Single Origin Coffee vs. Coffee Blends: What’s the difference?
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They are terms that you’ve probably heard before to refer to different coffees: Single Origin, Blend… It’s time we get to the bottom of these, explain to you in depth what these terms mean-- and what they mean for you in terms of taste and aroma.
Coffee is one of the world’s top crops. It is, in fact, called “black gold”; because it is so incredibly profitable. It doesn’t matter how much coffee you have because, if it’s good, people will buy all of it. So the problem often becomes not “how can I sell this?” but “how can I sell more of this?”- something that many companies solve by having different farms all over the world which they buy from. They select coffee beans that are similar in taste and, after roasting, they blend them, that is to say, they ground them together and package it as the same coffee. Sometimes, there can be upwards of five different beans in the same coffee.
But let’s cut to the chase.
Blend
Blending is, indeed, done mostly because it is much more profitable. However, concocting a blend is nothing short of an art, and quite a difficult thing to pull off. A blend is not just rounding up a few beans;. He who creates the blend has to know the taste of the beans. Each different bean is also given a different roast; the objective is usually for each bean to balance out the undesirable taste and maximize those which we like.
A coffee blend can be made up of as many as five different beans, and one of the advantages of this is that you can create a very unique flavor profile if you choose the right beans, and roast them the right way.
Most commonly, blends tend to include robusta beans which are nowhere near arabica beans in terms of taste, but they still have a distinct coffee taste and contain precious caffeine. If you see robusta beans in your blend, it probably means it was used to bulk the blend up.
Single Origin Coffee
Everyone seems to favor this type of coffee nowadays. Why?
Well, Single Origin refers to a coffee that is made from beans that come from the same region- although it can also mean coffee from the same farm or the same country.
The great thing about Single Origin coffee is that the taste is rather unique compared to what we have been drinking for centuries, which has been a mixture of different beans. In contrast, using Single Origin Coffee -which can be one same bean or it can be a blend of two or more beans from the same region or country- allows us to experience a very different taste. Beans have a personality, several different flavors waiting to be discovered which are usually stamped out during a blend, making them taste much like any other coffee.
Single Origin is usually synonymous with quality and a unique flavor and aroma.