John,
Part of the confusion is, as has already been suggested, is the word "espresso." Espresso is a method of preparing coffee. But the word is also sometimes used as a description for coffee beans, as in an "espresso roast."
Generally, these are indeed darker roasts, but . . . and it's a big
BUT . . . the term is basically meaningless. The roasting industry uses terms such as "Full City," "Full City +," and so on -- not "Espresso." (For a more definitive pictorial, see
here, scroll past the one picture to the individual pictures below.)
The idea that very
DARK roasts = beans for espresso comes from two sources, Italy and America, and while that might sound definitive, it's also very misleading.
Let's take Italy. Just as Vancouver is very different from Montreal, although both are major Canadian cities, and Alberta is very different from St. John's, parts of Italy are so different from each other that one is left to wonder at times if they are even the same country! It
is true that in Naples and southern Italy, the beans used for espresso are much more likely to be darkly roasted, but the beans are roasted lighter and lighter the farther north one goes . . . Rome is lighter than Naples, Florence lighter than Rome, Milan lighter than Florence, etc., etc. So to say that the Italians use darkly roasted beans simply isn't accurate . . .
some Italians do; other Italians do not.
Prior to the mid-1960s in the US, most coffee beans -- if you could buy beans at all -- were on the lighter side of the spectrum, unless you were in San Francisco (or New York or Boston or somewhere with a strong southern Italian population) where you might find a place like
Graffeo, founded in 1935. In 1966, Alfred Peet opened
Peet's Coffee, Tea & Spices, and though he later stopped the spice bit, he opened many people's eyes to various coffees from around the world and to a more richly (darker) roasted coffee. Alfred Peet is considered by many the "grandfather of specialty coffee" in the US. Some years later, people who worked at Peet's left and founded Starbucks, and roasted the beans even darker! (Eventually they left and bought out Alfred Peet, leaving Starbucks to Howard Schultz, but that's another story.)
Starbucks gets a lot of credit for "turning people on" to specialty coffee, not only in the US but in many other places around the world, but it's also a mass-marketed product -- the McDonald's of espresso, if you will. So people were introduced to better coffee (as in
better than Maxwell House), and presumed -- rightly or wrongly (in this case wrongly) -- that
all good coffee had to be roasted to a very dark level.
The same thing happened in the California wine industry, where a great leap forward was to introduce the use of French oak
barriques in aging Chardonnay, and then -- for years -- California suffered from hugely over-oaked Chardonnays . . . it's the "if a little is good, a lot is better" syndrome.
/ / / / / /
John, you can make average coffee, or you can make
great coffee. The choice is up to you. But to make great coffee, you will need a minimum of two things: a great grinder, and freshly roasted beans. (If making great espresso is your goal, you'll also have to replace that superauto of yours. Sorry.)
Most of what passes for "rules" are actually guidelines, rather than iron-clad rules. But having a grinder and having freshly roasted beans? Those are indeed iron-clad rules. There is no getting around them.
First of all, it doesn't matter that Tang is on sale, or that it's what the astronauts drink -- it still isn't orange juice. Bad coffee on sale is still bad coffee; it's just less expensive than it usually is, but the quality hasn't suddenly improved.
The "Rule of Fifteens" is one of those guidelines, rather than an iron-clad precise rule, but it's one most of us adhere to faithfully:
- Green (unroasted) coffee should be roasted within 15 months, or it will go stale.
- Roasted coffee should be ground within 15 days, or it will go stale.
- Ground coffee should be used within 15 minutes, or it will go stale.
Store-bought coffee . . . coffee with a "Use By mm/yy" date (or no date at all) . . . coffee bought from bins in the market . . . coffee purchased from the best roaster in the world and then ground at the store . . . all of these simply won't cut it. Period.
In other words,
aab1 wrote:my grocery store had a special for their 2 lbs bags of beans reduced from $15 to $9 and it's really good coffee for non fresh roast.
There's no such thing as "really good coffee for a non fresh roast." It's like saying,
this bread is really good for stale bread. aab1 wrote:I'll get some fresh roast soon though even though I got many bags of the beans on special, I vacuum seal what I don't put in my machine's hopper anyway.
Kind of like closing the barn door after the horse is gone, isn't it?
aab1 wrote:If I don't like it I can keep it for guests
When it will be even more stale than it is already?
Look to this
List of our favorite roasters, and don't look back. Do look down, however, as Canadian roasters are shown below the ones in the US.
aab1 wrote:I also didn't get any personal responses as I was hoping about what roast levels you guys normally use for espresso which is what I was mostly looking to know by posting this.
John, look at this photo:
(Image from Sweet Maria's)Every coffee I use for espresso falls roughly between Image No. 8 and No. 11, maybe decaf (which usually roasts darker) goes to 12 or 13.
John, I bought my first espresso machine over 30 years ago, and I still consider myself "an experienced newbie." I know what I'm doing, but
I don't know what I'm doing -- I have so much more to learn, and I'm learning every day that I come onto this site. Keep an open mind, and don't be so defensive -- we all started somewhere . . .
Cheers,
Jason
by Randy G. on Tue Dec 07, 2010 2:18 am 
