My usual everyday bean is one of the Kroger “Private Selection” (nicer store brand) coffees. They’re readily available whole bean, not produced by a company known for any exceedingly distasteful behaviors, under $10/12oz, and their selection of fair-trade regionals have a reasonable amount of character (well, their “Kona Blend” is in with the regionals, and probably only statistically contains a Kona bean in any given bag, but tastes pretty good anyway). Most of them are light of traditional espresso, but well in the bounds of my tastes.

I’ve ordered a couple things from Volcania (largish specialty roaster outside of Atlanta, does a lot of mail order business) recently, and they have been full of character. I’m still working through a bag of their Tanzinian Peaberry roasted to the light end of medium that behaves like no other coffee I’ve ever worked with. Extremely vegetal and winy, almost like a nice vegetable stock superimposed with coffee, and dense in a way that requires an unusually coarse grind to get reasonable shot dynamics in an espresso machine. Not something I’d want all the time, but it is a neat experience.

I have actually been looking for a classic Italian style blended espresso (dark roast, with a little Robusta in it) to play with, and found out a little roaster local to me has an interesting offering in that vein at $15/lb, I’m going to pick some up this weekend and see how it goes.