There’s a lot of lingo in the coffee industry. One of the phrases you may have heard being thrown around in your local cafe is ‘single origin’. And it’s just as the name suggests ─ coffee beans that have been sourced from a single region within a single country. Maybe even from a single patch of farm land. If you produce, harvest and put beans through all the usual processing methods, all within the same region, then you can say it has single origins.
It’s worth noting that in addition to single origin coffee, you can also get ‘blends’. Quite the opposite to single origin coffee beans, blends are a combination of beans from various different places.
The unique thing about single origin coffees is that they allow coffee lovers to really taste the character and flavour profile of that particular region. All the time, effort and passion the producer put into the coffee, not to mention the distinct qualities of the soil, climate and altitude – all these things come through to make that cup of coffee a unique representation of that particular place. Blends on the other hand tender a complex flavour profile – a combination of the unique characteristics of two or more single origin coffee beans. Roasters will try to strike a tasteful balance between things like aroma, acidity, aftertaste and mouthfeel to produce a cup of coffee that can be enjoyed by as many people as possible. When it comes right down to it though, neither style is better than the other, it just depends on what you want from your coffee.
