In praise of mixing coffee beans
In praise of mixing coffee beans
I have been discovering the joy of mixing different types of whole bean coffees before preparing them in my French press. I find that as long as you don’t do something crazy like mix a very light roast with a very dark roast you can end up with a lot of extra depth and roundness to the flavor. Thoughts? Am I insane? A heretic??? Have you tried it?
This is what blends are. I often will add a touch of medium roast to a dark roast to dial back some of the harshness, or add a South American medium roast to an African single origin to round out the acidity
Yep, exactly! Single origin is fun and all, but roasters know that blends make for a more consistently well rounded cup. Blending batches is even a thing between different roasts of the same bean. If you enjoy the taste, it's always the right call!
We do this in my house with the last bit of each bag and refer to it as “Frankenbeans.”
Dang... That's a top tier joke.
I just did the same - end of a batch and there wasn't enough so I mixed some of the next for a medium-light + dark blend. Good if not great, and certainly interesting.
I don’t do it but I'm not opposed to it personally as long as the beans are within reasonably close roast levels.
I don’t understand how you can get good extraction with mixed beans of highly varied roast level; but if you can and enjoy the result then hell yeah; good on ya! Good coffee is life!
I definitely do this sometimes for my morning pour over. If I have a boring dark roast, or a single origin that doesn’t have a ton of depth, I’ll substitute 10g of a light roast to brighten up the flavor profile. Some combos turn out to be amazing, though I usually still prefer a good quality single origin bean.
No matter what you do, you can't be as heretical as when I make cold brew just to microwave it later. This much is no big deal.
I am often pleasantly surprised when I mix the last of the current bag with some of the next new bag.
sounds like a straight coinflip to get something good tbh