Where did Combo coffee come from? What do you mean by drinking two coffee with one bean?

Since last year, after Combo became popular in the coffee circle, Qianjie was always asked by guests if there was any Combo. When Qianjie told them that there was no Combo, one guest asked, "isn't Combo just a shunt handle to extract, and then a cup of milk and a cup of water? why don't you come out?"

What is Combo?

The full name of "Combo" should be "Coffee Combo"-coffee combination, which is a way of producing espresso by separating a serving of coffee powder and extracting 2 or 3 small cups of concentrated liquid, and then using them to make different types of coffee and combining them into a set meal. In short, it means two drinks with one bean and many drinks with one bean. Only children make choices, adults all want them.

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Nowadays, this kind of combination meal on the market is mainly in the form of "one black and one white", that is, a cup of black coffee and a cup of milk coffee, and the cup size is generally about 150ml. There are also cafes that divide the concentrate into three portions and make an extra cup of special coffee. The three or two cups of drinks on the small tray look small and delicate, even if you finish all three, you don't have to worry about consuming too much caffeine and don't have much burden.

From the operational point of view, it seems that as the guest said, as long as a shunt handle is stuck to extract two portions of the concentrated liquid, and then add water and milk respectively. But if it's that simple, you underestimate Combo.

What is Combo drinking?

In fact, Combo is derived from the WBC World Barista Competition, in which each contestant has 15 minutes to present espresso, milk coffee and creative coffee to the judges.

Combo can be said to be closely related to the core idea of the third wave of boutique coffee-"local flavor", that is, pay attention to a series of changeable source information such as origin, variety, planting and processing methods of coffee beans, and taste the aroma of beans under such conditions, so the roasting degree is no longer based on deep roasting.

You know, the deeper the roasting degree of coffee beans, the more the loss of small molecular aromas of sour flowers and fruits in coffee beans, the flavor will gradually tend to the bitter tone of nuts, chocolate and so on. Combo, a way to drink more than one bean, can not only taste the aroma of coffee itself, but also try to taste it with milk. Therefore, in order to show the unique flavor of a bean with Combo, coffee shops tend to choose coffee beans that are relatively lightly roasted, or even SOE.

Different coffee beans express different flavors. Maybe this bean is wonderful for making American coffee, but it is not satisfactory when combined with milk. It is also possible that this bean is suitable for making milk coffee, but the expression in American style is slightly less distinctive. Therefore, the coffee bean selection of Combo needs to consider the flavor of black coffee and milk coffee at the same time, and find a relatively balanced bean between the two. Qianjie suggests choosing coffee beans that are full-bodied, full-bodied or highly directional.

Combo is not simple.

The difficulty in making Combo also lies in how to make the extract concentrate while taking into account the flavor of milk coffee and black coffee (concentrated / American).

Qianjie has also used a shunt handle to make two drinks with reference to the way Combo produces a cup of American coffee and a cup of milk coffee. Using warm sun to mix Italian beans, the same day parameters are 20g powder 28 seconds to extract 40g coffee liquid, shunt to get each serving of Espresso in 20g or so. Hot American style according to the proportion of the normal product around 1:4, injected with 80ml hot water; Piccolo by 1:2, the normal addition of 40ml about whipped milk production.

The actual taste found that this cup of hot American style is slightly dull, the flavor seems to be very "crowded", and you can still drink a little whisky and vanilla cream, while Piccolo coffee, as expected, shows the perfect flavor of butter cookies and chocolate. the coffee has a strong aroma and a touch of fresh sweetness of milk at the same time.

We know from the taste that the hot American style made of split single shot can not simply use the original ratio of coffee to water at 1:4, but need to lower this ratio, and add a little more water to make the aroma have more room for expression; or re-adjust the extraction parameters to make the concentrated flavor better, but a carelessness can easily lead to the weakening of the flavor of milk coffee. And if our American (/ concentrated) performance is good, but milk coffee is mostly milky, you might as well reduce the proportion of milk.

Why is there no Combo on the front street?

The hardest part of Combo is how to choose between milky coffee and American coffee (/ concentrated), which takes us a lot of time and materials to find a compromise extraction solution. Qianjie stores produce Italian coffee beans only warm sun mix, although this bean is also suitable for Combo, but only for the production of Combo again debugged a perfect extraction parameters, in the case of small production, it seems that the loss outweighs the gain.

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Front Street Cafe

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