I am currently using Stumptown Founder’s blend. It is a bit pricey and is Light-Medium at around 15-16 dollars at Target here in the US.
Stumptown are great roasters. I love to experiment with local roasters. I travel quite a bit and I try to pick up a pound from a local roaster wherever I go. I used be pretty smug in thinking that the top tier roasters in San Francisco would beat a small town roaster every time. My opinion has changed, I’ve been super impressed by a lot of smaller roaster.
It seems like we are both aware that lots of beans not labeled as espresso are great for it. I tend to go for light to medium roasts for both pour overs and espresso. I also prefer malty/chocolatey profile beans over the citrusy ones. That is not a hard rule but light roasted citrusy beans can be overwhelming in espresso
I also home roast 80% of my beans. I’ve been home roasting for over 25 years. I’m receiving 25 pounds from Sweet Marias today. I picked up 5 pounds each of the following:
-Congo Organic Kivu Kalehe
-Costa Rica Tarrazú Cerro La Cruz
-Java Pulp Natural Gambung Robusta
-Ethiopia Dry Process Mahamed Aba Nura
-Kenya Nyeri Kiaguthu Peaberry
I’m looking forward to playing around with blending with the Java Robusta
Quality un-roasted green beans tend to be in the range of $6 to $8 a pound. On a light roast, about 15% of the weight is lost in roasting. $6 to $8 a pound un-roasted coffee turns into $6.90 to $9.20 a pound roasted. This doesn’t include cost of the equipment, wear and tear and electricity.
It seems like the going price of artisanal roasted coffee is $12 to $18 pound. IMO, is completely justifiable to charge based on their wholesale cost of goods and labor costs these days.
Ditto with the non dark roasts. I wish I remembered the exact roast, but I was really pleasantly surprised by one of the light roast Starbucks beans I picked up because they were cheap.
I think a lot of people go down the path that of, “Oh, I’m making espresso, then I need to get espresso roasted beans.” I know I initially did that. IMO, if you are buying espresso roasted beans, then the underlining bean doesn’t matter that much since most of the nuance of that bean has been roasted out. Some people really prefer that level of roast so they might as well explore cheaper bean that they like. A mass farmed, produced, $2/pound commodity bean can taste similar to a $50/pound Panama gesha bean roasted at that level.
A huge factor is also on equipment and how you drink your coffee. A lot of espresso is dumped into milk drinks. So, a darker roast flavor might be able to cut through all that milk than a lighter roaster. If I’m making lattes and especially vanilla lattes, then a cheaper bean would work for that. I do love a well made vanilla latte. It’s such a comfort drink. Take my purist card away. If I’m brewing straight espresso shots then I’m splurging on the beans.
Back to the equipment, when I had a $150 espresso machine and a whirly blade grinder, I was definitely better off buying pre-grind illy coffee. I was able to make very good lattes with that. When I upgraded my grinder to a $500+ one, that allowed me to buy whole beans to do espresso. A $50 burr grinder is good enough for doing pour-overs and aeropress but IMO doesn’t cut it for espresso. Eventually, I got a prosumer espresso machine. Then the beans made a huge difference.
I remember reading an article that very dark roasted coffee was so popular in the US for two main reasons. I touched on both of these points a bit already. The first is that coffee roasters can put out a very consistent product using any kind of cheap bean. The other reason is that for 50+ years, the most common way people made coffee was via a Mr. Coffee styled machine. The main issue with a Mr. Coffee machine is that extraction is extremely poor because the water temperature is quite low that goes over the beans. Like 170 to 180 degrees. IMO, optimal water temp is around 200 to 205. Since the extraction is so poor, the nuance flavors don’t come through. The main flavor that you can extract at that level is the char flavor. So, the “best” roast for those style of machines are probably very dark.
It’s been a while since I have explored Starbucks coffee but I remember some of their light roasts were quite good. I recall that Starbucks roast level seemed to be one level higher than what was said on their package. So, light roast = medium roast, medium roast = dark roast, dark roast = espresso roast, espresso roast = charcoal
Do you have any local roasters in your area?
There are, haven’t tried them because I haven’t been super impressed by what I have gotten in local shops.
Like 170 to 180 degrees. IMO, optimal water temp is around 200 to 205.
This! There are only a handful of drip machines that brew at the right temperature and they are all expensive and not what you would find in a department store. Keurigs have the same issue.
When I upgraded my grinder to a $500+ one
I’m using a hand Kingrinder. They are sold on Amazon for ~80 or so USD. It only takes like 30! seconds to grind a shot. It has pretty good granularity with the settings and produces good enough consistency to make decent espresso.
I do love a well made vanilla latte. It’s such a comfort drink. Take my purist card away.
No shame! I get a few pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks every fall. I like them.
Eventually, I got a prosumer espresso machine.
I’m using a flair signature. It takes a bit of work, but I don’t mind.
That’s actually a great point that there are a lot of additional options these days. I wrote about my history of espresso making and when I got started there weren’t as many options.
The best hand grinder at the time was a Zassenhaus. I hand ground for years using one for pour overs and aeropress. I think for my birthday I’ll get a modern hand grinder. Some of those look amazing. I’ll keep the electric grinder since I doubt my girlfriend is going to want to hand grind coffee in the morning.
I also have a Flair Signature which I bought after the prosumer machine. I love that thing. I enjoyed developing the skill for pulling great shots with it. I guess back in the day, we had lever espresso machines but for some reason I never picked one of up. I forget exactly why. I think I could only buy them second hand on eBay and they were Italian machines with 240 voltage. I’m a bit fuzzy on that.
I use Wegmans bulk espresso beans. It costs $18 for 2 and a half pounds. If I want something that tastes good, there’s a local coffee shop that has dark roast beans that I love
Oh this is good to know I’ve been doing sams club Starbucks 40oz for 24ish$
I’ve been purchasing most of my beans at Whole Foods, they have a bunch of local roasters, you just have to do some searching to find ones with a good roast date. I pay ~15 USD for a 12oz bag but it goes from 12 up past 20.
Give Blue Bottle espresso a try if you haven’t. I swear they’re a whole other level.
I’m buying house blend of Indonesian arabica from my local roastery, only cost me around 16 USD (240k IDR) per kg.
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.
Here’s my flex: I work at a roastery so I haven’t paid for beans in years. My daily coffee is our Full Cycle blend from Nossa Familia in Portland OR.
We alternate between
- Kicking Horse Cliff Hanger
- Bar9 (found them when in Washington, delicious)
- Whatever we get each month from our Atlas subscription
