Why Do Coffee Roasters Favour Blends?
Why is it that it is rare to walk into a café and get your coffee made from just Ethiopian coffee beans, or just Costa Rican coffee beans? Simply put, roasters try to give their consumers the best of a few different beans to make the coffee as complex as possible. A coffee with good mouthfeel (eg Brazil) is no good without aroma (add some Papuan New Guinea) or aftertaste (add some Mexican Altura). Coffee aficionados love tasting single origin coffees to taste the nuances in those coffees, but if you are a café trying to maximize your revenue by satisfying as many people as possible, you will want to give them espresso with mouthfeel, aroma, aftertaste, good crema, acidity and smoothness but not bitterness.
Simply put, roasters try to give their consumers the best of a few different beans to make the coffee as complex as possible. A coffee with good mouthfeel 
(eg Brazil) is no good without aroma (add some Papuan New Guinea) or aftertaste (add some Mexican Altura). Coffee aficionados love tasting single origin coffees to taste the nuances in those coffees, but if you are a café trying to maximize your revenue by satisfying as many people as possible, you will want to give them espresso with mouthfeel, aroma, aftertaste, good crema, acidity and smoothness but not bitterness.
Think of a coffee roaster like a chef mixing in many ingredients to make his/her signature dish. Those ingredients (for arguments’ sake let’s say they are celery sticks, cream, butter, pumpkin, spices and stock) on their own are not overly inviting, but mixed together and cooked for the right amount of time and they transform into an amazing gourmet cream soup that can fetch $20 a bowl at a good restaurant! Just as a chef tries to create synergy (the end product being much better than the sum of its individual parts), so too does a coffee roaster.
Roasters can create blends for complementarity sometimes and at other times to create contrasts – depending of course on what their wholesale customer may 
think their consumers would be interested in drinking. They may find a couple of beans that go really nicely together, such as Ethiopian and Brazilian and another couple that stand in stark contrast with each other such as Sumatran and Kenyan and tailor blends based on those similarities and differences.
What is really interesting about the blending process is that a roaster’s blend may need to change from time to time and the large coffee companies will have cuppers who continually cup their blends to ensure that their integrity of the blend does not change over time. For example the roaster may use a Guatemalan bean from a particular plantation in their signature blend. Over time, the taste of the roasted beans from that plantation may change due to a number of factors: climate change, a change in the way those beans have been fermented, dried or stored or a change in the soil conditions. This in turn will impact on the overall taste of the roaster’s blend. Now the roaster won’t want the overall taste of the blend to change because they 
have loyal wholesale customers who like it and they in turn want to keep their paying customers satisfied from week to week. This will mean that the roaster will have to re-assess those Guatemalan beans and either substitute them with something else or change their weighting in the blend.
The golden rule for roasters is to create a flavour profile and be consistent with it.Examples of some blends we have created in the past and which we now use in our training rooms can be found on the blendly.co.uk
Examples of some blends we have created in the past and which we now use in our training rooms can be found on the blendly.co.uk
When is Coffee Blended – Before or after Roasting?
Some argue that blending pre-roasting can achieve a unique coming-together of flavours that cannot be achieved by roasting individual origins then blending. Beans that have been blended before roasting are typically characterised by all being the same colour.
Others argue that you have to maximise the flavour of each origin as they will not all want the same time in the roasting chamber. Beans that have been blended after roasting are typically characterised by being different colours.
Generally, blending post roasting occurs because:
– A small bean will roast at a different rate to a large bean
– Beans with different “hardness” or density will roast at different rates
– Beans with different moisture contents will roast at different rates
As past coffee roasters ourselves, to be honest, there is no right answer. Most roasters these days practice both methods depending on which beans they are using.
Single Origins vs Blends – Which type of coffee is better?
Purists would argue that you cannot top a great single origin coffee and that you must be very careful not to destroy the greatness of a coffee by mixing it carelessly with another.
But most coffee companies in Australia sell blends therefore arguably blends must be better. These companies probably want to offer their wholesale cafe customers and in turn their consumers a complex tasting coffee, giving them more than just one attribute that a single origin may be able to offer them.
At the end of the day though, nobody can say that one particular coffee is 
better than another or one blend any better than another. All we know is that if you have a half-decent machine even at home, buying single origins after drinking blends all your life can be a refreshing experience and a thoroughly enriching one. but the Choice is up to you
The Dalmore Inn’s growing community of food and coffee lovers are one of the growing number of destination that offer great freshly roasted coffee from Blendly.
blendly coffee experiance and with Quality food and service at the top of The Dalmore Inn’s agenda They understand that more and more top establishments and restaurants have increased sales of the hot drink three times faster than specialist outlets, By Creating coffee blends that are unique to them and there customer
“Coffee-shopping” is a trend that’s disrupting the traditional brick and mortar retail experience. When customers are coffee-shopping, they peruse in-stock items on a tablet, rather than on the shelves and racks of a retailer. It’s so named for the social, cafe-like, atmosphere that’s designed to entice shoppers to spend time in physical locations.
According to coffee shops in the UK, Britain’s coffee shop culture is full of beans. The UK coffee shop market has enjoyed its biggest period of growth since 2008. Over the last five years, the market rose by 37%, up from £2.4 billion in 2011 to reach an impressive £3.4 billion in 2016. What is more, between 2015 and 2016 sales increased a spectacular 10.4% – the biggest year-on-year boost witnessed in the last five years.
manage inventory across all the sales channels, – The Company provide Commodity based planning as well as Logistics, Distribution and Inventory management as well as developing new analytic to help chains better plan and manage footfall. “Britain’s appetite for coffee shops continues. Much of the growth we’ve seen in recent years is driven by habitual coffee drinkers and the continually increasing number of coffee retailers that are now ubiquitous on British high streets
According to Mintel The UK consumers’ love of coffee shops, for some, the draw of the kitchen remains too tempting. Half (51%) of coffee drinkers prefer to drink hot drinks at home rather than out-of-home, including 55% of men and 47% of women. – The opportunity to drink and post your own coffee blend has much appeal to coffee customers. Creating your own coffee and developing your own coffee blend for your customer , is part of developing your business and your supply chain to be unique to the people that you serve as most companies now understand that there is no one size fits all when it comes to developing your products and services and extending the possibilities of extending this service from the coffee shop to your customers kitchen offers greater opportunities in building trust and developing better services based around customer choice.
customer , is part of developing your business and your supply chain to be unique to the people that you serve as most companies now understand that there is no one size fits all when it comes to developing your products and services and extending the possibilities of extending this service from the coffee shop to your customers kitchen offers greater opportunities in building trust and developing better services based around customer choice. The fact that half of coffee drinkers prefer to drink hot drinks at home could suggest that the range of beverages for at-home consumption may, in fact, be so well-established in the retail channel that more consumers can now recreate the coffee shop experience without having to leave the comforts of home.” And it offers coffee shop owners the opportunity to develop there retail channels into this highly engaging marketplace.
and a half hours working from a coffee shop every week and it’s not just start-ups or self-employed workers doing so.‘We each spend an average of £2,160 a year working from coffee shops – but we close business deals worth £14.5bn to the UK economy’ Findings from the research included:
what might be a common assumption that the self-employed may be more partial to working in a coffee shop, three in four employees in large-sized businesses (250+ employees) often decide to shun the office for the coffee shop, with the approval of their bosses no less.
drink of choice? In a thoroughly UN-British turn of events, only 8 per cent of us choose a cup of tea to power our work. In fact, it is the Italian cappuccino that fires British business (26 per cent), closely followed by a latte (21 per cent).
Strangely comforting….
tended tour of the Highlands – or a group of locals looking for a Pleasant afternoon Lunch in the Perthshire countryside The The Tullybannocher Café is a destination not to be missed
coffee that allows The Tullybannocher Cafe guests to relax after a leisurely browse around the gift area and shop were you will find a variety of items; jars of preserves, picture frames, candles, soft toys, and wall plaques to make you smile.
Combination Travel and coffee shops have cropped up in all corners of the world.
based speciality coffee roaster and we were able to create a superb product with the help of the Blendly.co.uk team.
Inverness are passionate about coffee and have developed their own speciality coffee blend as part of their ongoing success in developing great food and services for its customers in Inverness that are passionate about coffee . Having your own blends specialty coffee shows that you have taken the time to develop your products and services, unique to your customers and as more and more companies move away from mass-produced products.
are also looking for new things – speciality in the Food and catering, and Coffee allows the Red Pepper Group to be unique in the area.
Blendly creates speciality coffee blends for coffee shops and coffee customers. All their products come with the customer’s own label and QR code, as well as Tasting and Serving Notes. The company allows Coffee shops to resale the fresh coffee beans to their customers allowing them to take it to be enjoyed in their own home.
blender to develop a superb 
commented on The Coffee Corner in Aviemore is one of the favourite destinations when travelling. Good food, good service and good price. In fact, The Coffee Corner is so good that this place is usually packed.
While traditional brands are looking to grab more of the global industry for themselves, based on traditional methods of scale – with a movement towards mergers between large coffee manufacturers and roasters.
that in entrenched in the economics of scale, its ability to grasp the advantages of economies of choice, is being met by new types of organisations that are offering more transparent services.