What is coffee combo? What kind of beans are suitable for making coffee combinations? What are the requirements for making concentrated lattes?

Like specialty coffee, Combo has been a mess in recent years. Because it can have a variety of different experiences at one time, such a presentation is very popular with guests after it is moved offline from the event.

But with the spread of combo, problems followed, many friends found that the combo made from their own coffee beans is not very good, either the American style is too bitter, or the latte is tasteless, it is difficult to achieve a balance. So I went to the front street and asked combo which coffee beans should be the best. And then what should I do to taste good? If we want to know the answers to these two questions, we need to understand what Combo is, because only by knowing ourselves and knowing the enemy can we be invincible. So next let's share with Qianjie what is Combo!

What is Combo? The word "Combo" means "combination", while the Combo we often say is actually the full name Coffee Combo, which translates to the meaning of coffee combination. The coffee combination here does not simply refer to the combination of different coffees, but refers to the combination of using one bean to extract multiple portions of concentrated coffee and then making different coffees to match them, that is, the so-called "drink more than one bean". The common combination is "one black and one white"! One part is concentrated and divided into two parts, then one is used to make American (black), and the other is used to make milk coffee (white).

Of course, there will also be stores will concentrate into more than two portions, in addition to American and milk coffee will also make a special combination. However, most merchants will still focus on the combination of American style and milk coffee, because it will not be too complicated. The core of the Combo of the coffee shop comes from the coffee beans used. The reason for using a bean to make different types of coffee is to show the flavor characteristics of the beans themselves and to taste how the beans will behave differently in this way. So compared with the milk coffee and American style, this combination is more like a show using beans, a stage for expressing yourself. But as a result, Combo often leads to the misunderstanding that individual coffee should be used to make it.

But in fact, what Combo wants to convey in the competition is only the contestants' mastery of the beans and the display of the characteristic flavor of the coffee beans, that is, a technical consideration for the users and the quality test of the beans. That is to say, as long as people can drink the flavor characteristics of beans in this combination, as well as a high degree of fit as a whole, then it is OK to choose mixed beans or single beans.

So how to choose coffee beans for Combo? In order to show the flavor characteristics of coffee beans, then our best option is to rule out deep-roasted coffee beans. Because when the coffee beans are roasted too deep, the characteristic flavor of the beans will be constantly eroded by long-term chemical reactions, or covered up by the bitter taste, which can not well show their own flavor properties. Therefore, under this restriction, the best coffee beans we choose are medium or light roasted coffee beans. But this is not to say that deep-roasted coffee beans can not be used, but relatively speaking, it is not so suitable for store Combo products.

In addition, if you want to make the coffee have a more outstanding flavor performance, then we can choose highly fermented sun, honey treatment, or anaerobic beans. Because these beans will have a more outstanding flavor performance, but relatively speaking, the sense of fermentation of coffee will also change according to the degree of fermentation of the beans, so the choice between fish and bear paws depends on the choice. After talking about the choice of beans, the next step is the extraction of espresso. I believe friends who work in coffee shops all know that the morning test at the opening of the coffee shop every day is not only to test the taste of the concentrate, but also to make a cup of latte to test the degree of agreement between the concentrate and the taste of milk. Why?

Because good espresso is not necessarily suitable for making lattes, not only because coffee needs bitter substances to counter the taste of a lot of milk, but also because the sour taste of coffee is too obvious to blend with milk can be very abrupt, so you need to make a cup of latte. to taste whether the extract of espresso needs to be adjusted. This truth is the same with the production of Combo. Moreover, if we choose medium-to-light roasted coffee beans, then conventional extraction will be very easy to extract rich acid, high-sour coffee is more difficult to match with milk. Therefore, we need to increase the extraction to reduce the sour proportion of coffee, so that it can be more suitable for milk!

Finally, it is important to note that when making coffee in Combo, we do not need to apply the original ratio (in this case, the ratio of coffee to milk / water)! Because we need to highlight the characteristic flavor of beans, the ratio of milk to water can be reduced appropriately. For example, in the original American style, the 1:4 ratio is adopted, so when we do combo, we can reduce it to 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 5, so that the flavor of the beans will have better room for expression. (PS: the amount of powder and liquid extracted had better be relatively increased, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve a full cup! )

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