Deductive reasoning forces me to conclude that my setup is not up to par. But there's one thing left to try since I've used only one coffee. I want to try a "comfort food" espresso blend. I'm considering Dolce from Espresso Vivace, Redline from Metropolis, and Toscano from Counter Culture. Do you have other recommendations? I'm duty-bound by the process to see if there's a meaningful difference.

I only have experience with Toscano out of the ones you mentioned but I have to recommend it highly because I find it to be fairly forgiving. Also, it's delicious!

I would stay away from Vivace for the purposes of this exercise. Not because it isn't good coffee; in fact it can be delicious. But it isn't especially forgiving in terms of its brewing parameters, and because of the monsooned coffee and robusta it contains, what you learn from it won't be especially transferable to working with other blends. I would add Verve's Sermon to the list of fairly forgiving and tasty coffees.

Best,
David

Ive been on a comfort food blend kick lately, going from roaster to roaster and buying pretty much only the chocolate/caramel flagship blends. Its just what Im likiing right now. With that in mind, I suggest,....

Klatch Coffee- Belle Espresso
Klatch Coffee- FTO Espresso

Counter Culture- Toscano

Batdorf and Bronson- Dancing Goats
Batdorf and Bronson- Timbales

Redbird Coffee- Redbird Espresso
Redbird Coffee- Blue Jaguar Espresso

Barrington Coffee- Barrington Gold

Also, some I haven't had recently, but still suggest in the same style as the others..

Caffe Fresco-Ambrosia
Caffe Fresco- Dattera

Atomic Cafe-Cosmopolitan
Atomic Cafe- Dattera

Terroir- Dattera Calabria Style
Terroir- Dattera Southern Italian Style
-Despite the names, Calabria and Southern Italian.. this is still Terroir coffee, neither of these are burnt, dark dark roasts.

There is a lot of really great espresso that falls in the comfort food variety. Some are milk chocolate and creamy caramel, others are dark chocolate and burnt caramel. Some of them have hints of stone fruits.. those that do, are the ones which won't get boring(IMO)after a bag or so.

Italics to denote my personal favorites. The order isn't exactly most to least favorite, but Belle, from Klatch, has long been MY favorite blend of espresso. Ive been drinking it for years now, and its always wonderfully amazing.

Great information, thank you. I did not know that about the Vivace espresso. Another reason I asked this was to compare it to what I have been using--Allegro Espresso Sierra. Mr. Schomer mentions on his site that his blends are roasted separately and then combined. It occurred to me that Espresso Sierra is a blend that is roasted all together in the same batch. Can someone elucidate the advantages and/or disadvantages of both methods?

I would have to second the recomendations for the two terroir coffees and the red bird.

DavidMLewis wrote:I would stay away from Vivace for the purposes of this exercise. Not because it isn't good coffee; in fact it can be delicious. But it isn't especially forgiving in terms of its brewing parameters, and because of the monsooned coffee and robusta it contains, what you learn from it won't be especially transferable to working with other blends. I would add Verve's Sermon to the list of fairly forgiving and tasty coffees.

Best,
David

No robusta in Dolce for quite a while.
Haven't read all the way down, But Redbird espresso from Red Bird Coffee is nice and chocolate-y.



Edit:Another few not mentioned are Veltons Coffee,..uh oh, I forgot the company name but one is Mike McCoffee's roasting company, and also AJ Roasters

Go with the redbird for taste, ease, and price to really dial in your setup.

On the topic of robusta, does anyone know what the components of RedBird are? I know they have changed over time, but has it ever been written down anywhere?