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BLENDING IN:
MAKING YOUR OWN COFFEE  BLENDS
For truly fabulous coffee, use more than one kind of bean

This article first appeared in my
Tastes column in the Wine Spectator.

 In the past two decades, premium wine drinkers have been deluged with single varietal wines—California Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, Australian Shiraz, Argentinean Malbec. Similarly, premium coffee drinkers have been drinking lots of straight or single-origin coffees from places like Sumatra, Kenya, and Costa Rica. These stand-alone beverages can be quite satisfying, even thrilling. But blended coffee, like blended wine, is usually more complete and harmonious with greater complexity and depth of flavor.

With wine, a big-boned Cabernet Sauvignon might be mixed with a fleshier Merlot, Cabernet Franc and other grapes to make Meritage. Similarly, for a full-bodied Sumatra the natural partner would be a lighter, more acidic Central American coffee. “The most complex and interesting coffees are blended,” says Jerry Baldwin, chairman of Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Emeryville, California. At Peet’s, the nine caffeinated and six decaffeinated blended coffees are so popular that they represent 75 percent of sales.

Combining coffees in a special or unique way also enables coffee companies to identify themselves with signature blends. “Any company can go out and buy a Colombian Supremo but not everyone has a Nantucket Blend,” asserts Rick Peyser, of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, in Waterbury, Vermont, where blends represent about 40 percent of company sales, up from 30 percent 10 years ago. Green Mountain’s Nantucket Blend, like many blends, is a registered, proprietary name. As is the case with many coffee roasters, Green Mountain is reluctant to be specific about what goes into it. Peyser will say that it contains beans from Central and South America and Indonesia, all given a “full city” roast (a medium-dark roast akin to a light French roast or Viennese roast, depending on the roaster). The recipe also calls for some French roast (a dark roast similar to and often darker than espresso).

Whereas single varietal wines are derived from different grape types, premium single origin coffees all come from the same plant, Coffea arabica. (Lower quality beans from the Coffea robusta plant are used in many supermarket blends.) Beans get their distinctive character from where they are grown. Many purists feel that blending mutes the distinctiveness of varieties. But Mary Williams, senior vice president at Starbucks, disagrees. “If you are good at blending, each of the characteristics in the coffees will be enhanced. There’s a gestalt to blending that creates a finished product that is greater than the sum of its parts.”

While Starbucks and other premium roasters blend for higher quality, blends are not always created with improvement in mind. Mass-produced or commercial coffees, like those that come in cans in supermarkets, are blended primarily for consistent taste at lower cost. “A large coffee company might normally use, say, 50 percent Brazilian in its blend. But one year that might cost too much to sell at the price they want. So they have to look around for a cheaper coffee (e.g. a cheaper type of arabica or perhaps a robusta) that will still give them the taste customers expect,” says Donald Schoenholt, president of Gillies Coffee Company in Brooklyn, New York.

One of the first blends to gain widespread acceptance was Mocha Java, which is one-third Yemen Mocha from the Arabian Peninsula with two-thirds Java Arabica from Indonesia. While each were great coffees in their own right, each lacked something. The Yemen Mocha had wonderful acidity but only medium body. The Java had plenty of body but very little acidity. Together they formed a more complete coffee.

Achieving a good body-acidity balance is but one of hundreds of blending goals. For example, Starbucks’ Christmas Blend is a dark-roasted, full-bodied combination of Indonesian and Latin American coffees that will complement heavier holiday foods. The coffee used in espresso is almost always a blend. The intense nature of the espresso brewing process can accentuate any bean’s characteristic, sometimes to a fault, so blending is necessary to get a balanced cup. For example, a high acid bean might make a fine drip coffee but it might produce an unbearably acidic espresso. Italians are fond of adding some robusta because it helps to create a better crema, the frothy top of espresso.

To celebrate the turn of the millennium, Oren Bloostein of Oren’s Daily Roast (which I think produces New York’s finest cup of coffee at its eight Manhattan shops) created a Y2K blend. Bloostein’s logic was that one part of subtle, less expensive Ethiopian Yirgacheffe wouldn’t detract from two parts flowery, buttery Hawaiian Kona. Not only did his theory work, but it enabled Bloostein to sell this Kona blend for $19.99 a pound, $10 less than his 100 percent Kona. 

Kona and Jamaica Blue Mountain, the two most expensive coffees in the world, frequently fall victim to unscrupulous blenders. Be wary of blends that say Kona or Jamaica Blue Mountain “style,” “blend” or “type.” With the exception of Hawaii, which requires any Kona blend to have at least 10 percent Kona coffee, there are no laws governing how much, if any, of a particular coffee (not just Kona or Jamaica Blue Mountain) is in a blend. “As long as it’s 100 percent coffee, you don’t have to say where it comes from,” Bloostein says.

The roasting process can add nuance to a blend. Lighter roasts generally accentuate acidity. Darker roasts can bring out body and add charred and chocolaty notes. If all the beans in a blend have similar characteristics, they are often roasted together, as is the case with Peet’s House and 101 Blends, which are all from Central America. When they’re different, the elements in the blend are roasted separately. A good example is a Viennese blend, which may contain half to three-quarters medium roasted beans and one-quarter to half dark-roasted beans.

Unfortunately, there is no standardization when it comes to roasting terminology. “One person’s French roast is another’s Italian roast. Some people’s espresso is lighter than other’s Italian or French roast. And some people’s espresso is darker than other’s French or Italian,” Schoenholt says. West-coast purveyors tend to roast darker than those on the East Coast do.

To create a blend that’s best suited to your own tastes, Williams suggests buying five or six single origin, full-city roasted coffees to get to know their characteristics. Then make a mixture of, say, 50 percent East African and 50 percent Indonesian. Taste and begin adding or subtracting for body or acidity. Then add 10 to 15 percent French roast coffee to give it some spice, charred, and chocolate notes.

Another way is to try a roaster’s house blend, which will help you determine the roaster’s style. Peet’s House Blend, for example, reflects that company’s dark roasting philosophy and gives this floral, pleasantly acid blend some chocolate notes. That West Coast darkness shows up in Starbucks House Blend too—so much so that it (and other Starbucks coffees I’ve had) often have a burnt taste. Oren’s Special Blend is done in a lighter East Coast style, though there are some French roasted Colombian beans in the full-city Sumatran/Colombian mix. It has a rich aroma with subtle spice notes and a perfectly balanced taste with deep flavor.

Torreo, a small roaster in Philadelphia, also uses full city roast in its house blend of Costa Rican, Guatemalan, and New Guinea beans to make an inviting cup that has a floral aroma and surprising complexity. Green Mountain’s Nantucket Blend is pleasantly rich with a sweet, nutty aroma and good balance.

With the exception Kona blends and the like, coffee blends, at about $10 a pound, are no more expensive than most single origin coffees. And they’re a lot cheaper than your average Meritage wine.

How to Get It

 Have Another Cup

Can It

Innovations in coffee seem to go on and on. One of coffeedom’s greatest innovators is Dr. Ernesto Illy, chairman of illycaffé, whose espresso can be seen in many fine restaurants and coffee bars. Illy popularized the espresso pod, which compresses a single dose of espresso into a disc, eliminating the problem of getting just the right grind and dose (a significant obstacle for good espresso), not to mention messy countertops. Now Illy has come out with perfectly ground coffee in a pressurized modern, streamlined canister. Instead of vacuum packing, the can uses inert nitrogen, which keeps the coffee fresh and aromatic. The screw-off lid insures that the coffee stays fresh to the very end. The cans come in 8.8 ounce and 4.4 ounce sizes and are available at quality retailers such as Williams-Sonoma, Dean & Deluca, and online at www.illy.com.

For Peet’s Sake

Peet’s Coffee & Tea is one of America’s foremost coffee innovators. Quite a few people, including Mary and me, have become addicted to Peet’s legendary (some would argue “notorious”) dark roasting as well as the quality of the coffee drinks made in its coffee bars, primarily in the Bay Area of Northern California but now expanding up and down the West Coast.

Recently Peet’s introduced two new reserve coffees, JR Reserve Blend and Aged Moka-Java, to go along with its Reserve Kona coffee. As with wine, Peet’s reserve coffees are made only from the best crops from top growers and are handled with particular care, which includes roasting to order. The result is coffee that is even more rich and deeply flavored than Peet’s regular coffees, which is saying a lot. Just as reserve wines cost more, so do these reserve coffees. The JR Reserve Blend is $24.95, the Aged Moka-Java, $29.95, both for a half pound. So “reserve” them for a special occasion. Available at Peet’s retail stores, by phone at 800-999-2132, or online at www.peets.com.

Kona

As I said above, getting true Kona coffee can be a dicey proposition. But Dragon Roast Coffee is the real magilla. I’ve tried several different roasts and vintages (Yes, coffee can have vintages just like wine.) of Dragon Roast in my French press pot and in my espresso maker. Almost without exception, the coffee was excellent. And if you’re into a holistic approach to coffee farming, Dragon Roast coffee is produced by biodynamic methods, which is sort of like taking organic farming to the next level.

 Dragon Roast comes in three roasts, Dark or French Roast, a lighter Dragon or Viennese, and Café, a combination of dark and medium roasts. Prices range from $30 for the 2000 vintage to $47 a pound, for the 1999 vintage. Order from the company’s web site, www.dragonroast.com.

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