House Espresso Blend Pt. 1

My efforts this week to develop a house espresso blend have met with a good deal of success, though much more tweaking is still in order. Through this little exercise, I have gained a bit better understanding of what I like in an espresso shot, which is of course the whole point of it all. The most easily accessible freshly roasted espresso in my area is Intelligentsia's Black Cat blend, which, although it does taste wonderful, is a bit bitter to my taste. To be more exact, it has a bite to it (robusta? aged Indonesian?) which I find to be unpleasant. I am happy to say, that even at this early stage in development, my freshly roasted beans produced a better shot than I normally get from Intelligentsia.

I initially planned to use three different beans in my blend: Sumatra FTO Gayo Tanah Tinggi for the base, Yemen Mokha San'ani, and Guatemala Fraijanes - Finca Aqua Tibia for flavor. I roasted the Sumatra at two different levels, a full city+ and a full city++ (or a light Vienna). An initial cupping showed the FC+ to be the best (at least for filter-brewed). However, when I pulled it as a n espresso shot, it was much to bright. Pulling the FC++ (Vienna) produced a delightful single origin (SO) espresso.

I roasted the Yemen also at two levels, an FC+ just into the second crack, and a light Vienna well into the second crack. The latter did not cup well. The flavors of the roast completely dominated the flavors of the origin. It did, however, work well as an SO espresso. The common ground (no pun intended) is that I wanted a more mellow espresso without the brighter flavors associated with lighter roasts, though without the ashen flavors of the darker roasts. Blending the two beans at 80% and 20% respecitvely produced a very drinkable shot, though the flavors of the Yemen were not as apparent as I would have liked. At this point, I have run out of material for blending. With the small batch size of my roaster, it is labor intensive to produce enough coffee for the blending.

I have ordered a few more beans to experiment with: Sumatra Mandheling, Yemen Mokha Haimi, and Brazilian. When these arrive, I will try to find which bean makes the best base, i.e. an SO espresso. The Mandheling is a classic, which may be better than the Gayo. I am skeptical of the Brazil - I am afraid it will be too bright and acidic. But, we shall see.