Glossary: Blend

The mix­ture of beans from dif­fer­ent cor­ners of the world in com­par­i­son with a straight or sin­gle ori­gin cof­fee, which is cof­fee from one region. Blend can be of the same roast or at dif­fer­ent roasts to cre­ate desired flavor.

His­tor­i­cally, blend orig­i­nated from the need to cre­ate var­i­ous “fla­vors.” Blend­ing beans was devel­oped in early cof­fee drink­ing his­tory to work around the lim­ited roast­ing knowl­edge and facil­ity in pre-industrialization. Blend is also impor­tant in com­pen­sat­ing each year’s crop vari­abil­ity to keep the fla­vor consistent.

In a mean­ing­ful way, the roaster cre­ates a spe­cial fla­vor with his sig­na­ture blend which can rep­re­sent his style and phi­los­o­phy about cof­fee. The recipe for each blend is a roaster’s top secret.

The Cof­fee Blend became pop­u­lar since espresso pre­vailed in the spe­cialty cof­fee world of the late twen­ti­eth cen­tury. The rea­son? In espresso, the instant 9-bar pres­sure which forces hot water through the fine cof­fee ground extracts defect fla­vors. A dark roast elim­i­nates the char­ac­ter­is­tics of beans and guar­an­tees the bitter-sweetness and syrupy solid body, thus mask­ing the defected fla­vors. But at the same time, the acid­ity and del­i­cacy of the cof­fee beans are blunted when cre­at­ing a dark roast. To make up, the cof­fee roaster sources fla­vors and bal­ance from blend­ing beans.