After the concept of "specialty coffee" emerged, the unique flavors of various producing regions have become increasingly familiar to coffee connoisseurs, and SOE has also become increasingly popular in the coffee market. So how do you choose the right SOE coffee beans?
SOE
SOE is the abbreviation of "Single Origin Espresso," which means "single origin espresso." Its focus is to highlight the coffee flavor of a certain producing region. In fact, it is simply presenting the flavor of single origin coffee beans in the form of espresso.
Since its birth, SOE has been labeled as coffee with good flavor from the producing region, which means the coffee chosen can highlight the unique flavor of the producing region and give people a refreshing impression.
The characteristic of espresso output is that it enhances the flavor characteristics of the producing region. In addition to "concentrating" the aroma of the coffee, it also increases its acidity. Secondly, for most people, the purpose of making espresso is to use it as the base for milk coffee, so the requirement for crema is naturally indispensable.
Unlike pour-over and other drip coffees, espresso needs to release 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 oils of the coffee itself, 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 with enough crema can it support the flavor display of a cup of espresso. This is also why freshly roasted beans have more crema.
In other words, the general need for espresso is just that much acidity and a more suitable crema performance. Then, aside from flavor, what degree of roast is suitable for SOE espresso use?
Here, we use extremely fine ground coffee for espresso, with a coffee-to-liquid ratio of 1:1.9 to 1:2, and under high temperature (94°C) and high pressure (9 bar), the coffee liquid extracted within 25s to 35s is used as a benchmark.
Front Street tried using three different roast levels of everyday beans, including lightly 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.
Extraction parameters Coffee powder weight Coffee liquid weight Extraction time
Yirgacheffe 20g 38g 28 seconds
Brazil 20g 38g 30 seconds
Mandheling 20g 38g 30 seconds
From this, we can intuitively see that under the same extraction parameters, lightly roasted Yirgacheffe has less crema than medium roasted Brazil and Mandheling, and the color of the crema is also lighter than the latter two; while 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 roast and medium-dark roast beans to make espresso.
Of course, this is a trade-off made from the perspective of crema requirements. In terms of taste, lightly roasted Yirgacheffe can be tasted instantly with a rich lemon acidity on entry, but it disappears in a flash, the aftertaste is not long, and the mouthfeel is rather thin.
Medium roasted and dark roasted Brazil and Mandheling have an overall bitter flavor, with a rich nutty and chocolatey tone, relatively sufficient sweetness, a smooth and full mouthfeel, and a long sweet aftertaste; Mandheling has an extra herbal flavor at the finish compared with Brazil.
Lightly 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 lightly roasted coffee beans to make SOE; however, if you want a cup of SOE with rich crema and a smooth, full mouthfeel, 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 a producing region, its shortcoming is also that it can only reflect the taste of the producing region. For example, the lightly 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 producing regions 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 more expensive single origin specialty coffee beans as options for SOE, 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 a bit more extreme, crossing beyond everyday beans and even beyond SOE, the result of making a Geisha blend is imaginable, such as Front Street's Costa Rica blend Mirazu, which is medium roasted to meet the need for crema, and at the same time is composed of outstanding specialty beans. Under espresso, a candy-like aroma is nothing surprising.
Therefore, this article merely uses the perspective of the influence of roast level on crema to let us clearly understand the benchmark of crema performance and the reason for using medium roasted and medium-dark roasted coffee beans to make espresso. If you want to drink a stronger acidity and can also accept an SOE whose crema performance is not ideal, lightly roasted coffee beans seem to be able to satisfy your requirements.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
