What is a single-origin espresso? Very generally defined, it’s an espresso produced from a single crop of coffee grown and processed in a single country, region, cooperative or farm. In other words, it is not a blend of coffees grown in different places or at different times.

Single-origin (S.O.) espressos allow an espresso drinker to explore the wider world of coffee in the same mindful, informed way as coffee drinkers who taste their coffees brewed as drip or French press. With single-origin espressos, the curious espresso drinker can explore the sensory impacts of variables like tree variety, processing method, growing elevation and, to some degree, roasting strategy — explorations that are difficult to impossible to pursue with blends. Plus, single-origins have the capacity to surprise us, and make the simple act of tasting an espresso shot or cappuccino a memorable mini-revelation that tasting a routine blend, even a very good routine blend, can’t offer us.

Such coffee explorations would seem to be particularly supported by this month’s tasting, as all of the 13 top-rated coffees we report on are identified quite specifically: by specific farm or co-op, by variety of tree that produced them, and often by growing elevation. And we were able to tell something about the roasting by taking Agtron color readings of the beans.

Tasting Colleagues

I was joined in this blind tasting of single-origin espressos by John DiRuocco, vice president of coffee at Mr. Espresso, a long-established (founded in 1978) coffee roaster in Oakland, California. The Mr. Espresso motto, quite justified by its practice, is “Italian inspiration, contemporary taste.”

Kenneth Davids and John DiRuocco tasting espresso coffees at Mr. Espresso roastery in Oakland. Courtesy Jason Sarley.

We conducted the tasting over several days at the lab in the Mr. Espresso roastery, with Brandon Talley, assistant director of coffee quality at Mr. Espresso, pulling the shots on a Faema E71E, and Coffee Review’s Jason Sarley in a supervising support role. As usual, we generated the shots using 18 grams of ground coffee to produce 36 grams of finished espresso, a relatively standard ratio in North American practice. For the “with milk” assessment, the shot was combined with three parts whole milk, heated but not frothed on the steam wand. As always at Coffee Review, the tasting was conducted blind, with Jason delivering the coffees identified only by numbers to John and me.

Importance of Processing Method

When the tasting was finished and the results were tabulated, it turned out that one variable in particular moved to the front of the sensory line: processing method. (Processing method, readers will recall, describes the sequence of procedures that turn the moist seeds of fresh coffee fruit into dry, stable, roaster-ready green coffee beans.) The dramatic impact of processing methods involving anaerobic (limited oxygen) fermentation and its growing number of variations and applications tended to upstage the impact of other variables that create differences among green coffees, like tree variety, growing elevation and various more conventional processing methods.

Old Soul Coffee’s Natural Process “Unicorn Lot” drying at Anny Ruth Pimentel’s Finca Loma La Gloria in El Salvador. Courtesy of Jason Griest.

Thirteen of the coffees we tested achieved ratings of 94 or 95, all of which we review here. Among those top-rated 13 samples, nine, or almost 70 percent, were processed using methods that prominently incorporated anaerobic fermentation. Among the remaining four top-rated samples, two were processed by the conventional wet or washed method (all soft fruit residue was removed from the beans before they were dried), one by the honey or pulped natural method (skins were removed, but the fruit flesh or mucilage remained on the beans during drying), and one by the natural method (the beans were dried inside the entire fruit).

A stage in the multi-staged fermentation procedure for Royal Flamingo Coffee’s Colombia Red Fruits at Edwin Noreña’s Campo Hermosa in Colombia. Courtesy of Royal Flamingo Coffee.

The impact of the anaerobic ferment could be felt in the often striking sweetness and surprising aromatic complexity among all of the nine anaerobic-process samples. However, the only sample that displayed explicit anaerobic character in its candyish sweetness and perfume-like flowers was the Royal Flamingo Colombia Red Fruits Campo Hermosa Edwin Noreña (94). John very much admired this coffee at 95 and felt it was coherent and complete in its originality, with its intense aromatics supported by a sound structure. For me, however, there was a bit too much strawberry gummy and not quite enough coffee, though I managed a 92. But I suspect many readers will go with John’s take on this one. Give this striking coffee a try.

John and I switched sides with the quietly melodic, elegant Speckled Ax Ethiopia Dame Dabaye (John 92, Ken 95, net 94), which I found pure, poised and flawless. John found it a pleasing but straightforward washed Ethiopia espresso. But, again, try it; you may not be blown away, but I strongly doubt you will throw any of it away either.

Tree Variety

The celebrated Geisha/Gesha variety of Arabica, with its elongated beans, fine structure, and intensely floral, cocoa and stone-fruit character, has been one of the main vehicles that ambitious coffee growers have relied on over the past couple of decades in their often successful attempts to differentiate their green coffees and attract recognition and higher prices for them. Authentic Geishas, particularly those grown from seed of the original Panama strain (Geisha T2722), continue to impress with their grand but balanced structure and intense floral, fruit and cocoa aromatics.

Young coffee trees at Edwin Noreña’s Campo Hermosa in Colombia.

But Geishas may no longer seem as new and different as they once did. So applying anaerobic processing to a coffee from a respectable but otherwise unremarkable tree variety is an alternative way to surprise the buyer with aromatic fireworks and seductive sweetness. And at lower prices than might be expected for coffee from Geisha trees, with their often stingy yields and fussy needs. Of course, producers can double down and apply anaerobic processing to their Geishas, as is the case with the Big Shoulders Coffee’s anaerobic natural Marcela Gesha Espressso (95), Euphora Coffee’s anaerobic washed Colombia Buenavista Ataraxia Geisha (94), and AOI Coffee’s Ethiopia Growers Reserve Gesha Village Gaylee Special Fermentation (94), all of which pursue a distinctive cup by means of both distinctive tree variety and anaerobic processing.

Origin and Single-Origin Espressos

Seven of this month’s 13 highest-rated samples were produced in Colombia, all in southern or south-central Colombia. Of the remaining six, three were produced in Ethiopia, one in Rwanda, one in El Salvador, and one in Hawaii.

Why the preponderance of Colombias, obviously a popular origin, but until recently not the go-to origin for coffees intended for espresso? (Traditionally, that would be Brazil.) Mainly because a cluster of farms in southern Colombia appear to have mastered the use of complex methods of anaerobic fermentation, which, performed skillfully, can transform a high-grown, potentially acidy coffee into a lower-toned, richly complex, espresso-friendly coffee.

MK Coffee’s Rwanda Rulindo Red Bourbon drying in the “honey (fruit flesh) at Juru Coffee in Rwanda. Courtesy of Linking Coffee and Juru Coffee.

True, some of the other successful coffees in this month’s tasting used simpler, more direct applications of anaerobic methods than the Colombia farms. But, all in all, only two out of this month’s top-rated 13 samples were processed using legacy methods traditionally associated with the origins that produced them: The Wonderstate Colombia Sierra Morena Pink Bourbon (95) is a traditional washed-process Colombia, and the Speckled Ax Ethiopia Dame Dabaye (94) a traditional washed Ethiopia. Local tree variety may contribute to the success of MK Coffee’s Juru Rwanda Rulindo Red Bourbon Honey (94), though the honey processing method is atypical for a Rwanda.

Stay tuned, but it appears that the expectation that we can make consistent associations between coffee origin and coffee cup character continues to erode as ambitious farmers all over the world tinker with tree variety (e.g., Geisha) and processing method.

Roast Color and Espresso

Traditionally, Italian practice is to roast for espresso to around what Americans might call a darkish medium roast. However, when a taste for espresso drinks and European-style cafés first developed in the U.S. in the 1980s, roasters went really dark for espresso brewing. They aggressively dark-roasted high-grown Central America or Colombia coffees, producing intense, bitter coffees that required the softening, buffering impact of hot frothed milk to render them drinkable. Later, many American specialty roasters migrated toward something more like the original Italian tradition: moderately dark- to medium-dark.

Today, of course, on the leading edge of the U.S. specialty coffee scene, taste in roast style has completely flipped, regardless of brewing method. Rather than everything dark, as was the case 20 years ago, today virtually everything is light. Sometimes very light, regardless of intended brewing method.

Of the seven U.S. coffees reviewed this month, six are light-roasted. Only one, the Speckled Ax Ethiopia, was roasted modestly darker, to a little past second crack, classifying it as a moderately dark roast. The six coffees from Taiwan roasters were a bit darker roasted than the U.S. samples, tending toward medium or medium-dark, though none could be called outright dark roasted.

Omni Roasts and Acidity

Most of this month’s coffees probably qualify as what some in the coffee world call omni roasts—roasts that the roaster feels will do well when subjected to almost any brewing method.

This practice—one roast for all brewing methods—has a practical advantage for coffee sellers, of course. Fewer products, a more compact inventory, and perhaps simpler communication. The increased technical sophistication available today in managing roast, facilitated by computer control and monitoring, may help roasters apply roasting practices that tend to round sharpness and soften and integrate acidity in lighter roasts, making them more espresso-friendly.

The potentially bright, aggressive acidity characteristic of high-grown, light-roasted coffees has always presented a problem for espresso brewing. Some years ago, when the practice of pulling espresso from such bright, lighter-roasted coffees took off, I recall tasting some rather imbalanced espressos. Although we still run into an occasional rather sharply acidy single-origin espresso at Coffee Review, our tasting for this month suggests that roasters are becoming increasingly skillful at sourcing and light-roasting single-origins for all-purpose brewing, and, by implication, for espresso.

Acid-Reducing Anaerobics

The fact that there were so many anaerobic-fermented coffees among the espressos we tasted this month may have helped the acidity-reducing cause. Anaerobic processing tends to reduce or soften acidity, often replacing it with a backgrounded lactic tang, while encouraging a sweetness that helps balance any bitter edge to the acidity.

Single-Origin Espressos in the Café

When we decided on this month’s topic, we were a little afraid that single-origin espressos had had their day and were on their way out of fashion.

Perhaps. However, we received a reassuringly large number of submissions for this topic.

Roasters who sent us top-rated coffees and with whom we subsequently corresponded were largely divided about the value of single-origin espressos in their cafés. Generally, Taiwan roasters were more positive than were North American roasters, and for good reason, given brewing espresso at home appears more popular in Taiwan than in the U.S. Mark Shi of Taiwan’s MK Coffee reports: “Since Taiwanese cafes banned on-site drinking during the Covid-19 pandemic and most customers were working from home, I found that many people who drank coffee every day bought automatic espresso machines at that time, so for the beans suitable for espresso (including blended beans and single-origin beans), the demand is trending higher and higher.”

Arthur Chen of Taiwan’s Balmy Day Coffee Office (Ethiopia Anaerobic Washed G1 Wild Rose S.O. Sidamo, 94), offers an extended recommendation for how roasting for espresso should be conducted (slowly), concluding that single-origin espressos “… should be like a taste bomb, allowing the flavor of the coffee to be concentrated and focused, so that the single-origin coffee flavor can bloom in the mouth like fireworks.”

American Single-Origin Skeptics

A generally more skeptical attitude among American roasters regarding single-origin espressos is voiced by Old Soul Coffee’s Jason Griest (El Salvador Finca Loma La Gloria Natural Process “Unicorn Lot”, 94). Jason writes, “Single origin espressos can be fun, but we find a ‘good’ one elusive to find and so, rarely have one on the bar at our shops.” Jason echoes the position of many North American roasters, who feel that an espresso coffee needs to be versatile above all: “Our main espresso blend called The Remedy is made up of three components, designed to complement each other in terms of body, acidity and sweet/bitter notes that can be enjoyed both as a straight shot and with milk.” Lee Paterson of Hawaii’s Hula Daddy (Kona Espresso Special Selection, 94) points out that “Since most of our sales are to North America, where drip coffee is king, espressos are a small part of our business.”

Anny Ruth Pimentel’s Finca Loma La Gloria in El Salvador. Courtesy of Jason Griest.

Tim Coonan of Big Shoulders Coffee (Marcela Gesha Espresso, 95) takes a more encouraging middle-ground position: “Our S.O. espresso program serves three purposes. These are coffees that are challenging for roasters and baristas alike. So it’s educational for us. We find these are appreciated by those regular customers who are looking for an opportunity to both learn more about coffee and also [are] willing to explore some boundaries in the process. These are customers who also enjoy their espresso solo, not with milk.”

American Single-Origin Enthusiasts

Taking a wholehearted pro-single-origin position are Bryan and Beth Brzozowski of Royal Flamingo Coffee (Colombia Red Fruits Campo Hermosa Edwin Noreña, 94), who are planning to extend their successful e-commerce and wholesale business to a brick-and-mortar café this year. They write, “Single-origin espresso is something we’ve become known for in our coffee community and has played a major role in our e-commerce and wholesale growth. When we open our café next month, we’ll be leaning hard on single-origin espresso. … For example, we’re planning to have a few options on the menu where customers can order a drip and a shot of single-origin espresso comes alongside (a pair we are calling the Barista’s Boilermaker).”

Wilson Alva of Finca Sierra Morena, producer of Wonderstate Coffee’s Colombia Sierra Morena Pink Bourbon. Courtesy of The Coffee Quest.

Summing up the pro-single-origin side is Caleb Nicholes of Wonderstate Coffee: “We believe that single-origin espressos have a distinct and important role in specialty coffee. In all of our café locations, we offer both a single-origin espresso, which is roasted lighter, as well as a deeper roasted blend. Having a lighter-roasted espresso option gives us the opportunity to introduce our customers to a very light-roasted espresso experience that is very much reflective of a coffee’s variety, micro-climate and processing style. While brighter, more fruit-driven and aromatic espressos can be jarring for some coffee consumers, it is an excellent way to expand perceptions around what espresso can be. We love to surprise our customers with something they have never tasted before, and single-origin espresso is one of the best ways we have found to do that.”

Single-Origin Espressos at Home

Of course, café owners need to please nearly everyone who comes in the door. Consumers only need to please themselves—or at most their families and guests. So perhaps the single-origin espresso game, with its potential for coffee exploration and sensory revelation (along with its risk for temporary disappointment) is best played by consumers at home. If so, we feel that the coffees we review this month offer an excellent and diverse starting point.

John DiRuocco Reflects on the Tasting

John writes: “Roasters from all over the world submitted their finest offerings from familiar to exotic. It was an exciting challenge to describe and evaluate these coffees. The vast assortment of processes and varieties translated to a thrill ride of aroma, acidity, and fruit. As a roaster based in Italian coffee tradition, our approach to espresso at Mr. Espresso is based on the idea of balance and roundness, something that can be enjoyed several times a day, every day. What set the best of the coffees we tasted apart for me were not only flavor profiles that contained explosive fruits, intricate floral flavors, and intense acidity, but those that were balanced by a pronounced sweetness and round body to create a memorable espresso experience.”

Thanks to the roasters who greatly enriched this report by sharing their ideas and experience regarding single-origin espresso coffees: Matt Bolinder, Speckled Ax Coffee; Bryan and Beth Brzozowski, Royal Flamingo Coffee; Chris Chao, AOI Coffee Roaster; Arthur Chen, Balmy Day Coffee Office; Tim Coonan, Big Shoulders Coffee; Jason Griest, Old Soul Coffee Co.; Albert Hsu, OLI Cafe; Miguel Meza, Paradise Coffee; Caleb Nicholes, Wonderstate Coffee; Lee Paterson, Hula Daddy Kona Coffee; Mark Shi, MK Coffee Roasters; May Wang, Euphora Coffee; Zhou Tzuchiang, Bargain Cafe.

The post Single-Origin Espressos: Anaerobics Crash the Party appeared first on Coffee Review.

A closeup view of a barista pulling an espresso shot.

Each year, the Coffee Review team publishes an espresso report, for which we invite roasters to submit coffees on a specific theme. In typical years, we partner with an independent lab or roaster here in the San Francisco Bay Area and taste the espressos with at least one outside cupper and a barista or two dialing in and pulling shot after shot. But this year is certainly not typical. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to skip last year’s espresso report altogether, and while we’re slowly getting back to in-person tasting in our own lab (after more than a year of remote work), we aren’t quite ready to collaborate more broadly. So, my colleague Jason Sarley and I pulled up our bootstraps and methodically evaluated in our own lab the 58 submissions we received — 29 from U.S. roasters and 29 from roasters in Taiwan. (The even split is a complete coincidence.)

Pulling shots at MK Coffee Roasters in Taipei. Courtesy of MK Coffee.

Classic Darker-Roasted Espresso Blends

This year’s theme? Classic darker-roasted espresso blends. We review 12 coffees here, six from U.S. roasters and six from Taiwan, ranging in score from 91-96. The coffees from Taiwan averaged higher scores (for reasons that are not altogether clear), but rather than approach the report as an East/West battle of the shots, we decided to dig deeper into cultural questions about blend traditions, roasting styles, and what constitutes a “classic dark roast” for individual roasters.

Roaster Camilla Yuan, of Temple Coffee in Sacramento. Courtesy of Temple Coffee.

But first, a note about our own sense of what “classic” and “dark roast” mean when it comes to espresso blends. When we decided to explore this topic, we agreed, as usual, not to let our preconceptions get in the way of simply assessing each coffee on its own merit. But, of course, we do have certain preconceptions. A case in point is how we define roast levels. We use an instrument called an Agtron spectrophotometer to objectively quantify the roast level of each coffee we review. (There are other devices for measuring roast level, but our M-Basic Agtron machine has been our reliable go-to for many years.) This instrument gives us numbers that are associated with the degree of development of the bean, or roast “color.” The lower the number, the darker and more developed the roast. We take two readings with our Agtron machine, one of the whole beans, and one of the beans after they have been ground. The ground reading is always higher in number (lighter in roast) than the whole-bean number because the interior of the bean is less roasted than the exterior. These two numbers appear in the “Agtron” field in our reviews. (For more information on Agtron numbers and roast color terminology, see our table of roast definitions.)

What Does “Darker-Roasted” Mean?

Reading Agtron numbers gives us a lot of information about how any given coffee was roasted, but in terms of defining level of “darkness,” which we were especially interested in for this report, we focused on the whole-bean number. Extremely dark-roasted coffees might have a whole-bean Agtron reading as low as 25-30, but frankly, these are almost always coffees whose original green character has been largely obliterated in the roasting process. At the opposite end of the scale, lighter-roasted coffees designed for drip brewing typically generate whole-bean Agtron numbers in the mid 50s to low 60s.

Roast colors. The three samples on the lower right represent three categories of roast development referenced in the report: light end of medium (directly on right, 3 o’clock), dark end of medium (lower left, around 8 o’clock), and dark (lower right, around 5 o’clock).

Our own sense of where “darker” begins on the whole-bean M-Basic roast-level spectrum is somewhere around Agtron 47 or 48. And this isn’t a random value we’ve assigned, but rather a number that we’ve identified, over many years, as the approximate point at which the impact of the roast begins to explicitly influence the sensory character of the bean. Some words we use to describe this impact are “roast-rounded” at the lighter end of the darker-roast spectrum, “roasty” at a darker, “smoky” at a still darker. These sensory shifts start to happen around “second crack” — when the heat from the roasting process begins to break down the cellular structure of the coffee bean and the oils start to emerge from its interior. This is, roughly speaking, somewhere around whole-bean Agtron numbers 45-50 for most coffees, so it stands to reason that this is the roast level at which we begin to detect the influence of singeing or scorching on flavor and structure, as well as the intensification of various aromatic consequences of sugar-browning, such as caramel, toast, nuts and chocolate.

But again, we wanted to let roasters determine what they consider to be “darker-roasted” espresso blends in their own diverse lexicons — this is, after all, a relative concept.

What Is A “Classic” Espresso Blend?

The “classic” category is equally subjective. We turned up essentially two responses to our call for “classic” darker-roasted espresso blends: Some roasters sent in their versions of Italian-American style espresso blends, what many espresso-lovers think of as “classic” espresso: bold, darker-roasted, chocolaty-sweet blends that maintain their presence well in milk. Others submitted what might be considered “classic” third-wave espressos, which tend to be lighter-roasted and more fruit-driven. See below for high-scoring roasters’ thoughts on what “classic” means to lovers of their coffees.

Latte art at Per’La Specialty Roasters in Miami, Florida. Courtesy of Per’La.

Milk, Glorious Milk

Milk figures prominently in the narrative of espresso. When we test espressos, we evaluate them in the following categories: aroma, body, flavor, aftertaste, and with milk. Our basic recipe, which we use as a way of standardizing our evaluation process, is 18 grams of ground coffee in, 32 grams of brewed coffee out, over approximately 26 seconds (not counting pre-infusion), with an extraction temperature of roughly 198°F. Our milk of choice is Clover organic whole milk, a Bay Area brand. For the “with milk” category we test a fresh shot of the sample coffee combined with three parts milk that has been heated with the steam wand but not frothed.

We test all espressos, at any roast level, with milk, but the milk category is especially important with darker-roasted espressos. Per’la co-founder Paul Massard, whose Espresso Fino is featured this month, says the milk contribution is paramount for many of his customers: “We have found that, although specialty coffee puts a lot of emphasis on the espresso shot, most consumers are going to have it with milk as a cortado, cappuccino or [caffè] latte.” Many of the other roasters we spoke with echoed this sentiment, in particular the Taiwan-based roasters, who all agreed that the milk shot was the most essential aspect of nailing a good darker-roasted espresso blend, given that the vast majority of their customers take their espresso in a with-milk format. Unlike countries that have a strong straight-espresso culture, like Italy and Australia, both the U.S. and Taiwan (the two regions where all of the submissions for this were report were roasted) lean more toward milk-based espresso drinks.

Of course, as we know, many coffee bars offer all manner of milk substitutes, a fascinating subject, but one that we don’t have the bandwidth to address here.

Art of Darkness

Surprisingly to us, several of the darkest-roasted blends we tested earned some of this report’s highest scores. We were surprised because the high-end specialty coffees we usually feature skew lighter in roast (see below for more details). But there are some roasters out there who’ve perfected the art of darkness, if you will.

Top of mind is Simon Hsieh, of Taiwan’s Simon Hsieh Aroma Roast Coffees. As a green importer and a roaster, Hsieh is widely admired for his mastery of dark-roasting practices. And he has unabashedly embraced a darker style across his entire line of coffees, all designed for espresso. His “Bull Demon King” blend submitted for this report earned 96 points, knocking it out of the park with rich chocolate notes, smoky depth, and lyrically sweet florality — the milk shot earned a category score of 10 with its decadent perfection: layers of undulating chocolate, wisteria and scorched sugarcane notes lasting far into the long finish.

Of this coffee, Hsieh says, “Dark roasts require high-quality green coffees to withstand the extra high temperatures and significant flavors to survive.  A great dark roast blend is sweet but not so bitter, low-toned yet lingering and comforting.”

Simon Hsieh, of Taiwan-based Simon Hsieh Aroma Roast Coffees, has dedicated his coffee career to refining the art of dark-roasting. Courtesy of Simon Hsieh.

What makes it “classic”? Hsieh says it’s all about the basic blend logic: 3/4 clean, washed coffees plus 1/4 natural-processed coffees. He feels that this ratio enhances body, crema and structure, while not letting natural coffee character dominate in the demitasse. He also recommends a spoonful of sugar stirred into the shot, as many Italians do, or a piece of bittersweet chocolate alongside. This is an old-school practice that he would love to see return in contemporary cafés.

Hsieh’s Bull Demon King has a whole-bean Agtron of 35. We review two additional coffees (both from Taiwan), both rated 94, with whole-bean Agtrons of 36 and 39. All three occupy a roast range at the cusp of what we identify as “medium dark” and “dark.” Coffee Please’s “Chocolate Lover’s Espresso” (94) is aptly named with its throughline of chocolate fudge alongside pistachio, gardenia, scorched mesquite and molasses notes. And MK Coffee Roasters’ Classic MK Blend (94) is elegantly harmonious with delicate chocolate and warm, dusky spice tones throughout.

It’s important to note that we tested coffees with still lower Agtron readings than the three samples noted above, but these even darker samples (whole-bean Agtron readings below 35) generally tended to be sharply bittersweet and burnt.

Best of Both Worlds: Medium- to Medium-Dark Roasts

Coffees roasted toward the dark end of medium, which we define as having whole-bean Agtrons in the high 40s, may or may not display detectable roast character, but if done well, always preserve the fruit and floral notes inherent in the green coffee. We review six such coffees here, and they each, whether low-toned or high-toned, manage to present an expressive range of sensory experiences.

Paradise Roasters’ Espresso Nuevo (93) was developed 15 years ago by Paradise owner Miguel Meza as a follow-up to his Italian-style Espresso Classico. Miguel calls it his “new-wave, Seattle-style blend.” Now the company’s bestselling blend, Espresso Nuevo “was designed for larger milk-based drinks for wholesale clients,” says Meza. He adds, “In recent year’s iterations, we’ve used aged coffees that we feel help to create a heavier mouthfeel and push through milk well without needing to roast too dark and increase bitterness or lose other desirable flavors. While this blends construction has evolved over time, it has always remained a darker-roast style with excellent performance in milk beverages as its focus.”

In the roastery at Peach Coffee in Johns Creek, Georgia. Courtesy of Peach Coffee Roasters.

Coming in with scores of 91 and 92 were blends from four U.S. roasters and one based in Taiwan: Peach Coffee’s Red Clay (92); Temple Coffee’s Dharma Blend (92); Toca Coffee’s Amasia Blend (91); Durango Coffee’s Durango Espresso (91); and Taiwan-based Tribo Coffee’s Campfire Blend (91). (Click on the review link at the end of the report for full details.)

Carl Rand, of Durango Coffee, and farmer Ronaldo Azzi, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where a key component of the Durango Espresso blend is sourced. Courtesy of Durango Coffee.

Happy Medium: Lighter But Developed

The lightest-roasted coffees we considered for the theme of “darker-roasted” displayed whole-bean Agtrons in the low 50s, putting them at the light end of medium. Why did we allow such uncompromising medium roasts into a conversation about “darker-roasted” espresso blends? Because the trend in specialty coffee for some time now is to roast lighter, whether for batch brew, pourover, or espresso applications. Many of the espressos we regularly receive for blind review display Agtrons in the mid-50s. (These numbers are a slightly darker departure from third-wave roasters’ average Agtrons for non-espresso submissions, which hover in the high 50s to low 60s.) It seemed only fair to allow “darker” its own relativity, given that we test many high-performing espressos with Agtron readings in the medium or medium-light range.

Kakalove’s staff celebrating their Golden Parrot Espresso Blend. Courtesy of Kakalove Cafe.

The highest-scoring lighter roast we tested for this report was Taiwan-based Kakalove Café’s Golden Parrot Blend (95), a blend of washed Guatemala, washed Colombia, and natural Ethiopia that is especially fruit- and floral-driven. Kakalove owner Caesar Tu says of his Golden Parrot Blend, “The roast level is not as dark as a traditional Italian espresso. I would like to preserve berry tones from the natural Ethiopia and give the roast more development time to increase its sweetness. It will suit most people in the straight shot or as cappuccino. I think it’s ‘classic’ in terms of its friendliness as a daily coffee.”

Two other espresso blends whose Agtron values landed on the light end of the medium range were Queen Coffee’s submission (94), which highlights citrus and pipe tobacco notes, and Per’La’s Espresso Fino (92), whose straight shot displays dried apricot, cocoa powder, fresh-cut cedar, almond and magnolia.

Massard, of Per’La, acknowledges that “not many coffee consumers appreciate an espresso shot that tastes like hot grapefruit juice,” suggesting that a coffee can be brought to a medium roast that preserves fruit without shocking the palate with high acidity.

If there’s a takeaway here, perhaps it’s that tactful roasting can preserve a fairly wide range of sensory nuance in espressos even at “darker” roast levels, while medium-roasted espressos can maintain their fruit and florals without being sharply acidic. And, of course, that in today’s world of espresso, “classic” is in the eye of the beholder.

The post Darker-Roasted Espresso Blends: Variations On A Classic Theme appeared first on Coffee Review.

Because of the number of coffees we received, we had to break the report into two parts: U.S. roasters in June and roasters from Taiwan in this month’s report. In the June report on classic espresso blends from U.S. roasters, two themes emerged as definitions of classic: Some roasters viewed the call as an opportunity to submit traditional Italian-style espresso blends that are accessible, chocolate-leaning and relatively uncomplicated, while others offered more “third wave” blend expressions tending toward brightness and complex intensity.

Last month, as now, we tested all coffees blind without regard for our own pre-conceptions of classic, evaluating each espresso by way of Coffee Review’s tasting system based on five sensory categories — aroma, mouthfeel, flavor, aftertaste, and performance in milk — and only later sorted out why a roaster submitted a given sample as an example of a “classic” espresso blend.

Our co-taster for the coffees from Taiwan roasters was Israel (Izzy) Fraire, director of operations at Bay Area CoRoasters (CoRo), a groundbreaking space for new specialty roasters that offers a collaborative roasting facility with affordable access to high-end equipment, as well as education and community-building. Together, Izzy and I tested the 15 espressos that had made it through our initial screening of the 46 that we received from roasters in Taiwan. Our barista was Coffee Review’s Jason Sarley, who pulled shots roughly within these parameters: 19 grams in, 38 grams out, over 27-28 seconds.

The Five Top-Scoring Espresso Blends

Of the 15 finalists we tested, the five we review here scored between 92 and 93; the remaining 10 scored between 85 and 89. Because each of these espresso blends approaches the notion of “classic” in an entirely different way, it’s really not possible to group them around coherent themes, so we’ll approach each as a unique expression. After all, that’s what blending is about — putting your own stamp as a roaster on a composition of carefully selected coffees.

The Closest We Got to Traditional Italian-Style “Classic”

Kakalove Café’s Caesar Tu is a coffee-industry veteran, having founded his own highly regarded roastery in 2013. While Tu works across a variety of eclectic coffee styles, he interpreted the call for classic espressos as referring to traditional Italian-style blends, so he submitted a moderately darker-roasted blend of washed coffees from Colombia, Guatemala and Ethiopia, which scored 93. Tu says that, for him, “Classic espresso means a coffee that doesn’t have a leading role; it’s just a base for cappuccino and latte. It should have an old soul, link relationships, and be comfortable to drink with friends or family, casually, without thinking too much about it.” His Black Meow Blend — bittersweet, chocolaty, and delicately roast-toned — is, playfully, named after his cat who hangs around the roastery. For Tu, this coffee is a good choice for people who want something inexpensive and perhaps an espresso to enjoy with sugar or brandy.

Ethiopia Blue Donkey coffee, a component in Kakalove Cafe’s Black Meow Blend. Photo courtesy of Caesar Tu.

A Classic By Any Other Name Would Be … New Wave

The remaining four coffees we review here are unique blends — not “classic” in any traditional sense, but certainly working toward coffee styles that these talented roasters hope will have lasting presence in the 21st century.

L2 LOVE Espresso Blend by DoDo Kaffa. Photo courtesy of Amanda Liao.

Taipei roaster Amanda Liao of DoDo Kaffa blended two coffees from different growing regions in Kenya (Nyeri and Kiambu) for her sweetly savory, spice-toned L2 Love Espresso Blend (93). This is a coffee that would be equally lovely prepared for brewed applications, and certainly a “classic” in regard to its celebrated origin and style (old-school Kenya).

Roasting at Dory Coffee Roasters in Taipei, Taiwan. Photo courtesy of Dory Coffee Roasters.

Dory Coffee Roasters’ Guatemala-Ethiopia Espresso Blend (93) combines both washed and natural-process Ethiopia coffees and a washed Guatemala to achieve a bright, floral, and sweetly herb-toned espresso shot, notes that persist nicely into the milk.

The roasting room at Small Eyes Cafe in Yilan, Taiwan. Photo courtesy of Sheng Hsu Chuang.

Sheng Hsu Chuang, also known as Tom Chuang, sent us what is perhaps the most avant-garde of the 46 coffees we tested, starting with the blend’s name: Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun. That’s not a typo; the repetition represents the nine different coffees (from Ethiopia, Panama, Guatemala and Honduras, all natural-processed) that went into this 93-rated blend. It is a fruit-bomb extraordinaire, more appealing in the straight shot than in milk with its deep, dessert-like fruit, candy, and rich floral notes.

Shih Hong Lin roasting at De Clieu Coffee Roasters. Photo courtesy of De Clieu Coffee Roasters.

De Clieu Coffee’s Karibu Espresso Blend (92) combines three natural-processed Ethiopia coffees with a washed Panama for an interesting sensory juxtaposition of sweet-tart fruit and spicy aromatic wood notes, a study in (integrated) contrasts.

A Six-Degrees-of-Separation Twist

Two of the roasters whose coffees we feature here, Jason Yu of Dory Coffee Roasters and Chi Hong Lin of De Clieu Coffee, happen to be students of roaster Kelly Wang of Greenstone Coffee, someone whose coffees we’ve reviewed for several years. We learned about these relationships by coincidence when corresponding with Wang after both Yu and Lin had reported to her the success of their blends in this month’s testing. Wang was a specialty coffee roaster without plans to teach, but when a coffee she roasted received a 95-point score from us here at Coffee Review (a washed Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Banko Gotiti), she was invited to collaborate with Cultural University in Taipei to lead a roasting course. Lin was Wang’s very first roasting student in 2017; she met Yu in 2018 and has been working with him one-on-one. Wang has kept up with both roasters and their progress, and she has gone on to teach 11 courses and more than 70 beginning roasters the craft.

Wang also offered some thoughts about how “classic” espresso might be interpreted by various kinds of roasters in Taiwan. She says, “Both Jason and Chi Hong are third-wave roasters. Young people here can accept espresso with some acidity and fruit tone — so many creative espressos can be popular if baristas can promote the concept to more customers.” She goes on to say that “older-style” roasters think of “classic espresso” as dark-roasted and bittersweet, hopefully with some chocolate notes. But she adds that, “Young roasters don’t like this style. They prefer lighter-roasted, fruitier coffees, both in the straight shot and in milk.”

Caesar Tu, of Kakalove Café, surmises that many younger roasters in Taiwan, or those new to the coffee industry, might have interpreted “classic” to mean their own favorite and most creative blends. He also attributes this interpretation to a language barrier; our communication with roasters in Taiwan can be difficult in regard to precise meanings. (Let’s just say that their English is infinitely better than our Mandarin.) Tu goes on to say that the Taiwanese, in general, are attracted to new experiences, so most serious specialty roasters are going for experimentation and innovation.

There Is No Conclusion

Sometimes, an inquiry raises more questions than answers, and this month’s report is a coffee case-in-point. One question is why we received 46 samples from Asia and all are from Taiwan.  It may be as simple as the fact that Coffee Review’s presence may be more established in Taiwan than in other Asian regions. Our ‘Coffees from Taiwan’ [台灣送評的咖啡豆] page  displays almost 400 reviews of fine coffees from Taiwanese roasters, considerably more than the number of reviews we display from other East Asian countries. And, despite an obvious language barrier, Taiwan has more Coffee Review readers than any other non-English speaking country. Of course, we would like to have an opportunity to review more coffees from other East Asian countries; in fact, more coffees from wherever in the world we have readers. But we also hope to facilitate even greater engagement with the coffee community in Taiwan and beyond by looking for ways to expand the amount of Coffee Review content available in Mandarin.

But for now, one thing is clear: The roasters from Taiwan whose coffees we tested for this report are obsessed with experimentation and unique blending concepts, and their creativity has resulted in a number of exciting, original espresso blends. Whether they are “classic” or not is also a question we decided we needn’t answer. These thoughtful artisanal coffee experiences are well worth seeking out, regardless of antecedent or tradition.

The post Exploring “Classic” Espresso Blends: Taiwan Roasters appeared first on Coffee Review.

What is clear is that good blending has always been a genuine art, and this year we decided to visit the notion of “classic” espresso blends. Of course, as soon as the word “classic” is uttered, controversy ensues. Instead of using the term in any prescriptive way, we decided to let roasters define it. We simply asked for “classic espresso blends” and left the interpretation open to the roasters.

What we got was a range of blends roasted for espresso, from Italian-style recipes to those described as “fourth wave.” We received 54 samples from roasters based in North America and 46 from roasters based in Asia, almost all from Taiwan.

Italy: Where Espresso Was Born

Tasting espressos, both in the straight shot and in milk, at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab and Tasting Room. Photo by Evan Gilman.

In Italy, where espresso was born, the straight shot of pressure-brewed coffee is quotidiana: everyday, inevitable. In fact, while ordering a milk-based espresso drink is fine during the morning hours, doing so in the afternoon — or, God forbid, the evening — will guarantee you more than one sideways glance and peg you as a tourist a presto.

The Challenging Practicalities

Even though we limited submissions to one per roaster, we received exactly 100 samples, far too many to test with this year’s lab partner, The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room in Oakland, California. We decided to rather arbitrarily divide the samples into two groups, one consisting of coffees roasted in North America and another of coffees roasted in Asia. This decision provided almost perfect symmetry in terms of sample numbers but also may end by suggesting some hypotheses about the culture of espresso in the two regions. (This report will cover only coffees submitted by North American roasters, while the Asia Classic Espresso report will come out next month.)

Barista Elise Becker, of The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab and Tasting Room, at work.
Photo by Evan Gilman.

My co-taster for the North American espresso samples was Evan Gilman, a Licensed Arabica Q-grader, musician, coffee-lover, and self-described avid generalist. He was also a most agreeable tasting partner: attentive, precise, and broadly conversational. We spent two days together with barista Ruthie Knudsen on day one and Elise Becker on day two, both talented baristas at The Crown, assisted by Coffee Review’s Jason Sarley, also a Licensed Arabica Q-Grader and multifaceted coffee pro.

Before we could set up shop for this event at The Crown, we still needed to whittle down the group of 54 coffees to a number we knew we could manage in two days. So, Jason and I spent a full week screening all the samples and ending up with 20 finalists to take to our tasting with Evan and crew.

Two Classic Italian Espresso Blends, as Interpreted by Their Roasters

While espresso as a brewing method continues to evolve, it is still based on technologies developed in Italy late in the last century. The machine we used at The Crown is a La Marzocco Linea PB, and Jason (our resident shot-puller) discussed with Ruthie and Elise our typical parameters: 19 grams in, 38 grams out over 27-28 seconds, while suggesting that the day’s barista had license to tweak that formula, as necessary. While this protocol might not be optimal for each and every coffee, it ensures consistency, and that’s important for fairness. We also taste blind, of course, just as we do when reviewing coffees year-round.

Ruthie Knudsen, a barista at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab and Tasting Room. Photo by Kim Westerman

But what about describing and evaluating the coffees selected for tasting following this protocol? Here is where it gets interesting, and the sensory experience of these coffees was the domain of my tasting with Evan.

We review here seven coffees that scored 93 and 94. Six additional coffees scored 90-91 (none scored 92), and seven others scored between 86 and 89. Not too shabby when you go to consider all the challenges that come into play when developing an espresso blend.

We assumed that many roasters would approach the call for “classic” submissions in terms of traditional Italian blending concepts. Generally speaking, this might mean a large percentage of dry-process coffees from Brazil (the sweetly nutty style of natural, not the fruit-forward type), along with a percentage of Colombia to encourage chocolate notes and perhaps an El Salvador or Guatemala to add nuance and balance  acidity. The blend that pretty much nails that formula is Dragonfly Coffee’s Crema de Dolce Espresso (the name obviously paying homage to its lineage), which we rated at 93. Of this blend, owner and roaster Tamas Christman says, “For me, a classic (specifically northern Italian-style) espresso is characterized by balance and texture. Traditionally, acidity or brightness was not a sought-after component in the espresso profile. Sweetness, body and a slight astringency are the goals. Crema Dolce has been designed to emphasize sweetness and body, with a slight drying on the finish, and not focus on acidity, in honor of this traditional style. It highlights dark cherry, brown sugar, caramel and chocolate, with subtle nuances of soft florals and a velvety-smooth texture across the entire mouthfeel.”

Dragonfly Coffee’s Crema de Dolce Italian-style espresso blend. Courtesy of Dragonfly Coffee Roasters.

Italy is also historically known for including coffees of the Robusta species in espresso blends. Robusta has a bad rap in the North-American specialty world, where it is almost universally associated with cheap supermarket blends. But does it always deserve this reputation?

Here, we have Paradise Roaster’s Espresso Classico (also rated 93), which utilizes Arabica coffees from Brazil and super-clean wet-processed Robustas meticulously sourced from Ecuador by innovative green-buyer Miguel Meza, whose mission it is to find quality microlot coffees from emerging origins. Meza says, “This Classico blend was actually the first coffee I ever sent from Paradise to Coffee Review back in 2004. That coffee also scored 93 points, which was, at the time, the highest score an espresso blend had received and really what helped launch our then-nascent company. Structurally, it isn’t much different today than it was then. It has always included a base of Brazilian coffees alongside washed Robustas.”

The Dragonfly is balanced and richly bittersweet, while the Paradise is cocoa-toned and sweetly tart, and both seemed to me and Evan simultaneously like the most “classic” of the lot in terms of the Italian model. We’d be happy to encounter either of these on the nearest piazza.

So, what other coffees rose to the top in our tasting, and how might these coffees fit into a definition of “classic” espresso?

History Is Not Destiny

At least two espresso blends here include natural-processed coffees of the fashionable fruit-centered style, including Red Rooster’s Old Crow Cupa Joe (93), which combines both washed and natural-processed coffees from Central and South America for a chocolaty, overtly fruit-driven espresso. Roaster Tony Greatorex says the popular blend is designed to have medium acidity and that he pays close attention to the Maillard development phase, which he measures as the beginning of color change (around 300 degrees) to first crack (around 380).  He says, “I’ve found that extending this period accentuates body and creates a mellow, rounded flavor profile, along with a smooth mouthfeel.”

Red Rooster’s Old Crow Cuppa Joe on the bar at the Floyd, Virginia coffee shop. Photo by Tony Greatorex.

“Classic” for Martin Trejo of Amavida Coffee Roasters, whose Espresso Mandarina scored 94, means “persistent crema, heavy body and plenty of sweetness to hold up in milk,” and the Mandarina  delivers on this goal via a post-roast-blending strategy. Trejo says “I roast a washed Congo and natural Ethiopia separately so I can focus on developing each coffee’s distinct profile before blending. This allows me to roast the Congo a little longer than the Ethiopia and focus on bringing out its sweetness to balance the espresso.”

Members of the Congo Muungano Co-op, where one component of Amavida’s Mandarina blend is produced. Courtesy of Martin Trejo.

Folly Coffee’s SOB Espresso (which Rob Bathe assures me stands for Single-Origin Blend; 94) uses a mélange roasting strategy, which involves bringing an identical coffee (or blend of coffees) to two different degrees of roast before blending them.  The SOB Espresso is a seasonally rotating selection, and this version is comprised of coffees from a variety of smallholder farms in Colombia. Bathe says he aims to “bring forward tasting notes of rich, bold, dark chocolate, with a depth of flavor and enough acidity to balance.” He also acknowledges that “classic” can imply “overwhelming notes of bitter and burnt aromas and flavors.” While some percentage of this blend is darker-roasted, he deftly avoids those negatives in favor of fudge-like chocolate notes and deep florals.

Folly Coffee Roasters’ SOB Espresso Blend. Courtesy of Rob Bathe.

Propeller Ace Espresso (93), roasted in Toronto, Canada, is no stranger to Coffee Review’s virtual pages. We first reviewed a version of this blend in 2014, and it has consistently scored 93 or 94. This year’s blend is caramel-toned and chocolaty, with stone fruit notes and rich nut-butter tones. Evan pegged this coffee a “new-wave classic” espresso for its high-toned balance and success in presenting a big, prominent fruit character that is integrated rather than disorienting in both straight shot and milk.

Pulling a shot of Propeller’s Ace Espresso. Courtesy of Propeller Coffee.

Our mutual favorite may have been Highwire’s The Core (94), and Evan and I were both thrilled to discover that this blind-tested winner was also a local coffee for us, roasted just down the street in Emeryville, California. A transparently sourced blend of coffees from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea (PNG), and Sumatra (all conventionally wet-processed except for the wet-hulled Sumatra), this coffee intrigued us both with its notes of richly tart tangerine zest, earthy-sweet pipe tobacco, and lavish honeysuckle, all enveloped in clear dark chocolate tones. Founder Rich Avella replaces the Robusta in traditional Italian formulas with Sumatra, suggesting that the Lintong coffee in The Core gives “rustic” ballast to the “floral, citric” brightness of the Ethiopia and elegant cocoa of the Guatemala. He sees the PNG as a harmonizing bridge.

Highwire’s The Core Espresso. Courtesy of Highwire Coffee.

Avella says, “Our aim is to create an espresso with expressive, high-end heft, balance and complexity through the skills of sourcing, blending, and roasting. What makes The Core classic first is that it’s a blend. It’s not a single-origin expression of one farm. That can be amazing, too, but we’re excited by the chance to create a coffee that doesn’t already exist through thoughtful blending. To me, classic espresso has depth and tension between brightness and syrupy heft and between bitter and sweet. For a classic espresso to interest me, it also has to have sweetness and juiciness.”

In Closing, A New Definition of Style?

I’m not sure how close we’ve come to defining “classic” espresso, but it has been fun trying. Thanks to the roasters who not only sent in interesting coffees but also took the time to articulate their thought processes when approaching the notion of “classic.”

There’s much talk in the specialty coffee industry about “waves,” second and third, and we’re starting to hear buzz about the “fourth wave,” which we are, perhaps, already wading into. I’ll leave you with a thought from Folly Coffee’s Bathe, who mused on this particular time in coffee history.

He says, “To me, third wave is all about getting the most intense, unique, crazy (in a good way) flavors to come out of specialty coffees as a reaction to the simple and homogeneous flavor profiles found in the second wave. In the fourth wave, there is a bit of a swing-back, and we’re asking how we can create these flavors while keeping balance and harmony to create a more enjoyable cup, not just a unique sip.”

This is as good a definition of the “new classic” as I’ve heard, and all of the coffees represented here fit that model in one way or other.

Stay tuned for the July report on “classic espressos” roasted in Asia.

About Co-Taster Evan Gilman, Creative Director at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room.

Evan Gilman’s 17 years in the coffee industry have taken him from barista to trainer to Q-Arabica Grader and SCA-Licensed AST. Evan spent time in Southeast Asia getting to know the specialty coffee supply chain, from Sumatra, Bali, Flores, and Sulawesi in Indonesia, to Northern Luzon in the Philippines. His passions range from Balinese gamelan to heavy metal, from photography to communications design, and from baking to brewing. As Creative Director at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room, he manages community events, social media, photo/video production, and graphic design. He is also the chief editor of the blog at royalcoffee.com, and curator of the Gallery at The Crown.

The post Exploring “Classic” Espresso Blends: North American Roasters appeared first on Coffee Review.

Kenneth Davids, editor-in-chief of Coffee Review, evaluating an espresso. Courtesy of Kim Westerman.

Nevertheless, almost all of the 90 coffee drinkers who attended my tasting preferred the one sample that had been dried inside the fruit by the “natural” method. True, this particular coffee had other things going for it—distinguished tree variety, high growing elevation—but so did the other samples we tasted. It appears that the overwhelming majority liked this specific coffee mainly because the act of drying the beans inside the fruit had turned the cup lush, fruity and chocolaty. Drying inside the fruit also tends to fatten mouthfeel and reduce the perceived acidity or tartness of fruit notes, both additional positives for many coffee drinkers.

Floy Andrews, of Bay Area Co-Roasters, evaluating an espresso. Courtesy of Liza Lee.

Not all dried-in-the-fruit coffee tastes good in this particular way, of course. Rather than lush, the fruit notes can taste vaguely rotten, like something recently fished out of the compost. Rather than leaning toward chocolate, the fruit can taste rough, heavy and musty. Other dried-in-the-fruit coffees may emerge nicely from the drying process in an altogether different way: more crisply cocoa-toned than lushly chocolaty. In short, drying coffee in the whole fruit is tricky and hard to control. It can produce everything from a lush, fruity dream to compost in a cup, with lots of possibilities between.

The Natural-Processed Edge in Espresso

But it also happens that attributes like fruit, chocolate, fatter mouthfeel and lower acidity are all particularly appropriate qualifications for coffee when brewed as espresso. So, when Coffee Review tested 35 natural-processed espressos, we harbored rather high expectations.

The three tasters for this report included me, Coffee Review managing editor and Licensed Q-grader Kim Westerman, and Floy Andrews, also a Licensed Q-grader and co-founder of CoRo (Bay Area CoRoasters), a collaborative roasting and educational community space. We conducted the tasting over three days at CoRo and at the Coffee Review lab. Shots were impeccably pulled by master barista Rich Lee, co-founder of Spro Coffee Lab in San Francisco, with expert backup help from Jason Sarley, Coffee Review’s associate editor and in-house barista.

Rich Lee, of SPRO Coffee Lab in San Francisco, the barista for Coffee Review’s tasting of natural-process espressos. Courtesy of Kim Westerman.

We sourced 61 natural-processed single-origin espressos from 46 North American and East Asian roasters. Given the length of time it takes to rigorously test espressos (the grinder needs to be cleaned, precisely recalibrated and several test shots pulled for each sample before the final shots are produced), we were not able to test all of the 61 natural-processed espressos we received. Our principles of elimination were simple. If a roaster sent multiple samples (several did), we tested only one. If a roaster did not send the minimum full pound of beans we requested, enough to calibrate the grinder as well as pull the shots, we did not test that sample.

The Natural Scorecard

Did these natural-processed espressos deliver? Did they offer the fruity and chocolaty, crisply cocoa-toned, or otherwise distinguished espresso experience we were hoping for?

Anny Ruth Pimentel, of Finca Loma La Gloria in El Salvador, and her team. Courtesy of Old Soul Coffee Co.

A very impressive number did. Of the 35 natural-processed espressos we tested, nine scored 93 to 95, while ten more scored 91 to 92. All nine of the 93-through 95-rated espressos are reviewed here. Because five of those top-rated nine samples were Ethiopia coffees, we decided to introduce more Latin America origins into our final report by adding reviews for two of the 92-rated coffees, the Old Soul El Salvador Loma La Gloria Natural and the Argyle Coffee Costa Rica Tirra Natural, as well as for the highest rated Brazil, the nut- and spice-toned, 91-rated Auto Coffee Brazil Fazenda Sertãozinho. Brazil natural-process coffees are widely used in espresso blends worldwide, so we wanted to include at least one coffee from that origin in this month’s reviews.

Natural Quality and Character

What can we say about these natural-processed espressos and, perhaps by extension, about fine natural-processed espressos from contemporary specialty roasters in general? Are they likely to please from a consumer perspective?

Coffee Quality: Reassuring. Despite the tricky nature of drying coffee in the fruit, fundamental coffee quality overall was quite reassuring. Only two of the 35 espressos we tested hinted at green coffee faults of the kind often associated with natural-processed coffees. Many were fruity, but none were over-the-top fermenty. It appears that a consumer buying a natural-processed espresso from a top roaster is likely to buy quality as well as distinction.

Coffee Character: Flamboyant. The best of these espressos were rather broadly stated in their appeal. They typically offered the excitement of complexly layered fruit and chocolate, frequently complicated by floral top notes, and often supported by backgrounded cedary aromatic wood and savory spice. Those who associate espresso with the suave, understated character of Illy Caffè, for example, may be surprised by the assertively original, even flamboyant profiles of many of the espressos reviewed here.

A Natural-Processed Espresso Lexicon

Here is a very general vocabulary describing some of the sensory tendencies among the natural-processed espressos we reviewed.

Chocolate and More Chocolate. Descriptors for chocolate appear, often prominently, in 11 of our 12 reviews. Dark chocolate (most often), chocolate fudge, baker’s chocolate, and in one review, roasted cacao nib, the term we use for a crisp, nut-like chocolate. Probably the most explicit chocolate notes surfaced in the two splendid naturals from Costa Rica branded by their producer as “Perla Negra”: the deeply expressed, darkish-medium-roasted, 95-rated Durango Coffee Perla Negra (co-taster Floy Andrews called the lavish chocolate and fruit in this one “milk chocolate and blueberry pie”) and the similarly complex but much lighter-roasted, brighter 94-rated Magnolia Coffee Perla Negra. These coffees brought a clean, controlled, elegantly chocolate-and-fruit-toned natural character to the classic high-grown profile we associate with Costa Rica and the Caturra variety of Arabica. The 93-rated Kickapoo Coffee Ethiopia Gede Natural displayed a dramatic chocolate character as well, expressed with particular delicacy and grace (co-taster Floy Andrews again: “super balanced” and “a coffee for lovers.”)

“Perla Negra” coffee drying at Finca Las Lajas farm in Costa Rica. Courtesy of Magnolia Coffee.

Fruit. Descriptors for fruit varied greatly from espresso to espresso, but fruit was prominent in all, with a particular emphasis on berries and stone fruit, and less on the citrus notes often associated with wet-processed or washed coffees.

Flowers, Musk and Herb. The five espressos reviewed this month produced from natural-processed Ethiopia coffees were predictably more varied and unexpected in their aromatic character than the six produced from Latin America origins, doubtless owing to the influence of Ethiopia’s largely traditional, genetically varied, often locally indigenous tree varieties. Floral notes were common among the Ethiopias, leaning (probably owing to the influence of the natural processing) toward the sweet and heavyish or the musky. Both of the 95-rated Taiwanese espressos, the Small Eyes Café Gesha Village Lot #25 (produced from the celebrated and still pricy Gesha variety of Arabica) and the Taokas Banko Gotiti showed, amid an exhilarating range of aromas and flavor, the sweet, pungent, rather carnal notes associated with musk. In the case of the Taokas Banko Gotiti, we decided to associate this note with the odor of cannabis flower, which for us has a musky though still fresh aroma, more pungently floral than animal. The Kakalove Café Natural Sidamo Twakok (94) offered a lesson in the pleasures of brisk, crisp coffee character: lavender, dried strawberry, pungent sandalwood, unsweetened chocolate.

Brightness, Acidity. The sweet-tart, often citrusy sensation coffee professionals call acidity (we tend to call it brightness), can be a polarizing sensation in espresso. A coffee that is zesty and refreshing when brewed as drip or French press may come across as sharp and biting when brewed as espresso. Natural processing generally tends to round brightness or acidity, hence the widespread use of natural-processed coffees, particularly Brazils, in espresso blends.

Skillfully conducted medium to medium-dark roasts also can reduce acidy brightness. Interestingly, the three top-rated samples reviewed this month on an average were a bit darker roasted than is usual for coffees that attract high ratings at Coffee Review.

Pulling espresso shots at CoRo (Bay Area Co-Roasters) in Berkeley, CA. Courtesy of Kim Westerman.

Perhaps the brightest sample we review this month is the medium-roasted, 94-rated Dragonfly Yemen, a coffee that should please espresso drinkers who enjoy a complexly stated high-toned fruit in their straight shot or cappuccino. The 94-rated Revel Coffee Ethiospro Blend, a slyly-named blend of all natural-processed coffees from Ethiopia, displayed a rather bright profile as well, although the brightness came enveloped in an intricately original matrix of floral and spearmint notes. Finally, to fill out the bright-side candidates, the 92-rated Old Soul El Salvador Loma La Gloria Natural showed a classic sweet-tart character, with a crisply dry almond and cocoa nuance that bloomed and sweetened elegantly in cappuccino-scaled milk.

Fruit Ferment. If the sugars in the fruit begin to ferment during the drying phase of natural-processing, the result can range from pleasing notes suggesting wine or spirits to sensations that can read as composty or outright foul if the ferment gets completely out of hand. Two of the samples reviewed this month showed a slight, and, for us, pleasing shimmer of sweet ferment. In the PT’s Coffee Granja La Esperanza Tres Dragones Natural (93), an unusual natural coffee from Colombia, we associated this note with brandy; in the Argyle Coffee Costa Rica Tirra Natural (92) we could have associated it with a range of spirits notes, but decided on the scent of aged grappa. The important takeaway is that, in both cases, we found the spirits-like hints pleasingly supported and nuanced the general ripe-fruit character of the coffees.

Thanks to …

The team for Coffee Review’s natural-processed espresso tasting event: Kim Westerman, Kenneth Davids, Jason Sarley, Floy Andrews, Rich Lee. Courtesy of James Parrish.

Co-taster Floy Andrews for her skilled participation in our testing process and spirited contributions to our review language. In her pre-coffee life Floy was a successful attorney. She now combines her extensive business management experience with well-honed sensory skills and a passion for coffee as co-founder and leader of Bay Area CoRoasters (CoRo), the vibrant and growing collaborative community center in Berkeley, California for roasting, packaging and sourcing fine specialty coffee.

CoRo for providing the ideal tools and setting for this tasting.

Rich Lee, the prodigiously experienced barista and dynamic co-founder of SPRO Coffee Lab in San Francisco, for pulling most of the shots for our testing. SPRO co-founders Rich and Liza Lee are mounting an innovative, free-spirited barista competition for the San Francisco coffee community and consumers called Creatures of Habit on Saturday, September 22nd, 2018.

The post Natural-Process Espressos: Fruit and Chocolate Exalted appeared first on Coffee Review.

We were sufficiently concerned about achieving a balanced response to a possibly polarizing group of coffees that we decided to invite not just one guest taster, as we usually do for our espresso articles, but two. To bring what we figured would be a sophisticated version of the more traditional espresso palate to our tasting, we invited John DiRuocco, Green Coffee Buyer and Quality Control Supervisor for Mr. Espresso, a distinguished Oakland, California roaster that since 1982 has specialized in producing impressive espressos of the classically round, smooth style often associated with northern Italy. (Incidentally, Mr. Espresso also produces excellent examples of other styles of coffee.) And to hypothetically represent a palate possibly more calibrated to newer, brighter styles of espresso, we invited Jen Apodaca, currently Director of Roasting for West Coast importer Royal Coffee’s new Lab & Tasting Room, whose extensive coffee credentials include key positions at a succession of celebrated coffee companies of the newer style, including Ecco Caffè, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea and Blue Bottle Coffee.

Co-taster Jen Apodaca

In this anticipated scenario, I would be the third taster. We imagined a lively three-person panel arguing the merits of smoother, rounder, more chocolaty espressos versus more tartly bright, citrusy-floral styles.

So Much for Expectations

Well. Surprise.

First of all, the coffee samples we received were, by and large, neither the brightly acidy style now associated with many of the so-called third wave of light-roasters, nor variations on the older bittersweet, dark-roasted style popularized by Starbucks and its many imitators.

Most settled into a gently bright, sweetly nuanced position in between. True, all were light- to medium-roasted, but apparently owing to skillful management of the roast profile and tactful green coffee selection, almost none were sharply acidy or tart.

Nor, as it turned out, did the tasting panel itself polarize around preferences for contrasting styles of espresso. Although some differences did surface among the three of us, these differences were more focused on characteristics of specific green coffees than on general preferences in regard to espresso style or darkness of roast.

Sweet and Lighter-Roasted

We tested 21 espressos. The 10 highest-rated, ranging between 91 and 93, are reviewed here.

Some general observations: All 10 reviewed samples were subtly but distinctively different, a good sign for espresso aficionados looking for pleasing variation. However, they did share some similarities. All ranged in roast level from medium- to light-roasted. All were inherently sweet. None showed prominent bitter tendencies, and only one could even be called brisk. Some were bright and citrusy, but gently and sweetly so. Mouthfeel tended to read as smooth and satiny rather than heavy or syrupy.

Perhaps the most classic espresso profile was offered by the Las Chicas del Café Nicaragua Espresso del Patron (93), a coffee roasted toward the darkish edge of medium and composed of a blend of both dried-in-the-fruit or “natural-” processed and wet- or “washed-” processed beans from the same Nicaraguan farm. It showed distinct chocolate and caramel tendencies and a robust, balanced structure. Taster John DiRuocco called it a “chocolate bomb” in cappuccino-scaled milk. On the other hand, probably the brightest and most citrusy of the 10 reviewed espressos was the honey-processed PT’s El Salvador Lagunita Finca Los Planes (91), although it too displayed a rounding chocolate that softened and complicated the citrus and flowers. With neither coffee was there much difference in readings or ratings among the three reviewers.

Coffee Review editor Kenneth Davids

Other samples that attracted consensus support and closely clustered ratings from the three reviewers tended to be gracefully balanced and complete, pleasingly complex but without idiosyncrasies or extremes. Two were wet-processed coffees: the Joe Van Gogh Panama Dos Ruedas (93) was pure and graceful yet resonant; the Noble Coffee Roasting Guatemala Palo Blanco (92), softly tart and honey-toned. The 93-rated Magnolia Coffee Coast Rica Signature Reserve Don Pepe (93) was processed by the “black honey” method, which removes the fruit skin but allows the beans to dry enclosed in the fruit pulp. Not all honey-processed coffees are as sweet as the term suggests, but this one did display an almost candyish sweetness enveloping a tart but ripely orangy citrus.

The Polarizing Samples

The four samples that polarized the panel tended to be dynamic but relatively idiosyncratic, with less balance than those that attracted consensus readings and ratings. The Yo El Rey Roasting Ecuador Cahasqui (93), for example, was fruit-toned and intense. For an enthusiastic Jen Apodaca (95) the fruit read as clean, balanced and complex, pleasingly tropical, whereas for me (93) it was more brandy- or grappa-toned and for John DiRuocco (90), spicy, perhaps a bit unsettling.

Co-taster John DiRuocco

On the other hand, DiRuocco’s 95 was the top score for the Panama Santa Theresa Natural from Turning Point Coffee (92), a much crisper coffee than the Yo El Rey Ecuador, with briskly dry, tart-tending temperate fruit and lavender-like floral notes. I enjoyed the aromatics but held off at 91 because I was looking for a little more sweetness and a little fatter mouthfeel; Jen was lukewarm at 89. But read the fine print; you may agree with John.

Lab, Equipment and Tasters

We conducted the tasting at the lab at Mr. Espresso in Oakland, California. Eric Lewis pulled the shots on a Faema Teorema A2 espresso machine using a Mazzer Kony Electronic grinder. As with all Coffee Review espresso tastings, we first sampled a straight shot, scoring it on aroma, mouthfeel or body, flavor and aftertaste, then evaluated a second shot mixed with three parts milk, heated but not frothed.

Our deepest thanks to everyone at Mr. Espresso, reviewer John DiRuocco and barista Eric Lewis in particular, as well as to Jen Apodaca for spending significant portions of two days tasting with us. And, as always, thanks to those roasters who took a chance and sent us so many fine and expressive espressos.

Co-Tasters Jen Apodaca and John DiRuocco

Jen Apodaca started roasting coffee in 2005 for McMenamins Inc. in Portland, Oregon. She subsequently worked as a Coffee Roaster and Quality Control Specialist for Ecco Caffè and for Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, and was West Coast Production & Roasting Manager for Blue Bottle Coffee. She is now the Director of Roasting for The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room. She has experience on several styles of roasting machines and is dedicated to the craft of making coffee more delicious. She is an International Juror for the Cup of Excellence, Chair Emeritus of the Good Food Awards for coffee committee, licensed Q- Grader, and serves on the Roasters Guild Executive Council as the Events Chair.

John DiRuocco is second-generation coffee leader at Mr. Espresso, a family-owned roasting company celebrated on the West Coast for its long history of producing sweet, round espresso coffees slow-roasted using oak-fired roasting machines. Under John’s leadership Mr. Espresso has expanded its offerings, adding distinguished lighter-roasted single-origin coffees. John travels to coffee origins regularly and has served on many international green coffee juries.

The post New-World Espressos: Single-Origin Espressos from the Americas appeared first on Coffee Review.

On the other hand, when the components of a blend are openly disclosed, as they are in the twenty blends we tested for this article, the goal of blending is partly stripped of its branding and cost-savings functions. It becomes more clearly a creative sensory act, aimed at creating a coffee experience that has never existed before in quite the same way, one in which hopefully the sensory whole of the blend transcends the contributions of its parts. This is an idealistic coffee goal, but a worthy one.

Farther long in this piece I discuss some the trends and strategies suggested by the selection of green coffees in the blends we tested. But what I had not quite anticipated was how evocative overall these twenty blends would be in mapping some of the larger trends and polarizations in contemporary espresso blend design, at least as they are playing out in North America with a short detour through one coffee-loving East Asian country, Taiwan.

Co-Taster Ethan Hill, Barista Benjamin Roberts and the La Marzocco Lab

My co-taster for this survey was Ethan Hill, Head of Production at Victrola Coffee. (Victrola Coffee did not have coffees involved in the tasting, of course.) Ethan is a licensed Q-grader who proved to be an experienced and incisive taster and describer of espresso. See the end of this article for Ethan’s impressive bio. We conducted the tasting at the La Marzocco North America laboratory in Seattle, Washington, with shots pulled by the very experienced Victrola barista, Benjamin Roberts. We ended up tasting twenty “open source” espresso blends, seventeen from leading North American roasters ranging from very large to very small, and three from Taiwan-based roasting companies. We sourced over thirty blends, but were forced to limit our tasting to twenty owing to time constraints. Some blends we eliminated because roasters did not send us the minimum of sixteen ounces we need to calibrate the grinder, produce the shots, and take roast color readings afterwards. In other cases we made arbitrary inclusions or exclusions based on how interesting or original the blends sounded based on their constituent coffees.

The Crucial Starbucks Entry

One blend we did include was extremely important, I think, in understanding the entire exercise: the Starbucks Reserve Pantheon Blend No.1. This is a flagship blend roasted in very limited quantities on the small-batch roasting machine prominently displayed on the top level of the spectacular new Starbucks Reserve Roastery facility in Seattle. Like almost everything else involved in the new Starbucks showplace roastery, the Pantheon Blend displays a detailed, almost textbook-like understanding of the latest trends in specialty coffee. The Pantheon is clearly intended as a transparent, open-source blend of the newer kind. The blend name itself implies that this is the first in a series of seasonal blends (Pantheon Blend No. 1; presumably as green coffee opportunities change through the year we will have Pantheon Blends No. 2, No. 3, and so on). Furthermore, the constituents of this version #1 are revealed in considerable detail, in some cases in more detail than revealed by some of the smaller and presumably trendier roasters that produced other blends in the tasting.

Revelation by Contrast

However, as it turned out, the Starbucks blend differed in one dramatic way from all the other nineteen blends we tested: It was darker roasted than any of the others. Not nearly as dark roasted as some Starbucks coffees, but considerably darker roasted than any of the other nineteen samples in our tasting.

And by its mildly roasty presence in the mix the Pantheon Blend dramatized through contrast how relatively bright and high-toned most other high-end North American espresso blends have become in recent years. High-toned brightness obviously can be promoted in a couple of ways; first through a lighter roast style and second through incorporating bright, acidy coffees into blends: bright, floral wet-processed coffees from Ethiopia were one of the favorites in this set of blends, for example, as were wet-processed coffees from a variety of origins in Latin America. Balancing these brighter coffees were everyone’s favorite for achieving smoothness in espresso blends: nutty, chocolaty dried-in-the-fruit or “natural” coffees from Brazil. But also very important in many of these blends were the fruitier, sweeter style of dried-in-the-fruit coffees, particularly those from Ethiopia, which tend to add a juicy, sometimes slightly fermenty fullness to espresso blends. Now and then a robust, presumably earth- or cedar-toned wet-hulled Sumatra put in an appearance as a foil to the brighter wet-processed coffees, but there were far fewer Sumatras than there might have been some years ago when espresso blends were roasted darker and the pungent, woodsy contribution of Sumatras was more valued.

Favored Sweet Spots in the Roast

In respect to final degree or darkness of roast there appeared to be two main “sweet spots” for the creators of these blends. One was just at the very first hint of the “second crack” which signals the transition from medium to darker roast. Of the eleven blends we reviewed at 92 or higher, three were brought to this subtly pivotal point in roast development. Two of them were roasted in Taiwan – Simon Hsieh’s Proud Goat Espresso Blend (93) and the Mellow Coffee Dawning Espresso (92) – and one in the States, the Tony’s Coffees & Teas Ganesha Espresso (92).

However, it appears that the favorite settling spot for final roast color among the North American blends we reviewed was a classic medium roast, roughly where sugars and aromatics are well developed but before any hint of pungent roast taste puts in an appearance. Six of the eleven 92-plus blends, including the top-rated Taiwanese Bignose Espresso (94), roughly fell into the classic medium-roast category.

Roast-Level Outliers

The two outliers in roast development among the eleven reviewed coffees were the Starbucks Pantheon Blend, which showed a distinct dark roast pungency and which by machine reading of roast color was brought to the cusp between dark and medium dark, and the Bonlife Top Shelf Espresso, which, for an espresso, was very light roasted, medium-light to light.

My co-taster Ethan generally appeared to take a more critical position toward the impact of roast than I did; he was considerably more critical of the Starbucks than I was, for example, although he still assigned it a rating of 91. Three or four of the blends that we did not review struck him as too sharp, bitter and/or tart; in these cases my ratings often came in modestly higher than his did.

A New North-American Norm?

At any rate, these espresso blends did suggest a certain overall trend, a new norm perhaps for North American espresso blends: bright but not too bright, medium-roasted, with a balance of moderately acidy wet-processed coffees, round, nut-toned Brazils, and juicy natural, dried-in-the-fruit Ethiopias. Although they did not appear to be optimized for drinking as a cappuccino or other short milk drink, most did show well in cappuccino-scaled milk, softening but maintaining character. And, of course, given the new openness around blend communication, we now have an opportunity to know and appreciate some of the coffee thinking that went into their production and subtle differences.

Final Thanks To …

Co-taster Ethan Hill, Victrola barista Benjamin Roberts, who skillfully dialed in and pulled every espresso shot for the tasting, and La Marzocco North America for the use of its superb lab and equipment, including the support of KEXP Project Manager Amy Hattemer and her staff (not to mention their excellent recommendations for lunch).

About this Month’s Co-Cupper

Ethan Hill is the Head of Production and Quality Control at Victrola Coffee Roasters in Seattle, WA. He was raised on a six-acre coffee farm in the Puna district of the Big Island of Hawaii. He co-founded Puna Moon Estate Coffees in 1995 and the Hilo Coffee Mill – East Hawaii’s first full-service roastery and coffee mill – in 1999. He has over ten years of roasting experience, having served as Production Roaster for Hilo Coffee Mill, Head Roaster for Rimini Coffee Inc. in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Head of Production for Victrola Coffee Roasters. He has taught coffee-related courses on a variety of topics for the University of Utah and the Specialty Coffee Association of America. He is a licensed Q-Grader.  He reports: “I was thrilled to serve as a sensory analyst for Coffee Review’s Open-Source Espresso Blends article, and to contribute my thoughts and impressions to the article. It was exciting to see such a wide range of flavor profiles in the espresso submissions. I was particularly struck by how blends that ended up scoring the same rating were so dramatically different from one another.”

The post Open Source Espresso Blends appeared first on Coffee Review.

I am not alone in feeling that, as espresso in the United States moves from shots of over-roasted high-grown coffee drowned in hot milk to a more restrained, urbane menu of straight shots and short milk drinks produced from naturally sweet coffees [this was written in 2003, recall] a culture of connoisseurship will develop around espresso, a culture keyed not only to more distinctive and varied espresso blends, but to single origin coffees as well.

Today that culture of espresso connoisseurship appears to be fully developed, and very much focused on single-origin espressos. This month we make our third report on single-origin espressos since that first article appeared ten years ago. We sampled twenty-eight samples from twenty-eight roasting companies in North America and Taiwan. We conducted the tasting at Verve Coffee Roaster’s airy and spacious product development lab in Santa Cruz, California with the assistance and support of Jesse Crouse, Product Development Director for Verve, Cole Billings, Verve trainer, and Devin Eiring, Production Roaster. Our deepest thanks to Verve for generously sharing its facility and expert personnel.

A Co-Taster and a Clarification

As usual with Coffee Review espresso tastings, I enlisted an experienced co-taster to help me capture the often daunting sensory subtlety of espresso production. This time around, however, the taster asked not to be identified. His ratings and observations appear integrated with mine in the eleven reviews associated with this article, however, and I hope the clarity and incisiveness he brought to the tasting is apparent in the context of the reviews. Careful readers also should note that in this month’s reviews there is often a discrepancy between the published overall rating and the overall rating implied by ratings for individual categories like aroma, body, etc. This discrepancy was occasioned by the need to average upward to resolve discrepancies in both category and overall ratings between the two tasters.

The Scorecard

Of the twenty-eight espressos we sampled, about half scored 90 or better. Linked to this article are reviews of the eleven highest rated, all 91 or over. Most of the samples rating less than 90 clustered in the 87 to 89 range. Obviously this overall outcome suggests that the practice of offering single-origin espressos appears to be serving consumers well.

Light and Bright

It was striking how many of the single-origin espressos nominated by roasters consisted of a style of coffee traditionally associated with drip brewing rather than with espresso: green coffees from regions with high growing altitudes processed by the wet or “washed” method and brought to a light-to-medium roast. Such coffees tend, in general, to display an acidy brightness (owing to high growing altitude and lightish roast) and relatively low viscosity (owing to processing method), both tendencies that would seem to promote undesirable sharpness and reduce body in straight-shot espresso. However, many roasters pride themselves on their ability to reduce acidity and fatten mouthfeel for espresso brewing through roast profiling strategies, and I assume that they also select high-grown washed lots that appear to have a particular potential for espresso.

The highest rated of the high-grown washed, light-to-medium-roasted nominations was a sweetly bright, classically lemony and floral Ethiopia Yirgacheffe from Victrola Coffee Roasters (92) that at a medium roast succeeded in coming across as zesty rather than sharp, with the elegant aromatic vivacity of the Yirgacheffe washed type mostly intact. Interestingly, both my co-taster and I were willing to forgive its very light mouthfeel as an appropriate extension of its lively aromatics. The Conduit Coffee Guatemala Finca La Perla (91), also a classic high-grown washed coffee with clear origin character, was roasted considerably lighter than the Victrola Yirgacheffe, at the far light end of medium, but like the Victrola Yirgacheffe managed to soften the acidy brightness just enough to allow us to enjoy its lively, distinctive flavor and aroma in an espresso format.

In other words, both of these coffees successfully managed the balancing act of bringing the brightness and high-toned aromatic intensity of a distinctive single-origin washed high-grown coffee into an espresso sensory space without allowing it to come across as too sharp, astringent or thin-bodied. A handful of other high-grown washed samples did not quite manage to stay on the tightrope, however, displaying as either a bit too sharp and acidy as espresso, or a little too dull, suggesting perhaps that the roastmaster in pursuing his or her strategies to mute acidity also managed to mute flavor and aroma.

Round and Chocolaty

A second category among the samples – high-grown washed coffees brought to a moderately dark roast, poised just at the edge of the “second crack” – produced this month’s highest-rated sample, the 93-rated Conscious Coffee Organic Colombia SOS Espresso Roast. For readers not familiar with the strategies of roast style, coffees like this one are not “dark” roasted like Starbucks and Peet’s are dark roasted. In this case the roast is terminated just before, or occasionally just at, the point that the pungent, roasty sensation begins to develop. The goal is to maximize caramelly sweetness without introducing any burned flavor whatsoever, round acidity, fatten body, and turn the fruit notes gently toward chocolate and pungently sweet stone fruit like apricot.

The Conscious Coffee Colombia achieved this tricky move close to perfectly with a roast that managed to maintain the crisp berry and sweet floral notes associated with medium roasts while promoting deeper, more raisiny fruit and chocolate. The Revel Coffee Guatemala Santa Sofia (92) pulled off a roughly parallel outcome with an almost identical roast color, simultaneously promoting a bright, refreshing fruit note (“strawberry” for the co-taster) rounded by a fudgy chocolate sensation.

Espresso-izing the New Naturals

Some of the classic origins associated with espresso, especially natural Brazils and traditionally processed Sumatras, were missing from roaster nominations for this article, perhaps owing to lack of availability (we are nearing the end of the current crop year for Brazils) or perhaps owing to changing tastes favoring brighter, more acidy coffees. We did, however, find ourselves tasting a considerable number of what I like to call the “new naturals,” a coffee type in which the coffee beans or seeds are allowed to dry inside the ripe coffee fruit rather than after the fruit residue has been removed, as it is in the “washed” or wet process. Regular readers of Coffee Review are familiar with descriptions of the characteristics imparted to coffee by the ripe, drying fruit: sweetness, a mild to intense fruit ferment that may provoke associations ranging from brandy to fruit cider, and often (though not always) a more syrupy than usual mouthfeel.

Coffee purists and some traditionalists consider any fermented note in coffee a negative taint and grounds for dismissing the coffee, but most of us have found a way to value sweet ferment in this style of coffee, and have established criteria for judging when we feel it is balanced and successful or when it strikes us as too luridly lush or bitter-finishing.

Pure Expectations

My co-taster turned out to be a bit more of a purist than me in respect to the dried-in-the-fruit samples we tasted, although many of our judgments did overlap. A bitterish finish characteristic of mediocre samples of the dried-in-the-fruit type led us both to dismiss one sample with identical low ratings. On the other hand, the Seattle Coffee Works Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Guji Natural (92) and the Café Est Ninety Plus Nekisse SO Espresso (92), both dried-in-the-fruit samples with a ferment-toned flavor complex but a clean finish, attracted high ratings from both of us, although in both cases my score was two points higher than my co-taster’s. We differed more dramatically, however, in respect to the big-bodied Bacca Café El Salvador Natural Finca Malacara (91) in which an intense sweet fruit and brandy character was complemented by a slightly savory, herby note that I considered a legitimate and satisfying complication whereas my co-taster apparently did not.

Some roasters have argued that dried-in-the-fruit types are particularly well-suited to espresso because they tend in general to display a fuller, more viscous mouthfeel and a rounder, more backgrounded acidity than do wet-processed coffees, both tendencies traditionally considered positive in espresso cuisine.

However, having finished this latest exercise, I had the feeling that I might have actually preferred the best and cleanest of the dried-in-the-fruit coffees had they been roasted and offered for brewed application. I occasionally felt while tasting that a coffee’s full promise was being held down just a little, its potential for soaring top notes and full range of expression muted by the espresso method and perhaps whatever roast-profiling strategies the roastmaster applied to better suit the coffee for espresso brewing.

On the other hand, some quieter wet-processed coffees that I have tested earlier this year for brewed application rated higher in espresso application than they did when cupped. My regular cupping partner Jason Sarley and I rated the Just Love Peruvian Café Feminino Cecanor Coop at 89 in a recent cupping, but it emerged at a close-to-consensus 91 in this espresso tasting. Similarly, we rated the Conscious Coffee Colombia Fondo Paez 91 when we cupped it at a medium roast about three or four months ago, but roasted a bit darker and brewed as espresso (and perhaps quieted by further resting as a green coffee) it came out a top-rated 93 in this month’s tasting.

Blind-Tasting Espresso

This month’s espresso samples were tasted blind; in other words, the identities of the coffees were revealed to us tasters only after we had determined our ratings and sketched out our descriptions. Which brings me to Coffee Review’s oft-repeated defense of the practice of blind-tasting espressos using standardized preparation protocols. (Skip this if you’ve read it before, which is likely if you are a regular reader.)

Some espresso aficionados and professionals question us whenever we run another such standardized blind tasting of espressos. Admittedly there are unusual issues at play in evaluating espressos. Coffee generally is a fragile beverage that is in a continual state of re-creation. In particular, there is an intimate interplay between the espresso coffee and the extraordinarily complex act of brewing it on expensive, sophisticated pieces of machinery. I certainly have no problem with people publishing reviews of espresso coffees in which they have made every possible adjustment within their technical capabilities to maximize the performance of the coffee being reviewed. This practice provides valuable insight for everyone.

On the other hand, there also is enormous value in gathering a lot of coffees in one room, subjecting them all to the same protocols and procedures (protocols and procedures that reflect a consensus of industry leaders), and with everything stripped away except the fact of the cup itself, with all triggers of expectations, loyalties and coffee ideologies hidden and out of sight, taste and report honestly on what one has tasted.

Very likely there were some espressos in this month’s tasting that might have attracted higher ratings had they been extracted at, for example, higher water temperatures or lower temperatures. Or using one of many brewing nuances available to skilled baristas.

However, coffees that do well at standard brewing parameters using standard protocols carry at least some reassurance that they are versatile enough to perform well in home equipment with its typically very limited control of brewing variables. Which is, again, the main point here: We want our readers to be happy with their coffee.

2013 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

The post Lighter and Brighter: Single-Origin Espressos appeared first on Coffee Review.

Of course single-farm espressos always express differences in character, sometimes startling differences. But recognizing and enjoying these differences is part of the fun. When Sean Kohmescher of Temple Coffee hosted us at his shop and roastery in a sunnily unpretentious but (it turned out) rather sophisticated neighborhood in Sacramento, California, we sampled an impressive range of very distinctive and very different single-origin espressos, from the clean, bright (but not too bright), floral/lemony to the deep, dark-chocolaty and occasionally edgily fruity or musky.

The overall quality of our twenty-six samples was impressive, perhaps extraordinary. Our lowest score was 85, and the average rating was just under 90. None of the reviewed samples was taken to a roast degree darker than just preceding or just at the second crack (what used to be called “full city”). Many were presented at a medium to medium-light roast. Regardless of roast level, roasters presumably pursued roast protocols designed to round acidity and promote full mouthfeel.

A Typical Single-Farm Espresso?

What was a typical submission for this tasting? A washed coffee from Latin America or eastern/central Africa with relatively low acidity and pleasantly rounded citrus and floral notes. Successful samples of this style generally attracted ratings of 88 to 89. The eleven samples reviewed here at 90 to 94 in various ways pulled away from the pack, either because they were different enough to be intriguing, or complete enough to be exceptional, or both.

The Bright but Balanced

The highest-rated examples of a brighter, lemon-and-flowers style, like the Terroir Ethiopia Yirgacheffe (94) and Olympia Burundi Kiryama (93), stretched their profiles toward cocoa or chocolate while retaining higher-toned fruit and citrus notes. The Café Grumpy Colombia El Paraiso (91), one of the lightest roasted of the reviewed coffees, presented uncompromised lemon, honey and floral character in an espresso presentation that ultimately only rounded and softened in milk, though once there performed that transformation beautifully. Simon Hsieh’s rare 100% Taiwan coffee, also rather light-roasted, showed either mainly lemon and honey if you follow Sean’s reading, or added a little pungent dark chocolate and fir if you follow mine. The same difference surfaced in Sean’s and my reading of the lightish-roasted Intelligentsia Peru Cruz Del Sur (90). I was pretty much alone in registering some dark caramelly and chocolate complication to a dominantly citrus and floral expression.

The Definitely Deep

At the deep and resonant end of the sensory spectrum the surprising Las Chicas Del Café Nicaragua (94) impressed with great complexity and depth: stone fruit, berry, nut, dark chocolate. Sean nicely identified the appeal of the Victrola Bolivia Caranavi (94): a sort of richly nut-toned and fudge-like chocolate sensation complicated by a little edge of low-acid fruit. Both of these samples were brought to a roast level just preceding or just at the second crack, a style that, as many readers know, tends to deepen fruit, turning it away from citrus and toward stone fruit and chocolate.

The Dry-Processed and Edgy

Drying coffee in the fruit – dry-processing – often produces taints that at the right level of intensity and structure contribute to the pleasure some of us take in coffee. For example, dry-processing done right may encourage a sweet fruit ferment that reads as berries, particularly blueberries, or brandy and cherryish chocolate. But often – too often – the sweet ferment is complicated by a mustiness contributed by micro-organisms attracted by the sugars. These musty or mildew notes are usually not pleasant, though they can be if they are sufficiently supported by sweetness, which coaxes them to read as pungent fruit or pleasant earth notes like fresh-turned humus or moist, fresh-fallen leaves.

Of the coffees we reviewed, three showed clear dried-in-the-fruit or natural character. The Novo Coffee Ethiopia Anyetsu was the cleanest tasting of the three, with an enriching hint of fruit that at most very slightly flirted with ferment. Since it lacked controversy, Sean and I were able to come home together on this coffee at 91. We split on other two more problematic naturals, however. The Velton’s Mexico Nayarita (90), from a project in Mexico with a long and honorable history of dried-in-the-fruit coffees, attracted a 92 from Sean for its deep stone fruit and chocolate, whereas Ken, at 88, also found this character prominent and attractive but shadowed by a salty, perhaps musty edge. We reversed positions on the Muddy Dog Brazil Moreninha Formosa Raisin (92), a coffee apparently systematically allowed to dry, at least in part, on the trees rather than in controlled circumstances on drying patios or tables. Coffee fruit dried on the tree is particularly vulnerable to the molds that create a musty or mildewed character because it is not protected from moisture during drying as patio- or table-dried fruit is (or should be). Consequently the Moreninha Formosa Raisin showed a clear fruity/musty character. But for me (94) it was a rich, sweet-toned sensation that I had no trouble calling pungently earthy and grapefruity, in the best tradition of Sumatra coffees. Sean only partly bought into the pleasingly pungent reading, however; his somewhat half-hearted 90 reflects his reservations.

What’s a Single-Origin Coffee?

A last note on definitions. I think it is clear that, for starters, a single-origin coffee for the purposes of a review like this one needs to have been produced on a single farm or at a single wet mill. However, that definition allows for significant ambiguity, as cooperatives in particular can be huge; wet mills often process coffee cherry from a large variety of terroirs, and large farms frequently split their production by processing method, harvest timing, field, cultivar, etc. So ideally, perhaps, a single-origin coffee ought to be a coffee roasted from a single limited lot of green coffee from a single farm, wet mill or cooperative. Perhaps we should call them single-lot coffees rather than single-origin.

On the other hand, what are we to think about a coffee from the same farm that is a blend of two different processing methods? The remarkably successful 94-rated Las Chicas Del Café El Patron Espresso was exactly that: a blend of beans from the same farm (and the same tree variety, the heirloom Bourbon), but processed by two different methods, dried-in-the-fruit and washed. Surely this canny on-the-farm blending (not to mention the impact of the Bourbon) was a contributor to its excellence.

This example indicates how problematic absolute definitions can be of single-origin or even single-farm. All of the coffees reviewed here except one, the Simon Hsieh Taiwan, fit the broader definition of single-origin cited above: a coffee limited to a single crop from a single farm, cooperative or wet mill. Several of the reviewed coffees also appeared to fit the second, narrower definition, a single lot of coffee from a single farm, cooperative or wet mill, though some may have not. However, we decided not to get too picky, at least not this year. We also decided to accept Simon’s Taiwan coffee, despite the possibility that it is a blend of green coffees from different Taiwanese farms, because, after all, the entire coffee production of Taiwan is probably considerably smaller than the output of even an average-sized Latin American farm, not to mention one of the larger farms of Brazil. To keep this Taiwan coffee out of the mix at this point seemed like a disqualification based on a technicality. Simon, by the way, also submitted an excellent Ethiopia Yirgacheffe (92); we decided to review his Taiwan coffee rather than the Yirgacheffe because it brought a unique origin to the article.

Temple Coffee, Sean Kohmescher and Leslie Fraser

Shots for this month’s reviews were pulled by Leslie Fraser, Coffee and Wholesale Trainer for Temple Coffee, a very fine boutique, two-location roaster/retailer founded, owned and managed by Sean Kohmescher in Sacramento, California. Leslie started pulling shots for Temple Coffee at its founding in 2005. Sean is Barista Guild Chapter Representative for California and Hawaii and a certified Specialty Coffee Association of America trainer. He is passionate about finding amazing coffees and a particular sucker for stone-fruity ones. His loves include his baby, his wife, his dog, his cat, coffee, and car-racing.

The Value of Blind-Tasting Espressos

Finally, here it is again; please skip it if you’ve already read it: a defense of blind-tasting espressos using standardized preparation protocols. To synthesize a couple of quotes from earlier Coffee Review articles:

One would think that given the almost universal use of uniform blind tasting protocols and procedures to evaluate virtually every beverage and food now existing in the Western world we would not have to defend the use of those same protocols and procedures to evaluate espresso. Nevertheless, some espresso aficionados and some professionals question us every time we run another blind tasting of espressos.

Admittedly there are unusual issues at play in evaluating espressos. Coffee generally is a fragile beverage that is in a continual state of re-creation. In particular, there is an intimate interplay between the espresso coffee and the extraordinarily complex act of brewing it on expensive, sophisticated pieces of machinery. I certainly have no problem with people publishing reviews of espresso coffees in which they have made every possible adjustment within their technical capabilities to maximize the performance of the coffee being reviewed. This practice provides valuable insight for everyone.

On the other hand, there also is enormous value in gathering a lot of coffees in one room, subjecting them all to the same protocols and procedures (protocols and procedures that reflect a consensus of industry leaders), and with everything stripped away except the fact of the cup itself, with all triggers of expectations, loyalties and coffee ideologies hidden and out of sight, taste and report honestly on what one has tasted.

Very likely there were some espressos in this month’s tasting that might have attracted higher ratings had they been extracted at, for example, higher water temperatures or lower temperatures. Or using one of many brewing nuances available to skilled baristas like Leslie.

However, coffees that do well at standard brewing parameters using standard protocols carry at least some reassurance that they are versatile enough to perform well in home equipment with its typically very limited control of brewing variables. Which is, again, the main point here: We want our readers to be happy with their coffee.

2011 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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But so far as I and co-taster Andy Newbom of Barefoot Coffee could tell based on this month’s blind tasting of thirty-one North American espressos, darker roasting does not help at all in producing more presence in milk. Aggressive roasting simply resulted in a more limited sensory profile, which stubbornly stayed limited in milk. Milk sweetened and softened profiles, but in general dark roasting left less behind for the milk to sweeten and soften.

As in the Straight Shot so in Milk

In fact, blends that impressed us as straight shots impressed us in milk as well, and often impressed us with an only mildly modified suite of aromatic sensations. True, the sugars and fats in the milk often modified or muted the main sensory themes, but the continuity remained clear. Take the richly sweet lemon notes in the top-rated Counter Culture Apollo blend (93), for example. This ripe citrus sensation read as a sort of rich marmalade in the straight shot but turned creamily tart in milk – a sensation Andy nicely characterized as “lemon curd.” With a couple of other blends we experienced, not change, but amplification of a positive characteristic in milk. The most dramatic instance of a similar-but-better-in-milk character was the West Bean Sweet Sussex blend (92), where the deeply fruity and apricot character of the straight shot opened up and bloomed with an extraordinarily deep, resonant peach quality. It was not the detail of the sensation that was so persuasive, but rather the depth and natural sweetness it developed as it interacted with the milk – excuse the fustiness of the metaphor, but a little like adding a cello to enrich a melody already played by a violin.

Other blends were complex and forceful as a straight shot, maybe just at the edge of too forceful, but plumped up and smoothed out nicely in milk. Note, however, that the forcefulness was not accomplished through aggressive roast, but it would appear through forceful and complex green coffees brought to an (at most) moderately dark roast. Conversely, a couple of blends that relied more on finesse than fullness showed very mild hints of fading in four parts milk – no change in essential character, but a simple dilution in impact.

A Sweet Spot?

Returning to roast, it appears that almost all of the blends that scored well were roasted to a point just before the second crack (the turning point from medium roast to dark), or just into the second crack. Exceptions to the just-at-the-edge-of dark tendency among the blends reviewed here were the solidly medium-roasted Caffé Ladro Espresso (91) and De La Paz 14th Street Espresso (89). The Caffé Ladro blend maintained resonance as well as balance at a medium roast whereas the medium roast may have intensified a slightly imbalanced sharpness in the otherwise impressive De La Paz.

Barefoot Coffee and Andy Newbom

A word on my co-taster Andy Newbom and his company Barefoot Coffee. Last time out with Andy (Botany and the Cup: The Bourbon Conundrum, July 2009) [https://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?ID=161]) we cupped at my lab. This time round we tasted espressos at his place, located in a wonderfully relaxed mixed residential and light industrial area in the Silicon Valley town of San Jose. Barefoot generally quietly cooked with technical ingenuity and experiment, staffed by a crew that was uniformly unpretentiously articulate, knowledgeable, and nicely decorated. The espresso blends were prepared with consistency and skill and by Barefoot Barista Trainer Elaine Levia, strong, lovely and coffee wise, on a Nuova Simonelli Aurelia using a doserless Anfim Milano grinder. The Aurelia was set for 9 bars, water temperature 200F (World Barista Championship standards), and the milk heated to between 140F and 160F. We used a standard 2% milk, off the shelf at our local market.

As for Andy himself, how about “a cornucopia of fruit-forward intensity, balanced with an abundance of nuts … decidedly sparkly and loaded with tongue-in-cheek sweetness. A trifle un-tattooed and under-pierced on his own, mercifully he is backed by the best coffee people anywhere in the form of the Barefoot Coffee team. Best served chilled (never hot) to appreciate the refreshingly over the top, idiosyncratic voice of this catador. This vintage 1969 coffee maniac is seriously head over heels in love and spends almost every hour of the day drinking coffee juice. Pairs well with his life-long love and bride Nanelle.” In Andy’s words, of course. I should add that, un-tattooed and under-pierced as he may be, Andy was displaying a pretty original set of facial hair during our tasting.

The Value of Blind-Tasting Espressos

I now come to the repetitive but apparently obligatory defense of blind-tasting espressos using standardized preparation protocols. To quote from an article I wrote a year ago:

One would think that given the almost universal use of uniform blind tasting protocols and procedures to evaluate virtually every beverage and food now existing in the Western world we would not have to defend the use of those same protocols and procedures to evaluate espresso. Nevertheless, a passionate group of espresso aficionados in particular questions us every time we run another blind tasting of espressos.

Admittedly there are unusual issues at play in evaluating espressos. Coffee generally is a fragile beverage that is in a continual state of re-creation. In particular, there is an intimate interplay between the espresso coffee and the extraordinarily complex act of brewing it on expensive, sophisticated pieces of machinery. I certainly have no problem with people publishing reviews of espresso coffees in which they have made every possible adjustment within their technical capabilities to maximize the performance of the coffee being reviewed. This practice provides valuable insight for everyone.

On the other hand, there also is enormous value in gathering a lot of coffees in one room, subjecting them all to the same protocols and procedures (protocols and procedures that reflect a consensus of industry leaders), and with everything stripped away except the fact of the cup itself, with all triggers of expectations, loyalties and coffee ideologies hidden and out of sight, taste and report honestly on what one has tasted.

Very likely there were some espressos in this month’s tasting that might have attracted higher ratings had they been extracted at, for example, higher water temperatures or lower temperatures. Or using one of many brewing nuances available to skilled baristas like Elaine, whom I am sure felt limited by the consistencies we imposed on her. Doubtless she felt that, let loose with the blends and the sophisticated equipment she had at her disposal at Barefoot, and given enough time, she could have made some of these blends impress more than they did.

However, I think caveats are in order, not excuses. First of all, baristas, like roasters, have certain habits developed out of the very depth of their engagement with their craft. A barista working with a familiar style of blend may know very well how to maximize its performance, but may not be as skillful with another style. By allowing for blend-specific technical tweaking we would thus risk at least the possibility of creating an uneven playing field.

Secondly, blends that do well at standard brewing parameters, using standard protocols, carry at least some reassurance that they are versatile enough to perform well in home equipment with its typically very limited control of brewing variables. Which is, after all, the main point here: We want our readers to be happy with their espressos.

2010 The Coffee Review. All rights reserved.

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