Personally, I like very aromatic and clean coffees, and I don't mind high acidity and couldn't care less about body. I accept that this puts me in the minority, and there are many people who very much hate high acidity and want big body, and that's a perfectly legitimate choice. To my mind, it's like choosing between wine or beer - lovers of one might enjoy both, but are probably more likely to not like the other, but nobody would be dismissive of either category of drink as a whole. But, somehow, when it comes the discussion in terms of coffee, discussions of coffees always seem to veer off into people who like one style or the other chiming in in a discussion of the coffee of the type that they don't like to say that the style is wrong and the emperor has no clothes. Most often, what seems to happen is that someone is excited about some aromatic light roast, half the time being one with some whack processing applied to it (and, for the record, often being something that I personally think is gross even though I like light roasts) but then it quickly degenerates into the same cries of "third wave orange juice", "coffee should taste like coffee", etc, rather than a discussion of the actual merits of the coffee.

I just want people to end up with the coffee of the style that they want, and not to have nasty surprises.

So here's my question. Why isn't there actually more discussion of single origin coffees here that are actually what people who want a "classic cup" (sorry, I need some sort of shorthand description; y'all know what I mean) want?

I just scrolled through ten pages of the coffee discussion section and observed two things. First of all, the number of threads with the name of the coffee in the title is amazingly low and, second, not one thread in ten pages is a discussion of a Brazil or even an El Salvador single origin coffee.

Yes, I know that it's risky to generalise and that coffee producers all around the world are producing all sorts of cups not typical for their region. But it's fair to say that it isn't hard to stumble across a cup from Brazil that is amazingly sweet, low in acid, has huge body and makes absolutely fantastic classic cup espresso.

So where is all the discussion on this site helping classic cup lovers find them?

Blends

Is it possible that most classic cup people go for blends rather than single origin coffees? Many espresso blends tend to have Brazils as a component. My issue with this is that Brazillian and Ethiopian coffees tend to require a coarser grind for me than central american, african and asian coffees, and I've usually found that when they are blended, the blend does indeed taste worse than it would if you grind the components separately at their optimum espresso grind size and combine the two grind sizes in the portafilter to make a shot. Brazillian coffee often blends well with ethiopian coffees at the same grind setting, but those are often natural processed. Whilst that makes a perfectly delicious blend if you're into that style, I do often read many classic cup enthusiasts that don't like overly much fruit in the cup, so I'd expect that there's a large demand for espresso coffee that doesn't have that character.

Scoring

Brazillian coffees tend to score lower on SCA and COE score sheets. On the SCA sheet, you score sweetness on a yes/no basis, so if it does seem unusually sweet, a coffee has little opportunity to score up from that, whilst coffees with low acid don't tend to score high in that category. None of this means that they are any the less delicious or satisfying in espresso; it just means that if you blindly follow scores, you get what you deserve and miss out on coffee you might enjoy.

Roast

I think there is a lot of misinformation about roast levels. People think that dark roasts can reduce acidity (usually true, though if it's fast and dark it might still be acidic) and that they can "increase sweetness" (I've never experienced this) and that they have heavier body (probably true, to a point, after which body drops off). But I think what most people would probably agree on is that darker roasts generally create their own roast-derived flavours and mute other flavours like fruits and florals. Classic cup lovers are quick to criticise the acidity in light roasts, but bury their heads in the sand about the bitterness of dark roasts. Classic cup lovers seldom talk about sweetness, but, like all of us, clearly do seem to prefer high sweetness.

I've long thought that classic cup lovers are often getting shortchanged on some coffees as follows: Roasters seem to want to bring the latest and greatest to their customers, so they will buy a high scoring, expensive or prestigious coffee. That coffee will have high acidity and fruit or floral flavours. They roast it dark or long to mute the acidity, add roast flavours and replace the fruits and florals with roast flavours. Why? Why not find green coffees that are more inherently likely to deliver what the customers want to start off with? Then you don't have to roast them as dark, so you'll end up with a sweeter and less bitter result.

Coffees

I'm not especially interested in the classic cup profile, so I don't spend money tracking these coffees down, but I have over the last few years had some nice natural mundo novo from Bom Jesus and a few coffees I'm sure people would like from Santuario Sul.

There is a plethora of discussion of equipment on this site for classic cup lovers, which pales into insignificance in effect on the cup compared with the actual coffee you are feeding your machines, so it'd be nice to see a bit more discussion of that. I have bought and used many different grinders and machines, and I can tell you that most people are getting worse results than they would like due to paying less attention to the coffee that they are using that the agonising that went into choosing between a handful of espresso machines and grinders at the same price point. If people put one tenth of the effort into selecting their coffees than they did into selecting their equipment, they would probably get a much better result.

I think some people concern themselves far too much with what other people are doing with their coffee life choices.