As a specialty coffee café at the University of Minnesota, we like to help our fellow coffee lovers learn all the coffee industry’s ins and outs. We are here to serve you a delicious cup of coffee, but we are here to arm you with the knowledge to select sustainably sourced coffee of the highest quality.
For this reason, we want to dive into the difference between single origin and blended coffee.
Single Origin Coffee
Simply put, single-origin coffee is coffee that comes from one country. When green coffee, or unroasted coffee beans, are imported they always start as a single-origin. Single-origin is one of the many characteristics that categorize specialty coffee. A single-origin coffee allows you to taste the unique flavors that come from different regions of the world.
Coffee Blends
A majority of coffee sold in the United States is actually a blend. Most roasters purchase coffee beans from all around the world and blend them to create different flavor blends. This helps them have a more consistent flavor and helps drive down the cost of production.
Limitations of Coffee Blends
Since the driving force behind roasters creating coffee blends is mostly an effort to keep the cost of production low, quality is often compromised. Blended coffees tend to have a lot of defects which are usually covered up by over roasting the blends resulting in a slightly burnt flavor profile.
This method of blending eliminates the unique flavor offerings from different origin countries around the world and has convinced many people that they enjoy dark over-roasted coffee.
Specialty Coffee at the University of Minnesota
For the quality of coffee to be considered a specialty, it must be the single origin. At 7 corners Coffee, we appreciate and celebrate the different flavors and characteristics that coffee beans offer from different parts of our world. We never want to cover that up with generic blends or over-roasted beans.
To taste the difference between single-origin coffee, stop into our cafe at the University of Minnesota for a specialty cup of coffee today.
