Are single origins better than coffee blends?
Believe it or not, this is a relatively new question in the specialty coffee world. For most of coffee’s history it has been served as a blend and the world’s most famous and most desirable coffees were all blends. The classic Mocha Java pairing of Mocha beans from Yemen with Java from Indonesia was probably the first internationally traded blend and it was hugely popular for several centuries. Still is. Some famous blends had a dominant bean, others were more democratic and let all the constituents shine..
Coffee blends are better than single origins. Big statement, I know, and controversial enough. But, in general, I really believe it’s true. This isn’t a popular opinion at the moment but it’s one we’ve held for a very long time at Dreambeans Coffee and Greenbean Coffee Roasters. For the past 10 – 15 years or so, there has been a lot of focus on single origins in the coffee world but this is a very recent thing. For several centuries, coffee blends were all the rage. It’s only very recently that single origins have come into fashion.
We can see signs that the pendulum is swinging back towards coffee blends again and it looks like blends will be back in the ascendency once more in the next few years.
So what’s the difference?
Single origin coffee
A single origin coffee is one that comes from a particular country or a particular region or a particular farm or co-op. Single origin coffees can offer unique flavour characteristics or specific taste profiles. For many people, one of the most attractive characteristics of single origin coffee is its exclusivity. In a given region that’s known for good coffee, simple geography creates a natural limit to the number of sacks in the coffee crop each year, and that inherent scarcity can help to drive up the price of that specific coffee. Some growers and co-ops spend a lot of money on promotion to help promote the price of their coffee.
Single Estate coffees are even more exclusive still, as they are promoted as coffee from on one particular farm or plantation. These plantations range in size from simple family-owned farms with a few acres, to large plantations with hundreds of workers which are owned by large corporations.
Take the example of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee
This is a lovely coffee. A single origin and maybe the most famous coffee origin on the planet. It’s very good coffee but it’s outrageously expensive. It’s cost is several multiples of what it should be if it was priced based only on taste or on quality. Why is this? The simple reason Jamaica Blue Mountain is so expensive is because it’s scarce; it’s a supply and demand thing. The Blue Mountains coffee growing region is between Kingston and Antonio Bay, limited to the parishes of St Andrew, Portland, St Mary and St Thomas. This is a very limited area, no more than 6,000 hectares in total, about the size of a single large coffee plantation in Brazil or Colombia, yet the coffee is world famous and commands an ultra premium price, year after year, no matter how good or bad the harvest is. It has the name of a great coffee and that name attracts a great price.
The entire crop of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee varies between 400 tonnes and 1,000 tonnes, depending on the harvest. This is the equivalent of about three hours of coffee production in Colombia. The farmers are well aware of the coffee’s iconic status and they amplify its scarcity and its merit by packing it only in wooden barrels instead of sacks and they make a great fuss of labelling and origin.
As the poet Patrick Kavanagh said, paraphrasing Homer, “Gods make their own importance”.
Extraordinary expertise in roasting, blending, cupping and tasting can create better tasting coffee than virtually any single origin.
Some single origins are terrific
Some single origin coffees are terrific, some are very good indeed and some are not very good at all. Some coffees that are practically undrinkable on their own are sublime in the right blend. Let us compare a cup of coffee to a bar of dark chocolate. How many of us could stomach the bitterness of 100% cocoa in our chocolate? I know I certainly couldn’t. But give me a square or two of a good 70% dark chocolate with my coffee and I’ll be delighted.
We’ve tried and tested nearly all of the big-name single origins from every coffee-producing country on the planet over the past 30 years. Some of these coffees are truly unique, with qualities that cannot be found in any other origin. However, real expert blending can improve any of these single origin coffees. I’ve never tasted a single origin coffee that couldn’t be improved in some way. I’m not saying that there aren’t great single origins, but I am saying that they aren’t perfect; they can be improved. Maybe a skilled blender would want to prolong or soften the finish, give it more bite, or add a layer of complexity beneath the principal taste notes.
Frequently, single origin coffees with fantastic core flavours lack something in texture or tongue sensation. Three or four percent of a carefully chosen complementary bean could give depth and finish to these already good coffees, as well as heighten the sensation without detracting from what makes the origin special. However, in the coffee market, there is a great reluctance to blend many of the best single origins because they can command a premium in their natural state, and roasters are hesitant to forgo this premium.
Coffee blends
Coffee blends are made up of more than one type of coffee bean. A blend can have many constituents or it might be just two or three carefully chosen origins. The different coffee beans used in blends can come from any country or any region.
Almost all Dreambeans coffees are blends, apart from our decaf. We are quite clear in our view that blends perform better than single origins. A good roaster will have an intuitive sense of how a single origin will interact with other types, as well as how the flavours, aromas, and textures will compliment one another. This intuition strengthens and sharpens with time and skill, and the combination of insight and experience can elevate it to a fine art. It’s incredibly satisfying to create a coffee mix that is more than the sum of its parts. By mixing three distinct beans, each of which is a 6 or a 7 (out of 10) in its own right, a skilled blender will be able to create a blend that rates 9 out of 10. The magic lies in the blending, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I don’t think I have ever tasted a single origin that couldn’t be improved in some way. Maybe a little more bite. Maybe a rounding of a sharpness or adding a spike of flavour or an improvement in the mouthfeel. There’s always something and there are so many options. If you are dealing with single origins, you have very little room to manoeuvre. A single origin is what it is.
Pat Grant, Greenbean Coffee’s MD and Master Roaster.
Expertise in blending makes all the difference
A skilled blender doesn’t have to accept the shortfalls of any single origin. I think there is a strong and legitimate case to make that Pat Grant of Greenbean Coffee Roasters is the best coffee blender in Ireland. Pat Grant is the only Irish coffee blender EVER to win a Golden Fork nomination and one of only two Irish winners of three star Great Taste Awards for coffee blends. That he has achieved the most prestigious awards is beyond doubt. I believe it is true to say that no other Irish person has been sourcing, buying, roasting, tasting and blending coffee for as long and at such a high level. Pat Grant is unrivalled in his ability to match coffee beans, to play one against the other and to coax the very best flavour out of every bean.
I think that one of the reasons that many roasters promote single origins is because they are relative newcomers to the coffee business and they haven’t got the long experience, the hard-won understanding of the interplay between coffee varieties, or the roasting and blending skills to surpass the flavour notes of the best single origins. For that reason, they are obliged to pay a super premium for single origin coffees (only based of their scarcity, not because of their quality) and pass that super premium on to their customers in higher prices.
Pat Grant’s 35 years of experience in sourcing, roasting and blending is unrivalled in Ireland. This gives Greenbean and Dreambeans a great advantage. We can create a coffee blend like Torero, the most exalted coffee ever to come out of Ireland, and we can sell it for less than our competitors are selling very ordinary coffee.
Pat McArdle