Maybe... Would you mind sharing where you get your beans from? I'd like to try some 100% robusta.

I'm pretty sure I can visually separate out the robusta (60%) beans from Saka Crema Bar. It might be fun to pull shots of each of the fractions, just out of curiosity.

trevinschmidt wrote:I am beginning to wonder if I really like fresh roasted and fresh brewed coffee. . . My dad loved coffee and drank Seaport most of my growing up years.

Could it be that what you like most about that style coffee is simply the association between a happy time when you were growing up and the aromas and tastes of the coffee that was around during that period?

I've noticed that people also develop a taste for some type of coffee and stick with it. Like, people who grow up drinking Folgers are just stuck on that in terms of their expectation for what coffee should taste like.

I totally agree. Taste is also culture, memories, identity. People in the former Ottoman empire will go on enjoying Turkish coffee because they grew up with the perfume, the rite, the taste of Turkish coffee. There cannot be a bad coffee after all, all coffee cups are "good", but they are not all "our cup of coffee".

This is probably part of my fascination for Moka coffee. I really do enjoy espresso but I still fall back, once a day or more, to hand-ground Moka coffee. Too many fond recollections are linked to that beverage.

I usually order ''Cremaconda'' from https://www.quijote-kaffee.de/shop/dunkle-espressi/. Lately I've been roasting some greens myself and got the beans here: https://rohebohnen.de/shopsortiment/roh ... yanad?c=22. Another roast would be GUNNAR from blank roast, which is available on amaz0n. Don't know where you're from or whether you can order from Germany.

I tried separating the beans in Saka Crema Bar. It's listed as 60% robusta, 40% arabica. I've read that robusta beans tend to be smaller and rounder and, sure enough, when I try to split a sample of beans just by eye, I get pretty close to that ratio (57%/43% this morning). A lot of the beans are obviously smaller/rounder or larger/elongated but there are also some that I'm just sort of guessing which is which.


16g roughly 80% arabica (left) -- 16g nearly 100% robusta (right)


Anyway, I've been taking 32g and splitting off 16g of just the smaller/rounder beans. I figure that's going to be pretty close to 100% robusta. Then the other 16g should be something like 20% robusta. And the difference in taste is very apparent but not in the way I was expecting. I thought the near-pure robusta would be harsher, less balanced. Instead it's way better tasting. The lower robusta fraction is kind of a disappointment. I would not buy that coffee. When I've only included the larger/elongated beans the result was even worse.

What does it mean? Is the arabica in Crema Bar of some lower quality source than the robusta? I seem to remember reading that the robusta that Saka uses is of Indian origin, for whatever that's worth.

It's too much trouble to separate beans. And the blend straight out of the bag is pretty good. But the result I got separating them is kind of curious to me.

Interesting results!
It seems to me that there's not a lot of ''quality robusta'' on offer. Looks like most of it is only sold for a price and ends up in cheap commodity blends. Too bad . Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the organic indian robusta thus far.
Just yesterday I've ordered two bags of 100% robusta from kaffeemacher.de - they're actually located in Switzerland, but those two coffees were not on sale on kaffeemacher.ch . According to the description they're from Guinea (sold as roasted, and greens, too) and Ecuador (roasted only).

For what I know, the easier way to distinguish robusta and arabica is that arabica has an S-shaped groove while robusta has a straight one. From your picture, I only see robusta (I see some Arabica in the Robusta heap) which means this might not be the definitive method to separate the two.

That said, I think the exercise give little information: a "blender" is somebody who has a gift in mixing average-quality or subpar-quality coffees into making - viribus unitis - a complex and interesting cup of coffee. Separating the components of a blend is like trying to separate egg and bacon in a carbonara. The blend is the result of the mix, the interaction of tastes is what matters. In theory, each sub-section of the blend should perform worse than the blend. It's a bit like saying you need two to play tango and you cannot separate the single dancers. Those aromatic contributions "dance together".

Moreover, "arabica" and "robusta" are just very broad classifications. Each of the sub-species come in very different qualities and characteristics, as you certainly know better than myself. A separation of the robusta beans in a blend does not give a representation of the "robusta coffee" in general, or of the "robusta coffee in blends", but just what the blender thought could have improved his own particular blend.

It is my feeling that robusta is talked down too much. Robusta (one of the thousand possible ones) is just an ingredient in a complex recipe. The only thing that matters is the coffee in the cup, its complexity, its interest. Robusta and Arabica should become what they are, an oversimplificating categorization.

In distillation, one can isolate certain compounds, or certain distillate fractions, that would taste very bad on their own, but give an interesting twist if put to the blend. Taste is a complex and magical game of several chemical compounds that cannot be investigated in isolation.

Something to consider is that the level of roast for the blend may be better suited for the robusta component rather than the arabica. Another way to look at it is the robusta required a higher level of roast to taste good. I've roasted robusta a bit and the beans I worked with needed more development to lose the vegetal/woody flavors. If they are preblending then the arabica is along for the ride while trying to get the robusta developed enough. If they are roasting each component separately then disregard these musings.

Interesting about the groove shape difference. Looking at the beans this morning I think I would never be able to separate them by that criterion. Maybe I didn't really get a near-100% robusta. I can't say with certainty. Whatever those smaller beans were they tasted as good or possibly a little bit better than the blend. I would buy a bag of them, whatever they were.

As for the other half tasting less than ideal I guess it's possible they weren't roasted optimally. I thought that perhaps they needed to be pulled differently. I tried a couple of different ratios but neither made them sing.

I understand that blends are not meant to be separated. But I was curious when someone posted that they preferred 100% robusta. I assumed robusta *needs* something blended with it and now I'm thinking that maybe that isn't the case. If Saka sold a 100% robusta I'd sure give it a try.