'Cause that's what I like.
I know, I'm a heretic. All my hipster coffee friends tell me so. When I was cornered in the shop (over by the slightly raised portion of the wood floor that serves as a collector for old hip interweb meme-based magazines or hipster musical duos on nights that it's too hot out to escape on the patio) my panicked brain came up with this explanation that seemed to calm the beasts and I slipped out the side door with a bag of the latest espresso blend;
"You know how some folk really like arugula, and some folk like Romaine, some even have a preference for green leaf lettuce, some for Boston leaf, some for Endigia (the purple stuff), some like Bibb, some even need to have simple Iceberg.
I like a mixed green salad. And blended espresso beans.

Sue me.

P.S. Do you know what a hipster sounds like hitting the sidewalk from the patio rail?



S'arright, not a lot of people have heard it yet.

What about mâche?

Now that you've got that off your chest, you can hold the posting until 2012, that way your number of posts will match the year.

If I were a hipster, I guess I'd be hitting the sidewalk about now.

Chert wrote:What about mâche?

Sure, toss it in...

Just tell them that you only drink DOC Espresso Italiano, which must be a blend. That should shut most people up.

Until a few years ago I never even considered SO coffees for espresso. The blend idea for espresso was so ingrained that it never entered my mind to try SO coffees. Which is strange, really, cuz I've been happily roasting my own SO coffees for my daily brew for at least the last 20 years or so. But when it came to espresso, I always defaulted to one blend or another...3Cs Toscano being one of my favorites.

Well...a few years ago I started paying attention to some of the coffees offered by Sweet Marias and noticed that Tom was designating many of them as worthy of SO espresso. So I've been giving them a try...especially the Brazilians, Africans and Yemeni varieties, and this has opened a whole new area of taste and slurpy good adventure. In fact, I just pulled a shot of Rwanda Remera Nyarusiza and my, my, oh my was it ever tasty! Medium body, dense mouthfeel, orange peel, cinnamon, cherry and clove. YUM!!!

I love some single origins as an espresso. One of my favorites is a Ethiopian Harrar. It has an incredibly stewed fruity flavour.

The problem with INEI espresso is that you need certificates on not only beans, but machines and yourself too.

Ps. How many sorts of lettuce are there?!

Bluecold wrote:Ps. How many sorts of lettuce are there?!

Roland gets it. There are literally hundred sot types of greens, and I like most of them. I like them better, however if a handful are chosen for their differences that make up a salad that is greater than the individuals summed together.
Not that I don't enjoy SO's either, I do. And I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with SO's pulled as espresso. Just that it isn't that much of a trick to pick a great coffee, and roast it for it's better qualities, and then pull to let those better qualities, brought out by the roast, to shine. I mean, it is a trick, but not compared to the delicate balance of roast and blend to be pulled in one shot together, and have the result be more than each of the SO's individually. That is the certain je ne sais quoi (or do I mean je ne sais pas?) that makes me (prefer blends, even in the face of my hipster coffee sno... er... 'enthusiast" fiends looking down their espresso demi's at me over their floral description of the half-meter of mountaintop on some minuscule outcropping of an Oceana island that their beans were harvested from, adn how there are only gulls and lizards there for fertilizer...
I mean, SO's are cool, and it's a great experiment, and I always say that you should drink what you like, but can we get a roaster to start blending for taste again?

What Chris said.

BDL

"Whole greater than the sum of the parts" will probably come up forever, at least because it's a convenient and lovely thought. But, my Single Origin espresso experience is that when certain SOs are pushed to a sort of extreme, the SO can have an incredible natural balance and complexity. That's why we're seeing more SOs, and many of those SOs are also getting better. Some blends are getting better too, but the vast majority are still nothing special. Maybe you can maximize blends after you learn to maximize SOs, but who is maximizing SOs? Maybe nobody, for a variety of reasons.

In addition to taste:
SOs show terroir best, and putting the spotlight on a single grower is probably better economically for that grower.