

"Ah! What is the relationship between espresso crema and carbon dioxide??" The crema of espresso is not all coffee oil! During extraction, an espresso machine generates more than 9 bar of pressure to "squeeze" the coffee puck. Because the pressure is too high, water becomes supersaturated with the carbon dioxide in the coffee powder, so the carbon dioxide cannot be released and can only directly integrate into the coffee liquid. During extraction, the fats in the coffee are emulsified, and these fats wrap around the carbon dioxide and are released together. Since oil is lighter than water, the surface of the extracted espresso will have a golden crema floating on top.

Seeing this, I believe everyone can roughly understand why Front Street Coffee recommends using specially dedicated Italian blend coffee beans when making espresso. So what good Italian blend coffee beans are recommended? Front Street currently sells these four Italian blend coffee beans, which are:

Warm Sun Blend: Ethiopian natural Red Cherry coffee beans + Honduras coffee beans, with rich fermentation aroma, vanilla cream, berry sweetness and acidity, and roasted nut flavor notes. Suitable for friends who like coffee with rich layers.

Front Street Specialty Blend: Colombian washed coffee beans + Brazilian semi-washed coffee beans, with nut, dark chocolate, and caramel flavor notes. Suitable for friends who like mellow coffee.

Front Street Commercial Blend: Robusta washed coffee beans + Colombian washed coffee beans + Brazilian semi-washed coffee, with nut, cocoa, and caramel flavor notes. Suitable for friends pursuing value for money.

Front Street Black Cocoa Blend:Yunnan washed small-bean coffee beans + Brazilian semi-washed coffee beans, with soft fruit acidity, caramel, and nut flavor notes. Suitable for friends with higher demand for everyday coffee.

Everything sold by Front Street is freshly roasted coffee beans shipped within 5 days after the roast date. After receiving Italian coffee beans, everyone should not rush to use them, because too much carbon dioxide will affect the overall extraction of espresso, easily causing uneven extraction, prolonging extraction time, and leading to unpleasant flavors such as bitterness in the final coffee. Although carbon dioxide is the key to whether the crema is rich, too much carbon dioxide will make the crema very thick. If used to make hot latte coffee, overly thick crema will affect the integration of milk and coffee, ultimately affecting the formation of patterns and the overall taste performance of the coffee.

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