What you should know about coffee with beans Blend, are beans really that delicious?

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Today let's talk about the antonym of single coffee-mixed coffee.

Like snowflakes, no two individual coffees in the world are exactly the same, but the most important feature of mixed beans is its excellent consistency and stability. A skilled bean baker will clearly find out the market trend and grasp the preferences of consumers. what on earth makes the market trend?

The coffee drinker is in charge.

Before the advent of boutique coffee, coffee drinkers were used to drinking mass-produced and widely blended beans, which are usually made by large coffee producers, such as Brazil and Central American countries.

It's a good thing when you don't know what you're missing, and ignorance is bliss, but once you drink high-quality coffee, it will make you unable to extricate yourself, a more apt analogy, just like when you only eat Toast and eat your friend's freshly baked cream for the first time, you will be so happy that you can't get rid of it.

Is it really that good to mix beans?

When we promote the concept of boutique coffee, we set up a good image for boutique coffee, and boutique beans are better than "traditional mixed beans". So, what about today's "unconventional" mixed beans?

Mm-hmm. The answer is yes.

Due to commercial considerations, mixed beans are still produced in large quantities, with different flavors as the main appeal. On the other hand, the bean baker of boutique coffee mainly focuses on two areas: the consistency of flavor and the unique blending of beans.

Why mix beans?

It is necessary for coffee shops to supply their main signature mixed beans, and their customers expect coffee with the same flavor, which is delicious and comforting. But when coffee beans change with crops and seasons, this is a big challenge for bean bakers.

In recent years, bean bakers have wanted to make customers feel that their coffee has added value by supplying limited, seasonal blends of beans. In this way, coffee shops can constantly add content to their options, creating reliable and unique blends, and novel coffee experiences.

Ask the baker how to create a combination of beans.

We visited the most respected bean bakers in the coffee industry and talked about how they can win over the public by blending beans.

Jacob Ibarra, a buyer for the Five Senses Coffee Coffee Research Project, thinks the answer is to meet customer needs, that's all. Our goal is to let customers who can meet different needs of each mixed bean to enter the market of boutique coffee. Five Sense Coffee recently repositioned blended beans, resulting in the development of four distinct blended beans, allowing customers to describe their coffee choices and expectations throughout the year.

Origin Coffee, another boutique coffee roaster, has recently reconstructed the main Italian mix that suits their coffee shop and meets customer expectations to give back to customers, from ordinary consumers who drink a cup of coffee every morning to coffee enthusiasts.

Grace Reith, marketing manager at Origin Coffee, said: "We want every customer to have a better understanding of the mixed beans, so we explore it through the cup test table, the coffee shop and even the coffee itself. We used to think that what consumers expect from coffee is what we do. In other words, we don't just ask consumers, "do you want handmade coffee?" Cappuccino? Nicaraguan or Ethiopian coffee? "instead, we want to understand the deeper needs and expectations and experiences of coffee in order to create unique combinations of beans.

Ross Quail, from Melbourne, Australia, which is also a wholesaler of ST Ali, Sensory Lab and Clement Coffee Roasters, agrees that mixed beans must cover consumer expectations. "it's very important to expect what people want to drink and what they want to enjoy. It's wrong to think about what you want."

Although blending beans is about consumers, it is also about coffee makers. Timothy Hill, purchasing and quality control manager at Counter Culture Coffee, said: "blending beans is important because it reflects a lot of things about the coffee maker." In many cases, many companies define themselves by matching beans. Blending beans is also a guide for consumers to define the company, and consumers may look for more consistent and stable coffee by blending beans. "

How about a single item of beans? Is it better to mix beans with Blend?

They are proud to be completely transparent about the recipe for their beans, whether it's the label in the 12-ounce package or the 5-pound coffee bags wholesale on the website. As Tim said, "We don't think it's a good thing to hide the recipe, and a good mix should simply come from good coffee, not some secret recipe."

I'm glad we have talented people and bean bakers who love coffee from the bottom of their hearts. But how do mixed beans come into being? How does the baker master these unpredictable raw beans and bake them into delicious and stable blended beans?

A bean baker is a storyteller.

To find out, we sat down and listened to their advice on the configuration of a perfectly matched bean, so what did we get?

You have to travel to find the taste that suits your taste and keep telling the stories you want to tell.

Joshua Tarlo, development manager of Origin Coffee Roasters, asserts that "We work with our long-term production partners to deliver our beloved coffee, combining rich travel experience and taste, bringing together producers from different regions and countries to create unique and delicious coffee. Through our links, find new partners around the world who can share our new ideas. The small details noticed by these new coffee-loving partners will give the final coffee uniqueness. "

Travel means that you must give consistency to the "story", and with the ups and downs of the seasons, there are several things in common that we still have to truly present.

Each coffee bean will have an impact on the matching beans, just as the classic masterpiece is also made up of word by word, indispensable.

Counter Culture Coffee's Timothy Hill said: "We like to mix beans with depth rather than simple good coffee and interesting naming. For us, the composition of mixed beans must come from the good flavor of the coffee beans themselves." We have been investing a lot of efforts in the limited blending of beans, and what we are looking at is the general direction of coffee. We choose coffee through cup testing and brew what we think is feasible. Sometimes we catch what we want the first time we try, while at other times we keep trying. "

Allie Shanholt, digital marketing manager at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, says that when we maintain the source of fresh coffee beans, we can maintain the consistency of the quality of the beans: "when we think of the formula, we think of a good mix with distinct personality and good quality, and the mixed coffee beans may be better than any single coffee. Matching beans is an art, or at least a work of art, and it is one of the representatives of the important skills of bean bakers. In Stumptown, we have a very high standard of blending beans, we often look for them day and night, and spend a lot of time and energy on blending a good mix of beans.

The ups and downs caused by nature do not affect today's bean bakers.

Blending beans is not without difficulties, combining crops together, coffee is related to climate conditions, weather patterns, growth cycle and harvest time in different producing areas and places. Not to mention the many challenges that coffee varieties pose to bean bakers, and how bean bakers face these challenges:

A truly global product, a coffee world that never sets.

Tarlo said: "at Origin Coffee, seasonality and freshness are the basic focus for us, and we change the blending content with the harvest time. In order to deal with the unique flavor of each coffee and its impact on the final flavor, we are looking for producers who grow coffee with similar flavor, so that we can provide the coffee we like all the year round. "

Blended beans are the regulators of coffee supply and demand, and when the environment changes, blended beans bring balance.

Hill said: "seasonality makes it more difficult to maintain a good match, but at Counter Culture we create the flavor we are looking for specifically for matching beans, such as fine sun-cured beans from Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, and often switch to Ethiopian sun-roasted coffee at another harvest. "

Jacob Ibarra, a buyer for Five Senses Coffee's coffee research project, admits that a lot of thought has been put into thinking about the repeatability and reliability of blended beans: "when a formula is made, we will consider whether it can be supplied all the year round, and we intend to use coffee of an opposite or complementary nature. In addition, we have concluded that some years of coffee are better, so we don't always mix beans in the same way. "

"in fact, it's a tricky and intertwined problem that looks slightly different from year to year, but we want our customers to taste a cup of coffee that can be trusted and still has its seasonal characteristics. "

Ross Quail, a wholesaler of ST Ali, Sensory Lab and Clement Coffee Roasters, stressed that skills in buying raw beans are very important. "if you can fully grasp the crop cycle of raw beans, you can get high-quality coffee beans. If a company wants to make coffee well, it must have a professional and continuous buyer in this area." "

With so many stories written by bean bakers around the world, we look forward to unraveling the next delicious story of freshly roasted boutique coffee.

Translated from Perfect Daily Grind

Translated by Cheng Zhen Coffee

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