..a coming of age story.
Since becoming serious about coffee, I have lived in several different communities as diverse as the corners of a rectangle formed by Houston, Indianapolis, Baltimore and Albuquerque.
In each community I tried to find and patronize local roasters, with varying degrees of satisfaction. Because I was, and am, on a learning curve for pulling and tasting, I would supplement local roasts by mail-ordering well-regarded artisanal roasts with national reputations. This made for disjointed learning curves, but I was able to cobble together some serviceable experience.
Recently, I have been witness to the synergy that happens when a pair of dedicated and talented coffee professionals, a roaster and a barista, combine their experiences to create an espresso blend specifically for the barista's machine and for the complexity and latitude that he desires to produce straight shots and milk-added drinks without compromising taste quality.
I have previously written about Prosum roasters. If you visit Prosum's FB page or web site, you will quickly learn about the involvement that Cindy, the owner, has with the people of the communities that supply her with beans. Cindy impresses me as a good roaster but the thing I like most about Prosum is that the roastery is open every weekday morning from 6:30 and attracts a small but nice clientele of followers. It was on one of those mornings that I met Giuseppe.
Giuseppe created the café that you will find mentioned on these pages as Café Giuseppe in Albuquerque, now sold and renamed Espresso Fino. I only talked to Giuseppe for about an hour, but what an hour it was. I did not pry into his life but came away with the impression that I had been talking to an Italian-American (no accent) who trained for many years as a barista in both Italy and the U.S. and who had independently sharpened his skills in both places. When our conversation turned to any particular machine, he had used it and knew it, not said with bravado or braggadocio, but just matter-of-factly. In short, his knowledge and experience were wide and substantial. As I recall, he had mentioned establishing several brick-and-mortar coffee places and leaving each in turn. He now chooses to drive around Albuquerque in his Mimmo Espresso Truck with his gas-fired lever machine, Astoria, as I recall.
It was fortunate for me that Giuseppe and Cindy together have crafted a delicious and complex espresso blend designed specifically for his lever machine because it tastes just as rich and deep on my Londinium. As the title says, I have found my go-to blend and can now settle into learning about my machines, the roast and my skills without any desire to continue to 'play the field'. It also has that intangible feeling a being able to relax into a situation that 'feels right'.
I am writing this, trying to describe a stage of evolution of one home-barista from a state of distraction by the universe of roasts to a state of concentration on one roast that promises to have the longevity to provide a stable matrix for my technical and subjective development. Cindy says that the harvests that comprise this blended roast are pretty stable and unvarying. I am not trying to tout this roast to the H-B readership; the roast belongs to Giuseppe as the designer of the final product and so I have to find him on the dreaded Facebook for his truck's location in Albuquerque when I need to buy another pound. He is an avid cyclist and it seems that his business supports a cycling team, so perhaps he might be open to filling mail orders but now I see no hint that this is possible. However, he is quite enthusiastic about his coffee; you can always ask him.
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