After the concept of "specialty coffee" emerged, the unique flavors of various regions have become increasingly familiar to coffee connoisseurs, and SOE has become increasingly popular in the coffee market. So how do you choosea suitableSOE coffee bean?

SOE

SOE is the abbreviation of "Single Origin Espresso," meaning "single-origin espresso." Its focus is to highlight the coffee flavor of a certain origin; in fact, it showcases the flavor of single-origin coffee beans in the form of espresso.

Since its birth, SOE has been labeled as coffee with good regional flavors, which means the coffee selected can highlight the unique flavor of the origin and give people a refreshing impression.

The characteristic of espresso output is that it enhances the regional flavor characteristics. In addition to "concentrating"the aroma of the coffee, it also increasesits acidity. Second, for most people, the purpose of producingespresso is to use it as the base for milk coffee, so the requirement for crema is naturally essential.

Unlike pour-over and other drip coffees, espresso releases most of its aromatic substances in just twenty or thirty seconds, and espresso has a layer of golden Crema, which is what we call crema. In addition to the coffee's ownoils, it also includes the carbon dioxide released from freshly roasted coffee beans.

Crema is essentially the insoluble oils in coffee beans wrapping carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide is full of the coffee's flavor substances. Therefore, the richness of the crema determines, to a certain extent, the richness of the espresso's flavor. Only sufficient crema can support the flavor display of a cup of espresso.This is also why freshly roasted beans have more crema performance.

In other words, the general espresso requirement is just that level of acidity, and there is a more suitablecrema performance. Then, aside from flavor, what degree of roast is suitable for SOE espresso use?

Here, we useespresso with extremely fine ground coffee powder, at1:1.9～1:2powder-to-liquid ratio, under high temperature (94degrees) and high pressure (9bar),25s～35sthe coffee liquid extracted within this time is used as a benchmark for comparison.

Front Street tried using three different roast levels of everyday beans, including light-roasted Yirgacheffe, medium-roasted Brazil, and dark-roasted Mandheling beans, to make a standard espresso and observe the richness of crema under different roast levels.

From this, we can see very intuitively that under the same extraction parameters, the light-roasted Yirgacheffe has less crema than the medium-roasted Brazil and Mandheling, and the crema color is also lighter than the latter two; while the medium-roasted Brazil has less crema than Mandheling. That is, in terms of crema richness: Yirgacheffe<Brazil<Mandheling. Therefore, this is why when we choose coffee beans in daily life, we tend to choose medium-roasted and medium-dark-roasted beans to make espresso.

Of course, this is a trade-off made from the perspective of crema requirements. In terms of taste, light-roasted Yirgacheffe can taste rich citric acidity at the moment it enters the mouth, but it is fleeting, the aftertaste is not long, and the body is relatively thin.

The medium-roasted and dark-roasted Brazil and Mandheling have an overall bitter flavor, with rich nutty and chocolate notes, a relatively full sweetness, a smooth and full body, and a long sweet aftertaste; Mandheling has an extra herbal flavor at the finish compared with Brazil.

Light-roasted Yirgacheffe does not perform so well in terms of crema, but if what you pursue is the acidity of espresso, then you can also choose to use light-roasted coffee beans to make SOE; however, if you want a cup of SOE with rich crema and a smooth, full body, then Front Street still recommends that you use medium to medium-dark roasted coffee beans to make SOE.

Although high-quality SOE can well reflect the taste of an origin, its shortcoming is that it can only reflect the taste of the origin. For example, the light-roasted Front Street Yirgacheffe mentioned above, if you like its acidity and elegant floral aroma, but always feel that the body is not enough and the mouthfeel is too thin. If the roaster follows your suggestion and changes the roasting curve to increase the body, it will lose part of the fruit acidity and floral aroma. And "blending" is the most cost-effective choice to solve this kind of problem, complementing and matching according to the flavor characteristics of different origins to obtain balance in taste.

This is only a comparison result we made using everyday beans with the most basic flavors. In daily application, we tend to choose higher-priced single-origin specialty coffee beans as SOE options, such as Front Street Sidra with grape and passion fruit flavors. In this case, because these single-origin beans themselves already have excellent aroma, when expressed through espresso, aside from the requirement for crema, most beans will be very outstanding, and the only drawback is----too expensive!!!

If we go even more extreme, crossing beyond everyday beans, or even beyond SOE, the result of producing a Geisha blend can be imagined. For example, Front Street's Costa Rica blend Mirazu is a medium roast that meets the need for crema, and at the same time is composed of excellent specialty beans. Under espresso, a candy-like aroma is nothing surprising.

Therefore, this article only uses the perspective of the influence of roast level on crema to let us clearly understand the benchmark of crema performance, and provide the reason for using medium-roasted and medium-dark-roasted coffee beans to produce espresso. If you want to drink stronger acidity and can also accept SOE with less ideal crema performance, light-roasted coffee beans seem to be able to meet your requirements.