Pre-packaged Coffee Blues...

[gardoni]

As a resident of Mexico City I have been drinking espresso for about four years. It used to be that one couldn't get any kind of espresso roast. Okay, you could, but it was either over roasted or just really bad in its quality. And then about three years ago a company started importing Illy. So I started going to the other side of town in order to buy that very expensively packaged bean. And then Lavazza. And that was it. I was hooked on it. On the Lavazza Super Crema particularly. Well, sadly, things haven't changed much. My friend Chino and I have real problems trying to get our espresso beans freshly roasted. So I ask, is it so terrible to use the Super-Crema? or more importantly, my recently acquired kg of Danesi Gold?

I would love to hear anyone's opinion.

Sincerely,
Gardoni

[miKe mcKoffee]

If you're satisfied with what you get in your cup that's what counts. OTOH if you want control of fresh roast coffees, home roasting your own is always an option.

[chino]

Gardoni and I are espresso buddies. We get together every weekend to pull shots together (an event we innocently call "god shots"). Apart from struggling with all the usual brewing challenges, on his silvia and my europiccola, we have the problem of finding good coffee, which I brought up here:

http://www.home-barista.com/forums/sourcing-coffee-beans-in-mexico-city-t2557.html

We have discussed this topic endlessly offline, and have ultimately agreed to disagree: My current area of experimentation, the extraction itself, has guided me to using fresh roasted, but ultimately low quality beans to play with. Gardoni is currently working on microfoam and latte art, in which case the coffee quality itself is less important as long as it produces an acceptable crema canvas to play with.

Although using canned beans may not be the optimal choice for brewing the perfect home espresso, my intuition tells me that it's an acceptable compromise while a source for quality fresh high grown coffee becomes readily available.

we will soon meet with our mutual friend (mentioned in the referenced post) and hopefully move on to other challenges. And hopefully we can share our discoveries with other mexican aficionados and extractionistas on the internets!

[sohoespresso]

Hi Gardoni,

I don't want to come off as advertising, but Dan has given me special permission in this instance to address a request I believe we can help fulfill. We at http://www.SohoEspresso.com ship internationally, and can coordinate with you to make sure that any espressos we send are as fresh as possible. Just send us an email at info@sohoespresso.com if you'd like for this to be arranged.

Regards.

The Soho Espresso Team

[gardoni]

Hi Soho Espresso!

That would be geat! I will definitely contact you soon.

Thanks,
Gardoni