Barefoot Roasters Kabari espresso (Rwanda) is awesome. Pulls super sweet, balanced cups with nice floral and black tea flavors. Really great stuff.

Taste wise, I have had great experience with Ethiopian coffee roasted by Bodka and also Mountain Air Roasting.

nuketopia wrote:I'm a huge fan of Ritual Roaster's "Sweet Tooth". It is their single origin espresso label, and the coffee rotates on about a monthly basis. Ritual does a great job on the roasting and selection of these coffees. The cool thing is since the coffee changes roughly monthly, you can subscribe to it and get a pretty wide range of interesting coffees to sample. They also include their recommendations on preparation on the label, so it is easier to dial in and get good results. They tend to pick SOE's and roast them to bring out a well balanced flavors that work well as shots or in milk drinks as well.

Thanks for this suggestion! I'm on my second day with the Sweet Tooth Aramo (now 8 days after roast, they recommend 7-12), and it's quite interesting! I haven't worked with a coffee before that holds down the "tart" so easily. Nice flavors as espresso, and so very sweet in milk. The tasting notes mention strawberry rhubarb pie - and the smells I get from a freshly pulled shot are exactly this, and very strong at that.

Two shots pulled so far; most recently 17.5g in, 32.5g out, 35s (including 7s pre-infusion) at 200F. I'm seeing a "gassy" cone on the pour yesterday and today - I'm guessing this will go away in the next couple of days.

More fun talking about coffee than equipment.

nuketopia wrote:Barefoot Roasters Kabari espresso (Rwanda) is awesome. Pulls super sweet, balanced cups with nice floral and black tea flavors. Really great stuff.

I second this. Floral and black tea is a perfect description.