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My co-taster for the North American espresso samples was Evan Gilman, a Licensed Arabica Q-grader, musician, coffee-lover, and self-described avid generalist.
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(This report will cover only coffees submitted by North American roasters, while the Asia Classic Espresso report will come out next month.)īarista Elise Becker, of The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab and Tasting Room, at work. This decision provided almost perfect symmetry in terms of sample numbers but also may end by suggesting some hypotheses about the culture of espresso in the two regions. We decided to rather arbitrarily divide the samples into two groups, one consisting of coffees roasted in North America and another of coffees roasted in Asia. In fact, while ordering a milk-based espresso drink is fine during the morning hours, doing so in the afternoon - or, God forbid, the evening - will guarantee you more than one sideways glance and peg you as a tourist a presto.Įven though we limited submissions to one per roaster, we received exactly 100 samples, far too many to test with this year’s lab partner, The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room in Oakland, California. In Italy, where espresso was born, the straight shot of pressure-brewed coffee is quotidiana: everyday, inevitable. Tasting espressos, both in the straight shot and in milk, at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab and Tasting Room. What we got was a range of blends roasted for espresso, from Italian-style recipes to those described as “fourth wave.” We received 54 samples from roasters based in North America and 46 from roasters based in Asia, almost all from Taiwan. We simply asked for “classic espresso blends” and left the interpretation open to the roasters. Instead of using the term in any prescriptive way, we decided to let roasters define it. Of course, as soon as the word “classic” is uttered, controversy ensues. What is clear is that good blending has always been a genuine art, and this year we decided to visit the notion of “classic” espresso blends. In recent years, we’ve covered natural-process and single-origin espresso from the Americas in 2015, we reported on “open-source” espresso blends, documenting the growing trend of openly revealing blend components to consumers, rather than withholding them as proprietary secrets. Once a year, we ask roasters to submit coffees roasted for espresso for a special tasting with an outside lab partner, always focused around a specific theme.