A Guide to Coffee Blends
As a coffee enthusiast (and aren’t we all), you’ve probably come across the terms single origin coffee and coffee blends. We delve into the world of single origin coffee in this post (and it’s a wonderful world), but now we want to debunk some of the myths and rumours that abound about blended coffee. We’ll give you a hint – it can be absolutely fantastic!
A Guide to Coffee Blends
What is a coffee blend?
Coffee blends are comprised of beans from more than one origin, as opposed to ‘single origin’ which means beans from a single location. These origins might be at the country level or regional level, or even niche down to the micro-level and be from subregions or individual farms. But whether or not we’re talking about countries or farms, in coffee blends, the beans are from two or more.
What defines coffee blends?
The defining feature of coffee blends are their sheer variability. This can be both a good and a bad thing. Wonderfully good if we’re talking about a coffee blend that hits the right balance, but (quite intensely) bad if we’re talking about commercial blends that are simply a way to squeeze more profit out of a low quality product.
What makes a great quality coffee blend?
Coffee blending is an art and a science. So to make a great quality coffee blend, you need to make sure you have the right ‘recipe’. This involves combining different flavours to strike an overall balance that produces a complexity of flavour and an enjoyable coffee drinking experience. It bears in mind the market preference – in other words, who will be drinking the coffee or how they prefer to brew it – to meet those demands and allow the customer to get the incredible experience they’re looking for.
But finding this ‘recipe’ takes time and trial to get right.
How we create our blends at Coffee DRs.
The coffee blends that we make here, at Coffee DRs roastery, are based on our own ‘recipes’ and are guaranteed to be more than the sum of their parts. In fact, we promise a unique experience with all our signature blends.
We start by expertly choosing the beans, with thought towards their complementary nature, their growing region and climate and their flavour profiles, of course. Once we’ve chosen the beans we roast them at varying temperatures and begin to experiment. For us, it’s about trial and error, and continued effort. We never put forward a blend that we don’t love ourselves.
This is where true coffee artistry lies – in the discovering and melding together of unique coffees to leverage the qualities of both and makes something utterly new and absolutely delicious.
Coffee DRs Coffee Blends
Our Check Up Authentic Blend is our house blend, and the first one that we produced on a large retail scale. It was created following on from Luke’s win for his BANTAT blend at the Sydney Fine Foods show in 2017. When Luke started selling BANTAT (door-to-door at the time!) he also spoke with his customers and got feedback. He used that feedback to refine and test, and refine and test some more. Ultimately blending coffee from five different premium single origins at just the right roasting profile gave him the completely new and desired end result – the Check Up Authentic Blend.
Over time, we found that some of our customers, friends and family wanted a blend a bit more bold and full bodied than our (deliciously smooth and easy) Authentic Check Up Blend. We set our sights on creating just what they wanted leading to our delicious, incomparable Resuscitator Blend.
With the Resuscitator Blend, the combo of Colombian and Brazilian coffee beans packs a full-bodied coffee punch you don’t find in many other coffee blends or single origin coffees. And it’s flavour notes of sweet cocoa and toffee apple need to be tasted to be believed.
Drink What You Like
At the end of the day, your coffee palate is yours alone, and you should honour that by drinking coffee that you like – coffee that tastes good and gives you a great experience. But don’t write off blends too easily just because of a bad commercial coffee blend experience, or a low quality product. We promise that the right coffee blends can completely change how you view coffee, giving you the best of all the different varieties, origins and flavour profiles.
Check out our shop’s tasting notes to see what we taste in our single origin coffees.