Hi all! Happy to find this community!
Just wondering if some might be willing to help with some confusion Iâve had.
I was talking to someone here (Masto actually) about the best forms of coffee, and espresso hadnât been mentioned. So I said, how about just espresso ⊠clearly the best form of coffee.
They responded with âI donât like dark roastsâ. And I said it sounds like you just havenât had good espresso and that you donât need to have use dark roasts with espresso, as it can be quite light, floral and fruity. They didnât seem to like what I said and didnât respond.
This person comes from Canada, and I come from Melbourne Aus. From what I know, we have different coffee culture from Canada, or at least used compared to the US. For instance, Iâd never really seen espresso be tightly bound with the âdark roastsâ.
Naturally, being a snob, my impression was that this person and their coffee culture donât know what good espresso can be, but I truly donât know whatâs going on over there.
Any insights?!
EDIT: This conversation was much more polite than this ⊠I was just trying to summarise it and the feeling I had that they didnât quite appreciate that I thought there was more to explore in espresso than what they knew.
Otherwise ⊠thanks to those who answered and more or less confirmed my suspicion that some think espresso must be made from dark-roasts but itâs not true and oneâs understanding is probably due to what theyâve been exposed to.
From my understanding espresso beans do tend to be roasted darker to help increase extraction. I know that at least for my manual espresso press I need to use a significantly different recipe to get a nice shot out of light roasted beans.
Broadly though, I do think the cultural idea of espresso is that itâs a small, super intense cup of coffee which in turn implies it being very bitter as thatâs the main coffee flavor people can imagine being intensified. Especially when you consider that a lot of peopleâs idea of espresso likely comes from pod machines which, in my experience, tend to make very bitter shots.
I was genuinely shocked the first time I had a shot of a espresso from an actual coffee shop and the predominant flavor was sour not bitter.
So, yeah, I do think itâs very common for people to associate espresso with dark and bitter coffee.> I said it sounds like you just havenât had good espresso
Edit: FWIW, if youâre looking to actually talk to someone about all this, lines like, âI said it sounds like you just havenât had good espresso,â is not a great way to engender a good conversation.
To be fair to myself, I think I was much more polite than that. I was just trying to get the idea across that I was challenging their idea that espresso=dark-roast and that there seemed to be no where for the conversation to go as neither of us knew where the other was coming from. Iâve never had coffee in Canada nor encountered the espresso=dark-roast idea and the seem to have never had lightly roased or light tasting espresso.
Thanks for the response!
Yea, my local bean supplies often provide lightly roasted beans and often need an adjustment (Iâm using a Flair BTW for manual espresso), but can be really lovely!
I get the sense itâs a bit of a trend in my area at the moment to go for fruity, light-roast, even ânaturalâ beans (dried or roasted with the fruit still on the bean). So much so that my partner doesnât like it as much as I so itâs just reserved for me.