Why are certain coffee beans labeled for espresso? - Page 2

Discuss flavors, brew temperatures, blending, and cupping notes.
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spressomon
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#11: Post by spressomon »

I have been very happy, overall, with Coava Coffee's beans and they offer their array of beans roasted for espresso or drip; buyer's choice.

Although I haven't tried their drip roast profile for espresso it might be fun to order the same beans and do an A/B trial just for fun. :idea:
No Espresso = Depresso

malling
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#12: Post by malling »

Ypuh wrote:In our country the more premium roasters (e.g. €35/kg an up) do this as well; offering the same bean in filter and espresso roast level. I'm quite deep into the rabbit hole, but never really manage to extract the filter roast levels that well. My equipment is top-end, but simply not that suited for lighter roasts.

To be fair; I don't think I even like that direction of taste. You move from thick and creamy syrup to some funky flavours that some might say (a bit exaggerated) have little to do with coffee anymore. I do not like dark roast anymore, but espresso-roast from a good roaster usually means light-medium, mediumish, where filter is really pale. When roasters don't differentiate between the two of those, they usually roast a bit more on the darker side anyway.
Didn't you get the memo, funky is the new black, almost all expensive coffee that isn't from some rare variety is of some experimental processing, it's not just washed, natural and honey anymore. Now it's Anaerobic fermentation, lactic washed, carbonic maceration, double washed, yeast inculcation, combination where it spend certain amount of hours in certain methods, today it's about getting the coffee to be as funky as possible.

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HB
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#13: Post by HB »

Split follow-on discussion to Why you should (or shouldn't) home roast.
Dan Kehn

olutheros
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#14: Post by olutheros »

malling wrote:In Scandinavia it's common to see roasters offering the same beans with two roast profiles or beans they think suit a specific method best, Coffee collective, Wendelboe and April of the more known have a very distinctive filter and espresso offerings and generally advise you follow them. La Cabra and Coffea Circulor on the other hand doesn't and those are some of my other favourite roasters in my country.

Either they believe it doesn't work well or it's simply because it's hard extracting the "filter" labeled coffee well, I often had a version of both so it's not just a different label although I suspect that it is indeed for other roaster where I frankly could neither see or taste a difference. The "filter" is often far more challenging requires a machine that can profile and a more unimodal burrset to actually get tasty shot out from them and often also longer ratio and shots tend to not be as eye candy, their espresso roast typically is easier to dial in, less prone for error and you can pull them on most everything and as some say are typically slightly more developed this can actually be tasted in cupping.
Yeah, Wendelboe has spoken pretty publicly in videos about his espresso roasting and it translates to something like 15-20 seconds more development, which ends up being nearly visually indistinguishable from the filter roast just slightly easier to extract (if I remember right in that one sample video on a stronghold, they lower temp a little more for the espresso so it ends at roughly the same drop temp despite the marginally longer roast). Anecdotally, I've bought espresso roasts from them with color readings lighter than some other filter roasts of theirs.

It's just a very different approach than the "espresso roast = the dark-roasted version of this coffee" that is often the norm elsewhere.

kinda-niche (original poster)
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#15: Post by kinda-niche (original poster) replying to olutheros »

Yup, I certainly had something like this in mind when I asked the question initially. Something about the roasting process/roast profile. I just don't wanna jump into the whole roasting rabbit hole, so I'll try to avoid watching the videos you mentioned :cry:

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