Coffee blends have an interesting place in today’s specialty landscape. Although it is a craft as old as coffee production itself, the notion of what constitutes a ‘good’ blend has never been more scrutinised. With the landscape constantly shifting and roasting companies taking various different approaches, we thought it was a good time to re-illustrate the intent behind our Five Senses blends. Consequently, we are excited to announce the release of our new blend cards.
There are four major facets to each card, so let me explain:
Profile Brief
Each Five Senses blend has an overarching profile brief. Much thought and deliberation has gone into each of these briefs and, essentially, we designed each blend to service a different niche in the market space. For example, the Crompton Road blend’s brief reads, “Rich flavours, balanced and heavy bodied.” Our aim then is to deliver a consistent blend of coffees, roasted to our specifications which constantly fulfil this profile and overarching brief throughout the year.
Profile through Seasonality
Our main vehicle (other than roasting) for accomplishing our profile brief is utilising the various harvest cycles of different origins.
Shipping coffee to Australia, in a seasonal fashion, is a complex logistical operation. Yet we believe it is an ideal worth following.
Espresso machines offer so much control and variability that simply handing a coffee over without suggestions for brewing could lead to unintended flavour profiles which stray far from the original intention for the blend. Thus we have included a suggested recipe to best accomplish the profile brief.
As coffees come in and out of the blend due to seasonality, this recipe will be updated, ensuring that the blend can be prepared proficiently all year round.
Blend Profile
This section is largely tied to the Seasonality and Recipe sections. As different seasonal coffees come into the blends and the recipes alter consequently, so too will the varying intensities of certain characteristics of the blend.
Just to reassure you, this will be nothing too drastic. The profile will still be accomplished as mentioned above, but some changes will occur. For example, a blend’s acidity might become less sharp or lime-like and round out, like an orange’s acidity.
Lastly, we have created the graph to read left to right, thus modelling the way we would evaluate a coffee on a cupping scoring sheet.
Ultimately, we hope that these cards bring greater satisfaction by further illustrating the intent behind each Five Senses’ blend and how best to accomplish the desired profile. Expect to see blend cards included in your next order. Enjoy!
