Stop Being a Coffee Purist: Blend It

In this episode, I dive deep into a topic that I avoided for years—blending and mixing coffees. For the longest time, I was a purist, strictly dedicated to single origin coffees. I romanticized the origin stories, the soil, the elevations, the farmers, and the unique characteristics of each coffee. Single origins felt sacred, like something I shouldn't alter or mess with. But as I've pushed my understanding and love for coffee further, I've discovered that blending isn't cheating—it's an art form that allows us to mold and shape coffee into exactly what we want it to be.

I share my journey from single origin devotion to embracing the creative freedom that comes with blending. I explain how mixing coffees lets us manipulate flavors intentionally—adding sweetness to sharp, fruity coffees with a dark roasted Brazilian, or creating complexity by combining multiple light roasts. By listening to this episode, you'll learn why blending might be the key to rekindling your excitement for coffee, how to think about flavor profiles when creating your own blends, and why it's perfectly okay to make coffee your own way, regardless of what the coffee geeks say.

Transcript

[00:00:22]
It was always single origin coffees. Ethiopian, Kenyan, Brazilian, Guatemalan, Colombian, Costa Rican. That's how I identified with coffees. I read books about it, I thought about the soil. I thought about the people harvesting and growing the coffee. I thought about how something that has so many different varietals, how they can taste similar but also so different.

[00:01:03]
Then I start thinking about the roasters, roasting the coffees, trying to bring the best out of the coffees. That's more so where I was with everything. And then when you get the coffee, see the coffee, read the notes on the bag, you start to wonder, I can't wait to really taste that stuff that they say that was on the bag.

[00:01:39]
And then when you brew the coffee and experience it, it's magical. It's like something that you gravitate to, something that you look forward to, something that you wondered why coffee can taste this way. Beyond the classic Brazilian coffees, or even Guatemalans from time to time. Beyond what we're used to, the fruit notes, the acidity, the sweetness that we can get from the coffees.

[00:02:13]
And how we can manipulate and change that to an extent with our brewing, with our water chemistry, with our temperatures. And our way we like things. The way we like to taste things.

[00:02:33]
But for the very longest, I shied away from blends, or even in this case, playing around with coffee. Getting a couple different bags, a light, medium, and dark, variations, fruitiness, sweetness, chocolate notes, and just playing. I shied away from that quite a bit. And it was one of those things where I was like, that's not pure. That's not something that we geeks get down with.

[00:03:16]
Single origins ruled everything that I do, and they still do to an extent. Like whenever it comes time for me to make something or think of something different, I shied away from it. Not because it's a bad thing, but more so like something that I'm not supposed to do. Single origins give you that origin story. It gives you that sense of being, a sense of understanding what that coffee went through.

[00:03:58]
You start thinking about the soils and the elevations and the people again. And when you do that, and when it's harvested, you don't want to mess it up. You don't want to alter it. You don't want to change it. That's what I think about quite a bit when it comes to single origin coffees.

[00:04:25]
But as I continue to push my understanding and love for coffee, it's also something that it's a happy accident. Meaning that when you mix and blend and do all the things that you can with coffee, it felt almost like cheating, like you're doing something wrong. But when you get it right, when it does make sense, you start to think about all other things that you have thought about coffee. There's sometimes there's blends out there that just work. Sometimes I can make a blend that just works.

[00:05:11]
And when we do that and when we explore, that's the thing that we're really trying to go after. And one thing that I realized with this whole thing is that coffee is, for the most part, the goal is to be enjoyed. To be enjoyed any way that somebody wants it to be enjoyed. If they want to put milk and sugar on the coffee, if they want to use tap water, so be it. It's their palate. It's their mouth. It is their coffee. But something about blends really get me going and thinking and trying to really analyze it for what it is.

[00:06:10]
Because it's a way for us, if we're wanting to get there, we want to be truly honest with ourselves, to mold, to manipulate, to change the coffee, to understand it even more so. It's where we can use a medium roast that has nice fruit flavors on it, but it's lacking that sweetness. And that's where we can probably put in a milder, dark roasted Brazilian coffee to break down that sharpness, to bring out more of that sweetness.

[00:07:02]
Or it could be a lightly roasted coffee that does need sweetness. Or we can go ahead and mix two to three lightly roasted coffees, get that complexity that we never would have thought that was possible. The world of blending and mixing and exploring puts us in a different place. If you really want to go there, you want to think about it.

[00:07:32]
Blending, mixing coffee, is where you can actually mold the taste that you want to. Because if we're being honest with ourselves, the way those single origins are, they are what they are. They are acidic. They can probably be a little bit too chocolatey. Yes, we can change that factor to an extent. But truthfully, that personality is already set in stone. It's what we have to deal with until that bag is done, until we're on to the next single origin coffee.

[00:08:18]
And that's the thing that I fight with. Sometimes you're wondering like the pros and cons of coffee, pros and cons of single origin coffee, pros and cons of manipulating, changing things with blends. You start to wonder and think and just trying to figure this whole thing out, and try not to go too deep into the rabbit hole, but you're already there. And then you just want to make it work at the end of the day. That's all you really care about.

[00:08:51]
You want that coffee to be sweet when you want it to be. You want that acidity to come in in the beginning or wherever you want to actually have that come in. You want to experience the coffee for what it is. And sometimes I'll say it, single origins can be one note. They can not do anything for you. They can be lackluster. They can be a disappointment. They can be all the things that we always romanticize about coffee.

[00:09:28]
But something about blending and mixing and making it our own, something like a painter, an artist, and I think we can get there. If we explore those single origins, it's kind of weird saying that. You can't really blend and mix coffees as much as you really want to until you understand flavors, understand tastes, understand what that coffee is actually saying to you.

[00:10:03]
And then we start to develop our own palates, our own preferences, the things that we like and don't like about coffee. And as we do that, that's when we can really mold it and shape it in a way that it's for us. It's not for anybody else. It's for us. It's interesting how those two things go together hand in hand. The joy, the understanding, the excitement. Because I think that's part of it too.

[00:10:40]
We can bring that excitement back again if you've lost it. If you're just drinking the same type of single origin coffees, and if you're willing to go to the dark side, you don't have to go too crazy. Just get a directly roasted Central or South American coffee. Something that's not as loud and funky as an African coffee as a dark roast. And explore. Have fun. See if mixing and blending coffees is for you.

[00:11:18]
Because I think if you don't do that, you're missing out on something great. Because again, it's your coffee. It's like your condiment. It's the thing that we look forward to. So let's go beyond this whole single origin thing. Let's experience coffee for the way we want to taste coffees. And if you're not there yet, ask yourself, what do you like about coffee? What do you enjoy about coffee? What do you want to experience with coffee?

[00:11:55]
And once you figure that piece out, then that's when you can start blending. Sometimes you'll do a 50-50 split. Sometimes it's a 20-80 split. Sometimes just a little sprinkle, just something to just give it a different type of edge. Explore. Imagine you have your bag of coffee or bags of coffee in front of you.

[00:12:26]
It's okay to mix it up from time to time because the ironic part about all of this is that when coffee is harvested and produced, there's been many times where, in any way that is coming from this farmer, that farmer, this lot and all this stuff, that even though they may be the same, they probably be a little bit different. It's already a blend. But in this case, be intentional with your blends and your mixing. Make it your own.

[00:13:02]
You may brew or find out the best tasting coffee to you just because you got out of your comfort zone beyond the single origin. Let me know what you think. If you're about that life, you're not about that life. If you're used to just staying with single origins or you're just there and ready to explore, see what it's all about. And the beauty of this and awesomeness of this is that you don't have to ask anybody to play around with your coffee. It's all up to you. Talk to you later.