I haven't seen anything to suggest you need a darker roast for espresso. IMO, your roasts should be designed to get the flavors you want out of the coffee, i.e. the brew isn't going to turn your fruits into toffees and vice versa. If you are feeling the need to adjust your roast to your equipment, then I think you have issues with your equipment. The equipment you need also largely depends on what you are drinking. I have cheap equipment, primarily because I'm poor, but also I put milk, cream, and/or sugar in every drink. IMO sugar fixes sour or bitter and will bring you back to the same place. I can work to get a good shot out of my Delonghi with a non-pressurized basket, good grind, and tamp, but I've done side by side taste tests and after the milk and sugar are in, I can't tell the difference between the two. I've done it enough to be certain, so I don't even bother at this point. If you drink straight shots or think you can tell the difference (you really can't I tell you, YOU CAN"T! ), then you probably need better brewing/grinding equipment.

I've watched that video a few times in the past year. I want to like it; I want to believe it. I just don't.

Ben's entire pitch is hinged on his first comment: that "quality is not subjective". That comes off more than a bit arrogant and self-righteous. It is basically saying "this is a good cup of coffee, and if you don't like it, there is something wrong with you".

Let's say you get your haircut by the finest stylist in the world. He/she spends 2 hours cutting an absolute work of art on your head. Is it still a great haircut if you don't like it? Is it?

I believe that numbers can get us part of the way there. Just like 18g, ground at 4 on the grinder into 225g of water at 201* will yield what I am looking for pretty consistently. Refractometer numbers can also be a useful tool to give us more information about what is going on. I do not believe it is a panacea and a guarantee of a great cup of coffee.

I also do not believe that roasting for max extraction is a worthy goal. There are many, many compounds in coffee. Some taste great, others not so much. My goal is to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. Roasting for just more of everything is silly to me.

_____

I just thought of another example for those audiophiles out there. Music, like coffee is subjective. I have owned speakers that yield a very flat, almost perfect frequency reproduction curve from 15 -30,000 Hz. By the numbers they should provide the perfect listening experience. They do not. They sound, well, flat. I have a pair of Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater A5s in my living room (no wife). The frequency curve would make a numbers/measurement guy laugh. But the sound is liquid and alive and present. It might not be "perfect", but it sounds great.

I have also had state of the art solid state amplifiers that produced a perfect signal by the numbers. But my old tube amplifiers just sound better. My ears get fatigued when listening to digital music on solid state equipment. And even though the numbers are crap, I can listen to music all day on my Altecs and fire bottles. So much for measurements, so much for numbers.

Almico wrote:...

Agreed.

HoldTheOnions wrote:I haven't seen anything to suggest you need a darker roast for espresso.

Really? Just about every roaster subscribes to this method, that blending and a darker roast than they would do for brewed is pretty much standard. Almost every comfort, easy to pull blend we recommend for newbies is this type of blend. Of course, that's what the debate is about, but I would say it's a fairly common thought and not something to dismiss as a wacky idea that only the OP had.

Almico wrote:Ben's entire pitch is hinged on his first comment: that "quality is not subjective". That comes off more than a bit arrogant and self-righteous. It is basically saying "this is a good cup of coffee, and if you don't like it, there is something wrong with you".

To be honest, I didn't watch the video, so I don't know the context of the quote, but I think maybe if you look at the statement a bit different from a coffee industry point of view...it has it's merits. Quality is really not too subjective, if a farmer has looked after their trees, picked when ripe, processed well, shipped well...quality will be there. If the roaster has taken care, again quality. Barista is well trained...etc. Coffee is really a chain, and if a link is weak or broken, quality overall will suffer. Usually as home-barista we are focusing on the last link or so in the process.

Notice none of this had to do with the subjective factor of taste. You can have a super high-quality grown, processed, roasted, brewed bean...but not like it at all. I don't see anything wrong with that. Thats the subjective factor in taste. So I agree it wouldn't be right to say, if you don't like this high-quality cup of coffee your taste buds must be broken...but it shouldn't be as much up for debate that a coffee was produced with a lot of care.

I think the trend by some people in the coffee industry has been to try to highlight this amount of care that goes into the chain, and by doing that they are hoping that it not only translates to awesome tastes in the cup, but also helps to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. It's a cool idea, but in the end, having choices is what something as subjective as taste is all about, and as amazing as a coffee should be, sometimes it just doesn't do well as espresso.

I'm 62, started drinking espresso in the dark roast (but not ashy, tarry, etc.) 1980s. I have great taste memories of that brew. People born in the 80s grew up drinking the 2000s lighter roast espresso. And they probably have taste associations with that brew. In between are those who champion the Italian style, which falls somewhere in the middle. Only problem I have is with the nose-in-the-air attitude of some 3rd wave acolytes who insist that espresso should taste like fruit salad. None of us invented coffee, espresso, or good taste. Plenty of room at the table for everybody.

I generally use light roasts for espresso (C+, so nothing 'that' light) but I can fully appreciate the roasters that have a darker roasted blend that has the chocolate notes. When I go through the trouble of getting a single origin coffee, c+ just seems the most appropriate.

I agree with the concept that quality coffee is quality coffee. You may not like the taste profile, but that doesn't mean its not a quality coffee. If everyone's tastes were the same, it'd be a very boring world.

My favorite shop near me 'Ultimo', uses counter cultures single origins as espresso, which many of you know are roasted on the lighter side.

I might be crazy, but I tend to find the lighter roasts tend to grind more consistently than the dark roasts, but maybe that's just my taste preference

fascinating discussion - I am having this same debate, internally.

I am new to this forum, as a poster - much reading over the years as I have agonized over what machine to buy, and have finally just taken the plunge (won ebay auction for Faemina, less than 24 hours ago!).

I roast on a Behmor, which is very well suited for light roasts (actually almost impossible not to light roast), and have become accustomed to them for my non-espresso brewing methods: favorite is yama vac pot, followed by Clever. I drink mostly Ethiopian and am always looking for the berry flavors my brother and I found in a Harrar about 25 years ago from Olde City Coffee in Philly. Now that I have a Lido2, and a Faemina on the way, I am going to start learning a whole new way of doing things, and some questions persist. BTW, I find myself overseas on an extended trip and have been ordering from Heart, so I am familiar with their theory.

The concept 'quality is not subjective', or however it was exactly worded - very interesting. I would suggest that on semantics alone, tough to argue that one, qualitative aligns with subjective, and in order to argue objective, one needs to shift to the quantitative end of the spectrum. There is some truth to the concept that when your processes are all equal, the only variables that remain (when it comes to coffee) are the bean itself. I don't know if quality is the word you are looking for, perhaps uniformity is a better word. When the espresso process is uniform, the only variable is the bean itself, and not everyone will like every bean the same way. To use Heart's phrase: 'seasonal fruit'. What could be more variable than that?

Back to roast and espresso, there certainly could be many reasons why roasting for a process in which ground beans soak in still hot water for several minutes, may need to be different than roasting for a process in which 197 degree water is forced through finely ground beans at 9 atmospheres for a period of 25 to 30 seconds. I can't prove that these roasts should be different, but they could be. I further don't propose we construct a science experiment and obtain funding from the Illy Labs to carry it out. We should persist as coffee people do - hashing it out in a forum, and then believing our own narrative.

My gut tells me that for the most part, Heart is right. the more you roast past first crack, regardless of brew method, you get diminishing bean and increasing roast, up to the ashy burnt spectrum. I suspect it will take a lifetime of work to sort this out, but am up for the challenge.