S1: Episode 11: What’s In A Blend?
It’s time to tackle coffee blends. Did you know that while all coffee blends are coffees not all coffees are blends? In this episode we explore this distinction, why it’s important and what it means to you as a consumer. This week’s FACQ wonders just how many different coffees you can find in a blend.
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Hello and welcome to The Coffee Drinker’s Guide, a podcast for the coffee curious where I explore and explain the world of specialty coffee to make your daily coffee better and more satisfying.
I’m Angela Holder a coffee roaster and writer on a mission to fight back against bad coffee by giving you the knowledge you need to help you get good coffee and a happier (coffee) life in coffee-break sized episodes. So grab your coffee, pull up a chair and take a break…
This week's episode is all about coffee blends. Although the words 'coffee' and 'blend' are often used interchangeably, the truth is that while coffee blends are indeed coffees not all coffees are blends. If you are wondering why this distinction is important, stay tuned to find out… and later I’ll be answering a question about the number of different coffees you are likely to find in a blend….
I like to think that I’m a fairly easy-going person, but one of my pet coffee peeves is people using the word ‘blend’ when talking about a single origin coffee. As in “I’d like a cup of the Kenya blend” when the coffee in question is actually from a single farm in Kenya and is not in fact a blend - to my ears it’s like fingernails down a blackboard. A single origin coffee is one from an individual country - and often from a specific farm in that country - while a coffee blend is actually a mix of two or more different single origin coffees to a set recipe which is usually created by a roaster. When people call a single origin coffee a blend it bothers me because I feel that the producer of that coffee is - albeit unconsciously - not being given full credit for their work. Added to that is the diligence that is required to keep that single origin coffee as a separate and distinct batch, or Lot - as it is known in the industry - from origin all the way through to you, the consumer. It takes a lot of work and I mean a lot of work! I have to say up front that I am not against blending coffee as there are good reasons for doing it. But there are also some murky motivations behind blending coffee which you need to know so that you fully understand what you may be getting when you buy a blend. Right, I shall get down from my soapbox now. To be honest things are actually even more nuanced than what I am about to tell you, but you have to start somewhere…
Firstly - in a break from my normal format - blends and the taste
The purpose of taking different types of coffee and mixing or blending them together is to create a drink with a flavour and qualities that could not be achieved by a single coffee on its own. A blend may be designed to evoke a particular mood or to suit the time of day it’s drunk, for example at breakfast or after dinner. Blends are also created to vary a roaster’s offering by celebrating and being tailored to an event or season, such as a Christmas blend, which will be unique and time limited. Blends which are produced all year round are supposed to always taste the same even when different component coffees are used. These are often so-called signature blends, which are blends that are unique to a roaster’s brand and are hypothetically unreproducible by another roaster. Dunkin’ Donuts in the USA is famously proud of its Original Blend which reportedly has the same flavour as when the company started in the 1950’s although they are clearly not still roasting coffee harvested then!
Next blends and the brew
Aside from achieving a specific taste profile, blends may also be created to suit specific brewing methods. The principle behind this is to produce a more consistently balanced and pleasing brew than could be achieved by using a single origin coffee on its own. The idea is that the blend will be better than the sum of its constituent coffees, smoothing out any adverse effects of the brewing method on the flavour of your drink. The classic example is the espresso blend. Coffee brewed using the espresso method is often blended in order to counteract and balance out issues such as astringency, sourness and bitterness caused by the short brew time and high pressure this method uses to produce the shot. Those same flavour issues can also be a product of poor technique so using a good espresso blend allows you to work on your technique by removing one variable at least, which is the variable of the coffee itself being the problem. If you were to deconstruct an espresso blend and pull a shot of each of its individual coffees you would likely be disappointed in the flavours you taste in each - but when those same coffees are brewed as a blend, magic happens.
Finally blends and the bean
There are good reasons for creating blends as I have mentioned - to ensure consistency of flavour, to create the best result for a particular brew method or as a seasonal offering. But there are also less noble reasons for blending coffee. These reasons include using blends to use up old roasted coffee stock or for getting rid of dodgy roasts which would otherwise get thrown away. These practices help the roaster to reduce waste but do no favours to the blend they end up in. Other reasons to blend coffees are to bulk out an expensive coffee with cheaper ones and - as blend names are exercises in marketing - to charge a higher price than perhaps the coffee deserves. If a blend name contains the words ‘blue mountain’ it unconsciously makes you think of Jamaica Blue Mountain which is a famously very expensive single origin coffee and may not necessarily be an ingredient of the blend in question. Even if the reason for creating a blend is above board, it is all too easy for the provenance of the coffees used to create that blend to be lost to the consumer, unless the roaster is transparent in their labelling. If provenance and ingredient information is important to you, it pays to be wary of coffees labelled with the word ‘blend’. Always check the packet details carefully or ask the bean seller for more information.
Each episode I answer a Frequently Asked Coffee Question. This episode’s question is:
How many different coffees are you likely to have in a coffee blend?
Blending coffees is an art - similar to creating a perfume or spice mix. A blend will have as many different coffees as it takes to achieve the flavour profile the roaster is aiming for. That said, a great blend may have just two well selected coffees. Theoretically there is no maximum number, but on a practical basis six different coffees is really the most that could viably be blended together. This is because although you may achieve more complexity with a greater number of different coffees, you have to consider the probability of each of the different beans being present in the right proportion for every single cup of coffee. Currently blends in the specialty coffee world tend to have a maximum of three or four different coffees in them.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coffee Drinker’s Guide and that was all about coffee blends. I hope you found this useful - and that you now understand why I started the show with a rant! Let me know if there is a particular blend you like and what it is that you like about it. The next episode is the last in this season. We will be exploring why a great tasting cup of coffee is actually an everyday miracle in a cup - a miracle that we can all experience. Be sure to hit follow to subscribe and find out why when it drops. Please also tell a coffee friend about the show and rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts to help other coffee curious people find the show too. If you have a question about coffee or a topic that you would like me to cover please get in touch. I’m on Instagram @thecoffeedrinkersguide or email me at thecoffeedrinkersguide@gmail.com. Thanks to my executive producer Viel Richardson at Lusona Publishing and Media Limited. You can find him at lusonapub.co.uk. Until next time I’m Angela Holder thanks for sharing your coffee break with me - the best way to tackle life is one coffee at a time and here’s to better coffee!
The Coffee Drinker’s Guide is a Blue Sky Coffee Project