Mixing beans

Sham

Does anyone mix beans they buy? For example throw in a few light medium beans with some darker ones when single dosing to get a bit of acidity with their chocolate notes? Essentially making your own blend suited to your tastes? Is this a good idea or am I in for a world of inconsistency and dialling in?

DavecUK

Sham I do this quite often….mke a blend out of ⅔ different beans after roasting.

drdre89

Sham I was actually going to do this with decaf beans and normal beans. Mix in 50% decaf with normal beans for less of a caffeine rush. I wonder if anyone else has tried this.

SteveBRS

Sham Yes, I do as well. As others here, taming some shots with decaff beans late in the day. I also quite like to add to my Brazilian Bom Jesus up to a third of the quite fruity Ugandan Ibanda. Single dosing is great for this, allows for some spontaneous variables.

Sham

DavecUK I’m thinking that you would want to mix beans with more pronounced single flavours, like a bean with mainly chocolate notes, and a bean with just fruit notes, otherwise I’ll end up with a muddy blend. But many beans have multiple notes and they don’t really say which one is most pronounced or which ones are just subtle.

DavecUK

drdre89 Mix in 50% decaf with normal beans for less of a caffeine rush. I wonder if anyone else has tried this

It’s something I suggest every roaster I train, offer, a half caf coffee blend.

LMSC

For my afternoon brew, I create a half and half of normal and decaf. Evening latte is mostly decaf unless we want a half-caf latte.

drdre89

I have been caffeine free for 1 week now using solely decaf Columbian beans. The taste is nearly identical to my regular Columbian beans .. but I don’t get that caffeine kick, have been feeling lethargic all week! …

So it would interest me to mix the decaf with the regular .. but dialling in on the niche could be interesting

dfk41

Grind them separately, then mix together…….it is a compromise that you are trying to reach so no need to be quite so exact with the parameters

DavecUK

Sham I for sure would want to mix 2 beans that go together well based on their individual tasts…or perhaps a Brazilian for a bit of punch…the other option is to mix the Decaf and non decaf versions of the same bean. Although it’s still a blend of favours, because the decaf is rarely the same bean apart from in origin.

It’s probably a fair guess that decaff doesn’t usually use the more expensive quality beans.

Hotmetal

I’ve literally just finished my first bag of ‘half caf’ from Rave. You could see which beans were which as the decaf ones were darker and had a slight sheen. I only had them in the Aeropress as an experiment because I wasn’t sure about buying a kilo and I’m trying to reduce my milk (carbs and fat in general actually) as well as reduce my caffeine intake.

I was concerned it was gonna be pants but actually quite quaffable. Maybe next time I’ll buy some decaf and mix it with whatever I would normally have. Thing is I normally go for light - medium naturals and I suspect it would be tricky finding a decaf bean to complement that.