One goes to Evanston, the other to Oak Park. Oops, wrong reference, let's try again.
Red Line is the espresso blend used at Metropolis Cafe in Chicago. Unlike most commercial blends; it is roasted fairly light and has a singing peach and apricot flavor, with a growl of ceder underneath. It is a wonderful taste profile, very daring for a commercial cafe, and this year's iteration ranks right up there with my all-time favorite commercial espresso blends. It also makes a lovely contrasts with our other great Chicago roaster's, Intelligentsia's, Black Cat, which runs a mellow baritone chocolate at its best.
Green Line is for home roasters, an unroasted version of Red Line. Red Line is partially post blended, whereas Green Line is entirely pre-blended, so the question arises whether it stacks up or is an also ran.
I've been sipping successive blind shots (fill two identical baskets, shuffle, pull) of Red Line and my roast of Green Line to find out.
Red Line pulls just about as well at home as in the store, although I've gone to a slightly lower dose than theirs, 15 grams. If you are ordering roasted coffee and like a little tartness in your shots, Red Line should definitely be high on your list. My roast of Green Line was a hint too light. I stopped at 435F, around 7F below where the 2nd crack starts on a small capacity airroaster, and I should have taken it about 3F to 5F further to get to the same roast level as Red Line. The good news is that it tastes pretty much identical to Red Line. With the slightly different roast level, I'll need to pull mine a tad hotter and lower dosed to get the same balance, but all the flavors of Red Line were present in my roast of Green Line too.
There is a dearth of really great green espresso blends, and many home roasters have gone to SOs or home blends. Green Line has my highest recommendation for people looking for a well balanced North Italian green blend.
