pacificmanitou wrote:I once took a very plebian brazil to FC+ then forgot about it for about three months. It reminded me more than quite a bit of Bustelo.

Bustelo and Pilon are both Arabica of an unknown origin (I picked up a bag today and looked at ingredient names and info). But what's an FC+?

What I've figured is that any acidity in a decent espresso is deadly for an attempt at Cubano. Maybe letting the beans go stale takes both acidity and flavor out and lets the sugar overwhelm everything else - presto, you get Cubano. I also tried some Trader Joe's roast and it work OK, but not with most other roasts. I think Dark was OK, Medium was not. The cheap kind. Anything more expensive from TJ's did not work at all. Odd stuff.

FC+ is the roast level Full City +.

Description-http://www.sweetmarias.com/dictionary.p ... roast#Full City+ Roast

Pic-https://www.sweetmarias.com/library/con ... gree-roast

nile13 wrote:Bustelo and Pilon are both Arabica of an unknown origin

Really? I could have sworn Bustelo was mostly Robusta.

They claim 100% Arabica: https://gourmet.kehe.com/images/product ... 017201.jpg

Though, what's really inside is anybody's guess. The bag of Bustelo Supreme I bought yesterday also says 100% Arabica. I'm not sure what's teh difference between regular and Supreme Bustelo, but I have not seen regular in bean form at all.

Bodka Coffee wrote:FC+ is the roast level Full City +.

Description-http://www.sweetmarias.com/dictionary.p ... roast#Full City+ Roast

Pic-https://www.sweetmarias.com/library/con ... gree-roast

Thanks, David!

Full City + is a bit too dark for my taste. But I understand why. There's a whole separate discussion why I live in North End in Boston (Little Italy neighborhood for the last 100+ years) and can't drink coffee there. It's all over-roasted into the itsy-bitsy pieces of coal. The way it was explained to me is that immigrant working men from Italy were too poor years ago to afford anything resembling decent beans. So they had to burn poor beans to a crisp in order to kill stale acidity and get any taste out of it at all. Which makes sense to me and also explains over-roasted beans for Cubano. The younger generations were raised on these coffees and that's what they consider to be right.

Interestingly, that inability to get anything decent to drink once in a while locally is what pushed me into home machines. I'd be perfectly content to go across the street couple times a week to get a shot otherwise

nile13 wrote:They claim 100% Arabica: https://gourmet.kehe.com/images/product ... 017201.jpg

Wow..learn something new every day! Granted, it's been a very long time since I've had Bustelo.

You're not missing much

Doesn't the Versalab effectively have 2 grinders? One Conical and one flat? So in the long run you are grinding twice?

Not in the same sense. It's not like the beans have sat for a while and potentially oxidized between the conical and then the flat. One pre-grinds them to a workable size for the second set to finish off more "evenly" some claim.