Hey everyone, I've been playing around with all things coffee for a number of years - aeropress, regular drip, and now for the past 2+ have been at it with espresso on a BDB. Paying more attention over the years I've now started to try honing in on what makes my espresso different from a restaurant or coffee shop and then compared to some other techniques.

So on my most recent trip to Aruba when asking for a double espresso what they bring me is quite what i think is a long shot (maybe just a figment of my imagination). They call it Dutch coffee or as one referred to European shot (doesn't make sense but ok). One of these particular coffees really didn't taste like an espresso - it was PERFECTLY balanced no bitter, no sour just that strong flavorful coffee that I imagine MAYBE can come out of a moka pot or turkish coffee (without sugar). And then I started wondering are they using pods, different coffee, pulling longer or what are they doing that I can't seem to manage?

If anyone understands my struggle and can comment I'd be very curious. It almost tasted like a brewed pot coffee but without watered down effect.

There are at least three things going on, beans, roast, and ratio. "No bitterness" and, I'm guessing, low acidity, suggests to me the first two as primary, with the longer ratio (or dilution) enhancing that. Something like a clean, Brazilian or Central American bean, no darker than medium roast, may get closer to that goal. A moka pot may run too hot to avoid extracting roast bitterness.

Try cupping the coffee, or a V60, French press, ... , to taste what is in the beans, then you can adjust your preferred extraction method.

Thanks Jeff, I honestly have been thinking the same thing but then am hitting a brick wall figuring out which bean to try to accomplish that. I've been enjoying milk drinks with Malabar Gold and now and drinking something from Italy that I purchased at a local coffee shop that they import. Both are less stringent but still not clean (I like that word because that's exactly what it tastes like clean clear yet full). Clean is what these other ones were. Any suggestions? I know Illy and lavazza being prepackaged are frowned upon but what do you think?

Also I did a salami shot not too too long ago and as suspected the middle shot I think 3/4 were the most palatable and I am having a difficult time figuring out how to pull a full shot to be closer to the 3/4. Last 5/6 are too weak watered down and 1/2 are gawdawful sour and stringent.

Italian-style beans tend to be comparatively darkly roasted. The better blends and roasts are often what I would call medium-dark, some others range from dark to burnt. They also vary greatly in the balance of the blend.

One great thread on Italian-stye beans is The hunt for best Italian roasted coffee beans

There's an art to balancing the sweet and bitter -- like chocolate it can be sickly sweet like milk chocolate, or overly bitter, like bakers' chocolate. The best Italian-style roasters have mastered that balance.

If you want to try something lighter, I'm hesitant to recommend anything specific that I haven't tried recently. About a year ago (so not "recently") I had some of George Howell's Brazil Daterra in their lightest roast and found it to be a pleasant blend of chocolate and nuts, without being "roasty". They produce it in several roast levels, as well as using it as a base for their Alchemy espresso blend. They used to have Light, Medium, Espresso, Calabria, but look like they've changed it up a bit. (You can make "espresso" from any of them.) You can see how the flavors, from the same bean. shift more toward roast flavors with the darker roasts. Other roasters also have similar beans.

I have just ordered the 4 below to test them out and see what I like. Will also follow that hunt thread and am on one of the pages to order from EU. The one roast called alchemy is definitely accurate since this is definitely all a science experiment. Thanks for your responses and guidance.