About Our Blends
Sweet Maria’s offers a few pre-blended coffees for use as espressoA small coffee beverage, about 20 ml, prepared on an espresso machine where pressurized hot water extracted through compressed coffee.: In its most stripped-down, basic form, this is... and dark roast. There are pros and cons to blending. We feel strongly that good coffee does not need to be blended; we want to discover the “originIn coffee talk, it refers to a coffee-producing region or country; such as, "I was just at origin." Of course "Origin" for most product we use is not... taste” in the cup, the singular essence of the place the coffee is from. This is lost in blending. However, there are reasons to blend. Here are some excerpts from our Blending Article.
Our blends are made with our best coffees. We don’t treat blends as a way to get rid of older coffees or ones we need to clear out! In many cases, our blend components are sourced just for the blend, based on test roasts and cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest..... They are all comprised of coffees on our green coffeeGreen coffee refers to the processed seed of the coffee tree fruit. Coffee is a flowering shrub that produces fruit. The seeds of the fruit are processed, roasted,... offering list.
While some roasters use blends as a way to reduce costs, to promote their name and enforce customer loyalty, let me also add that many good small roasters are like us; they are proud of their single farm, single originSingle Origin refers to coffee from one location, in contrast to blended coffee. This term is particularly useful in discussing espresso, since most commercial espressos are made from... offerings and they are proud of their blends! They too use great coffee in their blends. Whether a roaster adheres to the pre-roast or post-roast blend school, the cup cannot achieve excellence if average quality coffees are used.
Our blends are divided into Standards (blends we maintain throughout the year, like our Espresso Monkey Blend, and Espresso Workshop “editions.” “Espresso Workshop?” The latter are blends that are only offered for as long as we have the specific lots of coffee we used to design the blend, and then it’s gone. When we maintain an Espresso Standard blend, like Espresso Monkey Blend, we have to find new lots to maintain the flavors of the blend as the coffee crops change. That can be a tough job, to optimize the blend and, at the same time, to maintain the “spirit of the blend” … its original intent. There will be shifts in the blend, inevitably. In a sense, Workshop Espresso editions are pure and uncompromising: specific coffees are found that inspire testing, and a new blend idea is born. Instead of maintaining the blend and making ingredient substitutions down the line, the Workshop editions follow the crop cycle of the coffee.
Blending Basics
Coffees from different origins are blended together for several reasons. Presumably the goal is to make a coffee that is higher in cup quality than any of the ingredients individually. But high quality arabicaArabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the taxonomic species name of the genus responsible for around 75% of the worlds commercial coffee crop.: Arabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the... coffee should be able to stand alone; it should have good clean flavor, good aromatics, bodyAssociated with and sensed by mouthfeel, body is sense of weight and thickness of the brew, caused by the percentage of soluble solids in the cup, including all... and aftertasteAftertaste refers to lingering residual sensations in the mouth after coffee has swallowed. It might be distinguished from "finish" which is the final sensations of the coffee while.... So one reason coffees are blended in the commercial world might be the use of lower-quality coffee in the blend. Another reason might be to create a proprietary or signature blend that leads consumers to equate a particular coffee profile with a particular brand image. Consumers don’t often call Starbucks by the origin names used in the coffee but simply as “a cup of Starbucks” as if the dark carbonyA roast-related flavor term, referring to burnt flavors from dark roast levels. For some this is a pleasant flavor if residual sweetness is present, but plain carbon flavor... roast tastes were somehow exclusive to that brand. Coffees are also blended to maintain consistency from crop year to year. This is done with major brands that do not want to be dependent on any specific origin flavorOrigin Flavor is a term we use to describe coffee flavors that are intrinsic to a particular coffee from a particular origin, and in contrast to flavor we... so they can source coffee from the least expensive sources. Such blends generally reduce all the coffees included to the lowest common denominator. But let’s put aside the less-than-noble reasons that coffee is blended and focus on details that concern the quality-oriented roaster. Before blending any high-quality coffees you should know the flavors of the individual coffees and have some goal for an ideal cup that cannot be attained by a single origin or single degree of roastDegree of Roast simply means the roast level of a coffee, how dark it has been roasted.: Degree of Roast simply means the roast level of a coffee,.... It would be a shame to blend a fantastic EstateA "coffee estate" is used to imply a farm that has its own processing facility, a wet-mill. In Spanish this is called an Hacienda. A Finca (farm) does... coffee; after all, you are supposedly trying to attain a cup that exceeds the components and it’s not likely you can do this with top coffees. Given that you have both a reason to a blend and a logical process for doing it, there will be little need for more than around 5 coffees in the blend. Blends with more than 5 coffees are considered to be fanciful, or indulgent, or confused by more than a few expert coffee tradespeople I know.
The Case Not to Blend
While blending requires the expert skill of knowing each ingredient coffee, having a clear cup profile as the goal in mind, and knowing how to achieve it, blends should not be considered a “higher” form of coffee by any standard. As indicated above, the opposite case is often true. For me personally there is much more satisfaction in enjoying single-origin and estate coffees roasted to their peak of flavor. In my opinion, even a so-so single-farm coffee is more intriguing than a blended cup, even if the blend is admittedly superior! Why? Because when I taste an unblended coffee it is the end result of a long road from crop to cup, without any one person deciding what I will be experiencing. While I enjoy that cup, I like to think about that process, and it informs my opinion about that region or that specific farm. I enjoy feeling connected to the origin of the coffee and the process in this way.
Blending Before or After Roasting
I get a lot of questions about blending before or after roasting …which is better? If you have an established blend it certainly is easier to blend the coffee green and roast it together. If you are experimenting with blend ingredients and percentages you will want to roast each separately so you can experiment with variations without having to make a new roast with each change. The case for roasting coffees individually is strong with the Melange-type blend, and with a handful of particular coffees, such as RobustaAteng is a common name for Catimor coffees widely planted in Sumatra and other Indonesia isles.: Ateng, with several subtypes, is a common name for Catimor coffees widely... in espresso blends. Some coffees are more dense or have extreme size variations. These will roast differently than standard wet-processed arabicas. All dry-processed arabicas require roasting to a slightly higher degree of temperature. But in most cases the coffees can be roasted together and I would recommend this: roast the coffee together until you encounter a situation where the results are disappointing and for success you must roast them separately. Every coffee roasts a bit differently but there is a great deal of averaging that occurs between coffees in the roast chamber, especially in drum roast systems. And then there’s the coffees that do not roast evenly as single origins either: Yemeni, Ethiopian DP coffees, etc. Uneven roast color is not a defectIn coffee, a defect refers to specific preparation problems with the green coffee, or a flavor problem found in the cupping process. Bad seeds in the green coffee..., and only when it occurs in a wet-processed arabica that should roast to an even color (and sometimes not even in this case) is it of any consequence.Please see the reviews of the blends below. We tend not to rate some blends with cupping scores,
especially with espresso. Espresso must be cupped as espresso and standard terms are undeveloped at this time.