In the previous post we talked about How to Know Your Coffee Is Over or Under Extraction? then you know how to identify under or over extraction according to the coffee taste. This post, we are gonna to talk about how to choose the right coffee bean for you, your own preference. There is no such thing called "which coffee bean is the best?", is all about your own preference.
So what are the 3 ways to choose the right coffee beans for you?
#1. Fresh Roasted Coffee
How do we know the coffee bean is freshly roasted?
You can check from the coffee bean package, it should be written down there. If you couldn't find any date on the package I guess they don't want to let you know how long the coffee beans have been on the shelf.
I have the freshly roasted coffee bean now what?
You might think you can take your own sweet time to enjoy the coffee beans, but you are wrong! Even though the coffee bean is freshly roasted, the peak flavour and taste of the coffee is between 7 to 14 days after roasted. Yes, you can keep for awhile but the taste, flavour, intensity of the coffee will slowly fade over time. If you keep more than 1 or 2 months you will notice the taste is different with what you had when you newly bought that time.
#2. Single Origin vs Blend
Yes, you might already know that some coffee from the cafe is actually blending with other beans and some offer single origin coffee bean.
So what is so special about it?
Some might argue which one to choose or which one is the best for black or which one is the best for coffee with milk. But let me tell you, the fact is, it depends on your flavour or what taste you love. Before knowing this I thought the single origin is always best for espresso and black coffee while blend is good for coffee with milk.
However, this creates a whole new world for me to explore as there are so many types of blends. You can blend from 2 types of coffee up to 9 types of coffee beans. Imagine how many cups of long black I can try compared to the limited single origin.
So what is so good about single origin vs blend?
Single origin tends to give you the taste of the uniqueness of the coffee at the origin place. While blend tends to give you a well-rounded coffee that’s reliably consistent that you can enjoy. So let say this blend I have 3 different types of bean and 1 of the batch is not so good I still have 2 other beans to cover and balance the taste while this is not achievable for the single origin. That's the disadvantage of single origin.
#3. Roast Level
There are 3 different types of roast level in general, however, there are some go deeper level such as medium dark but we will not cover it here. So, the general roast level which is the light roast, medium roast, and dark roast. The most obvious difference will be the colour of the coffee beans.
Why different type of roast & what kind of flavour does each type of roast brings out?
Different type of roast brings out the different taste of coffee. For the light roast, the coffee beans are light brown in colour (for obvious reason), no oil on the surface yet as they are roasted not long enough for oil to break through to the surface. For the medium roast, the coffee beans will be the medium brown colour with a stronger flavour, a non-oily surface, and slightly sweeter than light roast. Darker roast, the coffee bean is a shiny black surface with oil on the surface as they are roasted long enough for oil to break through the surface. The darker the roast the less acidity can be found in the coffee bean and hence the darker the roast the bitter the coffee.
Fun fact!
A lot of people thought that the darker the roast the stronger the caffeine. In fact, it is the light roast has the highest caffeine and did you know caffeine decrease as the roast gets darker? Because in the process of roasting the caffeine content decrease slowly due to the bean mass and hence light roast has more caffeine than the darker one.
Different type roasts are suitable for a different kind of brewing method which we will talk about in the future post.