Why do you make mixed coffee? not all mixed coffee tastes bad.

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

What this article will discuss is matching. Why commercial cafes use blended coffee beans, and why some bakers choose to use blended beans, while others don't. Tell me why the "reputation" of blending is not good in the boutique coffee industry.

For a long time, "coffee" was made by default from a variety of beans. Some companies will name combinations after themselves, and many big companies will have a variety of combinations in a year, while the current boutique coffee industry prefers seasonal ones.

Many bean bakers' recipes are secret. Baking beans is like an art, and many legendary baking masters say it cannot be taught. They keep secret about the mix, and some don't even write down the formula to prevent it from being copied. I think this is very ridiculous, to put it bluntly, self-high. The coffee beans baked by many bean bakers seem to be a little different every week.

This also makes the idea that "matching can be perfectly copied and there will be a commercial threat" seems far-fetched.

Why would a coffee company make a match? Usually, the reason has something to do with the size of the business, that is, the volume of raw beans traded in bulk and the customer's demand for their coffee. As far as I know, some companies are in the middle of several baked bean sizes mentioned below.

What big bakers need is stable output in the face of huge market demand. In order to maintain superficial consistency, they will buy a variety of coffee beans in large quantities and then put them together to weaken (some of them) coffee bean flavor changes. The seasonal variation of the flavor of coffee beans is not the focus of consideration here, because there are many kinds of beans, they can change the blending ratio at any time to reduce this change. The disadvantage of this is that the mixed beans do not show obvious flavor characteristics. To be honest, if there are more than eight different coffee beans in a mix, the floral smell of Yega snow beans is completely insignificant.

In other words, it is hard to believe that some of the flavors are consistent throughout the year. Under the huge logistics and commercial demand, I admire the amazing skills shown by these bean baking experts.

The blending baked by medium-sized bean bakers is to keep the consistency of each pot of beans as much as possible on the premise of retaining the characteristics of bean flavor and seasonal flavor. In other words, they will choose beans from 2-4 countries to bake and mix for a whole year. If you are smart, you will choose countries with two harvests a year or countries with scattered harvest time when choosing coffee beans. In this way, the blend will be able to use fresh coffee beans all year round without a big change in flavor. At the same time, it also gives them some space to adjust the blending ratio and maintain the obvious characteristics of the coffee flavor.

The matching baked by small bean bakers varies greatly and has strong seasonality, which is basically the default. Many boutique coffee roasters name their main mix "Seasonal Blend", while others have a fixed flavor mix, as mentioned above, and a more varied seasonal mix. And because of the specific business, there are some different reasons for the rapid change of flavor.

Some bean roasters will explain that coffee is seasonal, and they roast the freshest beans, so the flavor of the mix is constantly changing. This is the best-case scenario. Other bakers simply can't help buying small amounts of coffee beans. Because it is not a big deal and there is not much cash flow, the most advantageous thing to do is to buy raw beans in small quantities and many times. Even if many small bakers buy a container of Brazilian raw beans together, they have so much energy that they can't digest them, so sometimes it's more economical to change the mix.

Seasonal matching with constantly changing flavors is great, but product inconsistency is also a problem. Some people will think that the seasonal matching of flavor changes is like a delicate sensory experience-indeed-but for most bakers, it is more of a business need than a luxury. The fact is that a bean baker needs to reduce wear and tear or clear inventory. Because the best-selling blended products can sell those stored old beans or beans that do not have a good flavor when making SOE. Although this does not mean that it will damage the quality of the matching, it is indeed dishonest and undermines the original intention of selling the matching.

These are the reasons why bakers bake and mix beans from a purely commercial point of view. So why do some bakers choose to mix beans, while others don't bake beans at all?

Support matching

Matching is often touted to make the product taste better than a single bean. According to this view, blending can combine the advantages of a variety of coffee beans and erase their disadvantages. I think it's just a good wish in most cases. If you mix a thin, acidity bean with a rich, sweet bean, you won't get a delicious cup of coffee. All you get is a little sour and a little sweet coffee, and the taste is between thin and full-bodied. Matching is not to enhance strengths and circumvent weaknesses, it is just to mix all the characteristics of coffee beans together, and then according to different proportions, weaken these characteristics.

Some people claim that SOE never tastes good and has to be matched to taste good. Of course I object to this idea, but I admit that the combination sometimes tastes a lot better than a coffee bean in the recipe. This kind of situation is rare, and it is not impossible that it requires the excellent skill of the bean baker.

Object to matching

Others are totally against matching: Tim Wendelboe in Oslo and The Barn in Berlin in particular. The most popular view is that coffee beans are very complex and unique, so blending together will only weaken their characteristics.

END