Does SOE recommend hand punching or Italian enrichment? How big is the difference between single-piece beans and soe Italian beans?

When we walk into a coffee shop, we are usually faced with two types of choices, Italian and hand flushing. If you drink in Qianjie, you can choose single beans from different producing areas; if you drink Italian, you have to choose from American style, latte, cappuccino and other categories, and some stores will also offer "SOE exchange" service.

Nowadays, more and more well-known single beans have launched SOE versions, such as Rose Summer, Ye Jia Xuefei, Sakuran and so on. Some friends are curious, these are generally used to make Italian concentrated SOE coffee beans, can they be flushed by hand?

SOE, what is the biggest feature?

Traditionally, in order to stabilize the product and achieve the effect of taste balance, coffee shops will give priority to Italian beans with deep roasting and rich oil, due to the mixture of two or even several batches from different places. so it also makes it difficult to identify the flavor of coffee beans.

If we put aside the various flavors, according to the concept, SOE is nothing more than an Italian concentrate made of any single type of coffee beans. "single bean" refers to coffee that has been distinguished at the time of origin to ensure that high-quality batches are independent. The so-called "single" can be a province, a city, a town, a village, a processing plant, a manor. In short, the emphasis is on the impact of regional uniqueness on coffee.

For example, the sunflower warm sun commonly used in Qianjie stores is made from two kinds of single peas, Honduran Shirley and Yega Chuefei. Before each use, the barista will mix the two roasted ripe beans in a fixed proportion and then pour them into the bean warehouse, but if we only take the sun cherries and extract them with an Italian coffee machine. The concentrated liquid that comes out is the Yega Xuefei SOE we are familiar with.

In other words, the SOE products on the market come from a single place of origin and are suitable for Italian machine-extracted coffee beans. Usually, due to the choice of higher quality (grade) coffee beans, so the price will be relatively high.

Is there a big difference between SOE coffee beans and hand-made single-product beans?

In the past, our impression of the taste of espresso was that it was balanced, full-bodied, oily and scorched, and most of the black coffee was bitter. this is not a matter of extraction, but the use of raw materials. The price of espresso can not be too high, and the consumption is large, so in the requirements of beans, the cost is the first, then the stability, and finally the flavor. In order to take care of the compatibility of beans from different areas, the baker will bake them deep, so the coffee is basically frozen between caramel, nuts and chocolate.

Different from the previous goal of striving for stability, with the introduction of the concept of boutique coffee, people began to emphasize the unique flavor of the producing areas and promote the coffee with clean taste, obvious fruit aroma, light and elegant coffee, so all kinds of "sour coffee" are becoming more and more popular in the whole circle. For example, the fragrance of white flowers of Yega Xuefei, the sweetness of Costa Rica, the thick berry notes of Kenya, the tangerine flavor of rose summer, the fermented wine flavor of anaerobic coffee, and so on.

As a popular concept under the development trend of boutique coffee, SOE is charged with a particularly important task, that is to emphasize the origin while highlighting the good flavor of coffee beans. Unlike blending, SOE is more likely to magnify the characteristics of beans, especially lightly roasted coffee, which is concentrated with a strong taste and irritating acidity, so it is often impressive.

As the deepening of the roasting degree will promote the caramelization of more substances, if the coffee wants to retain more flower and fruit aroma, and then make the flavor attribute have a higher degree of identification, first of all, the roasting degree should not be too deep, otherwise the bitterness is too heavy, and cover the flavor of the origin itself. On the other hand, shallow roasting will make the coffee taste raw, or the acidity of the beans will be magnified under the high temperature and high pressure of the coffee machine, making the concentration unbearable. At the same time, the coffee beans will be too hard to extract enough.

Therefore, for the same coffee bean, many merchants will introduce two different baking curves for the use of hand-made and SOE. Generally speaking, the flower and fruit acid type hand-made single product will be presented in light-medium baking, while SOE beans will be slightly deeper than hand-made, but will not completely change its flavor, so that the concentration should have both fruit acid and caramelization sweetness, so most of them are controlled in medium baking.

Take Huakui coffee beans in Qianjie as an example, the roasting degree column is divided into two categories: "hand-washing shallow baking" and "SOE Italian roasting". The former is suitable for atmospheric extraction such as hand-flushing, cold extraction, French pressure kettle and hanging ear, while the latter is preferred by pressurized extraction such as Italian coffee machine and mocha pot.

What do you need to pay attention to when making SOE coffee beans by hand?

Although we say that the baking curve of SOE coffee beans is more suitable for Italian concentration, it can also make good hand-brewed coffee as long as it is extracted properly. As mentioned above in Qianjie, most of the products marked with SOE use a light-medium, medium or medium-deep baking degree, and the expansion rate and flavor tonality of beans are between light baking and deep baking, so we can first judge the baking degree according to the flavor on the package.

For the flavor description of flower, fruit, tea and SOE beans with various acidity, it is likely to be light to moderate baking. The short heating time makes these beans hard and not easy to release soluble substances, so we can use the high temperature hot water of 92-93 ℃ and the grinding degree of fine sugar (80% sieving rate of sieve bowl 20) to cook.

If the SOE bean bag you buy is generally filled with the words black, cocoa, spice, hazelnut, caramel, mellow and cream, it shows that the coffee uses a medium-to-deep roasting degree, and the prolonged heating time makes the bean structure loose, water absorption is easy to release bitter substances, and it is recommended to use a water temperature lower than 88 ℃, together with white sugar / coarse sugar (the sieve rate of the 20th sieve bowl is 70%).

From left to right: medium shallow, medium, medium deep

The rest is floral and fruity, tea, nuts, cookies, milk chocolate, or SOE coffee beans with flavors such as fermented wine, candy, honey and so on. We can judge that they are moderately roasted, and we might as well present them with a combination of 89-90 ℃ water temperature and moderate grinding (75% sieve rate in sieve bowl 20).

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