Why is SOE always more expensive than mixing coffee?

Today, in order to create their own brand characteristics, many coffee shops will launch personalized flavor of SOE coffee beans for customers to choose from. When we confirm that the coffee will be changed from blending to SOE, we always need to charge a few extra yuan for the price difference. why?

SOE is the abbreviation of "Single Original Espresso", literally, single espresso is obviously intended to distinguish it from Italian espresso (House Blend Espresso).

In the early days of espresso, coffee shops around the world used single beans, such as mocha and Brazilian coffee. As it is something that should be taken for granted, people will not emphasize or explain too much. With the increasing consumer demand for coffee, coffee beans from different producing areas are prone to uneven phenomenon, and the yield, quality and taste are likely to become unstable. In order to avoid the risk of extraction caused by these factors, some merchants began to combine coffee beans from different places to make them complement each other.

At the same time, the manufacturer will eliminate the unpleasant taste and acidity through deep baking, which can also cover up its defects, stabilize the coffee taste and extract the rich coffee oil at the same time. In this way, even if the batch quality of individual producing areas is low, or the yield is reduced due to the loss of harvest in a certain planting area in the coming year, it can be "saved" by adjusting the formula.

Therefore, 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. As for the taste, due to the use of deep baking, it is basically fixed on the rich and mellow taste of caramel, black Qiao, nuts, cream, cocoa and so on.

In the 1980s, the industry improved the quality of coffee beans from many places through a series of scientific means, and people began to emphasize the concept of "boutique coffee". The baker is also aware that coffee beans from each producing area will have their own characteristics, so they consciously adjust the baking degree of some beans to highlight their regional characteristics, and at the same time "dig" out more flower and fruit flavor.

At first, coffee beans from a single origin will only be used in drip filtration / soaking methods such as hand flushing, siphon, French kettle and so on. Until 2007, in order to shine in the field, James Hoffmann of the WBC World Barista Competition made individual beans into Italian concentrate and won the championship. In this way, SOE became more and more popular with the tide of boutique coffee.

It is not difficult to find that SOE, which advocates a single producing area, tends to use sour beans with a shallower degree of roasting in order to show rich and light aroma and taste characteristics different from traditional bitter coffee. For example, the citrus lemon notes of Essex beans, the honey of raisins in Costa Rica, and the fruit rhyme of tomato berries in Kenya, etc. The higher the recognition, the easier it is for consumers to remember the characteristics of SOE, but from a cost point of view, higher-quality beans are naturally more expensive, so extra money should be taken for granted.

Qianjie believes that the original intention of SOE is to highlight the advantages of beans and to highlight the "personalization" of espresso. Compared with blended beans, there is no difference between them. The key lies in whether users want to express rich, balanced and affordable adjustable coffee, or flower-and-fruit coffee with higher requirements for delicate flavor.

Today, SOE has undoubtedly become the mainstream, and many coffee shops have followed the trend by introducing individual beans with more detailed traceability information into the Italian category, hoping to create a delicious taste. But among them, it is inevitable that some items are concentrated and unpopular. Although they are under the banner of "SOE", they fail to give full play to the uniqueness of coffee flavor.

As mentioned above in Qianjie, SOE's main selling point is the high recognition of coffee flavor, so whether a cup of SOE coffee tastes good or not, in addition to the prerequisite of high quality coffee beans, it also tests the "interpretation" ability of bakers and baristas.

If the roasting degree of SOE coffee beans is too deep, the concentration is easy to appear bitter taste, aroma substances can not be reflected; roasting degree is too shallow, mellow substances are difficult to display, moreover, higher requirements for extraction, once the grinding, temperature, ratio and other parameters are not properly controlled, the concentration will easily become sour or light, and the American style and latte will not have "coffee flavor".

Therefore, if you do not play properly in baking and extraction, even if you choose expensive beans of high quality, it does not make much sense to emphasize its "oneness".

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Front Street Cafe

No. 10 Baoqian street, Yandun road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province