Why is soe coffee more expensive than mixed beans? which tastes better, SOE or mixed coffee?

As the habit of drinking coffee is gradually integrated into people's daily life, people's demand for coffee is getting higher and higher, and it is becoming more and more refined. In order to create their own characteristics, the major chain brands have launched personalized SOE coffee, forming a new popular trend.

What's the difference between SOE and matching?

Before the advent of the tide of boutique coffee, the raw materials used to make espresso are generally made of coffee beans from two or more producing areas, without paying too much attention to the origin and batches of coffee. Manufacturers will use deep baking to eliminate those unpleasant flavors and acidity, so that even if the batch quality of individual production is low, deep baking can cover up its defects. The extracted coffee oil is rich, smooth, mellow and balanced, with baked hazelnut, chocolate and caramel as the main flavor.

In the 1980s, people began to emphasize the concept of boutique coffee, and roasters realized that coffee from each place of origin has different characteristics. So began to adjust the roasting degree of some coffee beans to highlight the regional flavor characteristics of coffee, but also "dig" out more fruit flavor. Previously, coffee from a single producing area was mostly extracted by hand brewing, siphon, French pressure pot and so on, and people also began to delve into the various flavors of the coffee. Some baristas, in order to shine in the competition, will choose a variety of personalized coffee beans to brew. James Hoffmann, the champion of the 2007 WBC World Barista Competition, applied coffee beans from a single producing area to the Italian machine, and SOE became more and more popular.

SOE is single origin espresso, the abbreviation of single espresso, that is, espresso made from beans in a single producing area. "producing area" can be a producing country, region, cooperative, manor or farm. Coffee harvested in the same batch belongs to single coffee. For example, on the small blackboard on the left side of the front street bar, dozens of coffees from different places belong to individual products, and Qianjie is generally produced in the form of hand flushing. Individual coffee is based on the concept of boutique coffee, which aims to emphasize the regional flavor of coffee, such as the citrus acid of Yega Xuefei, the herbal flavor of Indonesia and the chocolate mellow of Colombia.

Therefore, the Italian concentrate made of single bean can be called SOE, which and Italian blending (Blend) both belong to the category of Italian coffee. In order to highlight the unique flavor of the producing area, SOE needs to be lighter in roasting. For example, on the front street bean list, the SOE extracted from Ethiopian Yega Snow Red Cherry Coffee beans shows the sour sweetness of berries and citrus. Because the taste is softer and the flavor is clearer, the merchants will emphasize the flavor characteristics when they produce.

Why is SOE more expensive than matching?

Some coffee shops provide SOE coffee beans need to pay extra price difference, many friends think that SOE is more advanced than blending, better flavor. From the above, it is not difficult to see that SOE only means that coffee beans come from a single place of origin, so it does not mean that the quality of coffee is better, nor does it mean that the taste is necessarily better than the combination.

The single bean used for hand-brewing takes into account the unique regional flavor of the place of origin and the aroma of the coffee bean itself, just as Yega Xuefei has fresh and bright citrus and citric acid, and Blue Mountain Coffee has sweet chocolate and caramel aromas. Similarly, SOE should also show the flavor characteristics of the place of origin. The baking degree is too deep, the flavor aroma is easy to be covered by the thick substances after baking, and if the baking is too shallow, it is easy to cause insufficient extraction, resulting in acidity and thin taste. Therefore, whether a cup of SOE coffee tastes good or not tests the "interpretation" of SOE by bakers and baristas.

Pressurized extraction of espresso will use mixed beans as raw materials, and producers will combine coffee beans from different places to highlight the rich, mellow and bitter taste by deep roasting, and the flavor is basically fixed on the flavors of caramel, black Qiao, nuts and cocoa. If espresso is different from traditional mixed beans, single-origin SOE will use lighter roasting, showing a lighter taste different from the traditional bitterness, such as the fruity and floral flavor of Essex beans. A higher degree of recognition makes it easier for consumers to remember the characteristics of SOE, but in terms of cost, higher-quality beans are certainly more expensive, and the extra money should be taken for granted.

It is more difficult to make SOE.

In order to present the unique style of SOE, high-quality coffee beans, appropriate roasting degree, corresponding grinding parameters and proper extraction are indispensable. The extraction adjustment of Italian concentration needs to take into account the slight fluctuation factors such as environmental humidity, extraction time, grinding degree of coffee powder, amount of powder, powder-liquid ratio and so on, so it is more difficult to ensure stable production.

If we are making SOE at home, Qianjie recommends using medium-to-deep roasted or flavor coffee beans, which can avoid strong irritating taste caused by roasting factors. For example, Qianjie Brazilian Queen's Manor coffee beans are roasted in medium depth, and the extracted SOE presents chocolate, roasted hazelnuts, cream, and sugarcane sweetness. Or the front street Costa Rican Mozart coffee beans, treated with raisin honey, SOE will have preserved fruit, tropical fruit and light floral aromas.

No matter how to extract a coffee bean, Qianjie believes that freshness is very critical. If you use coffee beans that have been roasted for more than a month, some of the aroma may have been lost and a bad wood smell has been produced. Qianjie wants every customer who places an order to taste the aroma of coffee during the best taste period, so it will ensure that only 5-day freshly roasted beans are shipped. People want to make SOE coffee with a better flavor, Qianjie recommends freshly roasted coffee beans.

When we use shallow roasted coffee beans to extract SOE, because the roasting time of coffee beans is short, the internal texture is still relatively hard, and the flavor is more difficult to extract. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the extraction parameters to improve the extraction rate, such as prolonging the extraction time, increasing the water temperature, adjusting the grinding degree, increasing the content and so on. As the fine degree of Italian grinding is much higher than that of hand-impact trickling filter, the adjustment can not be too large, which can easily lead to excessive variables and more unstable extraction. Qianjie is the daily product of the store, so the adjustment of parameters will be based on the accumulation of daily experience. If we have a low amount of cups at home, it is difficult to grasp. Qianjie suggests that we can record it and summarize the relationship between extraction parameters and flavor performance. This is more conducive to our rapid adjustment, but also save unnecessary waste.

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