TomC wrote:The main reason most comfort food espressos tend to be blends is basically two-fold.

1) Milk chocolate, caramel, nuttiness and creamy bodied mouthfeel are the mainstay of Brazilians, as well as their much lower acid nature. (a lot of Guat's also provide plenty of great cocoa notes too, and are easy to roast to different levels with success) It's much easier to start with a coffee that inherently has what you're searching for, than try to force that out of a longer or hotter roast of another choice (like a Yirg) that you risk either baking or adding too much roast notes in order to tame down the overwhelming lime-aide acidity just to arrive in a circuitous route back to what a Brazilian naturally offers.

2) Brazilian coffee is cheaper.

Try a standard blend with a simple recipe of no more than 3 coffees, all roasted separately (optimized for each cultivar) and blended afterwards.

1/2- Brazil (sweet, low acid, body, mouthfeel)
1/4 Sumatra ( a bit of earthiness, depth, complexity, avoid the funky)
1/4 Ethiopia ( snappiness, fruit, acidity to make it somewhat interesting on the palate)

swap out the 1/4 Sumatra for a clean, chocolatey Guatemalan if you don't want the earth note.