I love to see all the little artisan espresso joints that pop up nowadays. They usually employ baristas who know how to pull a beautiful ristretto, and I like the edgy urban ambiance that a lot of them have.
But what’s up with this trend in coffee beans? Although their espresso shots are lovely, the beans they use have this tangy, fruity, tart quality. It’s like drinking citrusy fruit punch.
I needed beans yesterday, and logistics prevented me from going to Peets. So at lunchtime I went to an urban hipster espresso joint in downtown San Jose and asked them for whatever bean had a deep bittersweet chocolatey, nutty quality. This morning I pulled a shot from their beans and it tasted like Hi-C. Yuck!
Is that the trend now? Hopefully folks like Peets and all those lovely espresso joints in Seattle won’t follow suit.
Third wave coffee roasters don’t roast the beans to that dark, nutty, chocolate-y flavor you are looking for. That fruity floral flavor is the acid (my understanding). They like that. I loathe it. Certain types of beans (Central American among others) are higher acid than others. Gimme a low acid bean and burn it French roast style is to my liking. Most if not all of the boutique, third wave, hipster-y joints look down their noses at that type of roast, which Peets popularized.
Shopping for bread at the hardware store is looking for that kind of roast from them folks.
I had some espresso gelato you’d’ve liked. It had little balls of charcoal that I think were supposed to be espresso beans. Literally, there was little structure left, only enough to suggest that they started life as coffee beans. The rest was gaping holes where the bean had been burnt out. But I prefer medium roast coffee (more caffeine). Your mileage obviously varies.
Sightglass is a roaster in SF which specializes in this style of fruity roast, they’ve lately been pretty influential in the Bay Area scene, I think. Last time I had a cup, I tasted lemony notes, which was a bit weird but not unpleasant.
I’ve thought before that there’s a definite cultural preference toward a darker roast evident in the chain stores’ beans. My theory is, stronger and bitterer flavours make people think that the coffee itself is stronger, more caffeinated, more powerful. Medicinal, almost. I prefer the lighter roast. YMMV.