Hello,
I’ve been thinking a lot about blends lately and how they’re put together. Unique and original blends can be a bit elusive and often companies put together blends for the same reasons. Through interweb conversations and forums one can find a wealth of opinion on what constitutes a good blend and the purpose for blending in the first place. For this reason I thought I’d put my two cents in on some of our blends and what Portland Roasting’s offering of blends achieve.
"black as midnight on a moonless night"
First off, I’d like to say that a blend is simply a mixture of any two or more roasted coffees. This can be entirely different coffees or it could be all the same coffee roasted and/or processed in different ways. It may be debatable to some if the same coffee roasted different ways and blended is a “blend” and it may not be marketed as such, but keep in mind that roasteries do it. There are a lot of ways blends are approached, depending on the cause of the blend. Common blends attempt to be conducive to diverse coffee drinker tastes. They consider food pairing and other components such as when it’s consumed and the diversity of people who are drinking it. House blends and the ubiquitous French roast tend to go in for this crowd pleaser, all-around effect.
House blends may be very articulated. By that I mean they have clear components and have flavors you can detect such as chocolatey Bolivian or malty, caramel-like Costa Rican that’s also very clean and crisp. Others go for a general “cuppa joe” aspect and look to a full body, and well-balanced cup that can stand up to cream and sugar and multiple brewing methods by an array of customers from your personal grocery purchases to the airpots in the breakfast joints. That’s not to say these coffees aren’t thought out and don’t have unique character. There are some excellent house blends that go straight for chocolate and others for bittersweet and caramel and so on.
Then you have the French roast, which tends to deal mostly with coffees tough enough to take a mega dark roast while maintaining character with a sweetness that evolves from the carbonization of sugars late in the roast.
Many other blends are out there, though. Most of what I’ve experienced, and what we blend here is aimed at flavor experience that features the uniqueness of certain varietals of coffee, but works to balance out the profile with other components to get flavor with body and acidity and sweetness all together. Here we also blend to achieve quality and consistency in the roast. Some coffees we purchase are very reliable over time while others are delicate and change more with the seasons than others as with all agricultural fruits.
That’s a major reason we cup and sample coffees so often and it is fundamental to coffee roasting. It becomes the marker for maintaining consistency and achieving the goals of great varietals, as well as memorable blends that stay true over time. Consistency is one of the main achievements of a blended coffee.
The last thing is espresso blends. This is another art unto itself. Here you have to manage the addition of crema and body with the amplification of taste that comes from shots. This means finding coffees that are minimally bitter, produce heavy body and crema while trying to add unique flavor character to each blend. Additionally, it has to hold up to the addition of milk without becoming diluted and too soft. This is generally achieved with Brazilian coffees that are semi-washed or dry processed that tend to kick out body and crema and have a fair amount of sweetness. Indonesian coffees are almost all semi-washed as well and beef up body, but can be funky if not chosen wisely and used proportionately. Then there’s dry processed Ethiopians and other natural process coffees that make a crazy fruity mess that can be remarkable or just funky.
"everyday give yourself a treat"
So blending is a way to get a great, well-balanced cup of coffee that hits flavor markers set by a Roaster or their customer. Varietals take you to that place that defines the origin of a coffee and offers subtleties, whereas a great blend takes you to that Agent Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks) place where you find yourself simply saying, “Excuse me…that is a DAMN fine cup coffee!”
Cheers.
