drgary wrote:Thanks, Luca. I've modified the sentence you highlighted in my review by adding the bolded text: "I'm surprised that Sam and his crew's blind tasting found the Niche holding its own compared to an aligned EK43 and Kafatek Monolith Conical for relatively light and dark roasts pulled as espresso." If that's off please let me know.
Hi Gary,
Thanks for changing it, and sorry for being a pedant, but I think it's better to say:
"
espresso made from relatively light and dark roasts
sold for espresso"
The distinction is that the light roast that we used was light relative to espresso roasts, but it wasn't light relative to all roasts. It was a bit more developed than a Tim Wendelboe/Coffee Collective style nordic roast and, indeed, that's why our cupping right at the end wasn't informative: the roast was maybe a tad too developed for any of the cups to taste good to us, so it didn't really provide any useful information on cupping performance.
The reason why I'm pointing this out is because I would hate people to think that we tested super-light, right at the boundaries, filter to nordic roast type espresso. We discussed whether we should do that and we thought most people are probably not going to buy the niche for that and we only had a limited amount of time to test, so we prioritized getting through the extremes (without going into over-developed territory) of the universe of what people usually use for espresso in Melbourne. If people want us to put the niche and the EK head to head for super light/filter type roasts, I can talk to Sam and maybe we can do that. I actually have some Tim Wendelboe coffee on the way, so if we get some time, we might be able to do that.
Overall, though, I've got to say that for regular espresso use, I'm quite impressed with the niche. I can definitely see it being at a budget sweet spot and I think that for most people, it will probably be rapidly diminishing returns spending any more than that.
Cheers,
Luca