Freshness matters when choosing coffee for espresso, but coffee freshness is not as simple as “The newer the roast date, the better.” Coffee begins changing as soon as roasting ends. Some of those changes are necessary, while others gradually reduce aroma,...
Better espresso starts with the coffee. Before grind size, shot time, or puck preparation come into play, you need coffee that suits the espresso you actually want to drink. That sounds simple, but choosing coffee can quickly become confusing. A...
“Espresso roast” sounds like a specific roast level, as if coffee reaches a certain degree of darkness and officially becomes espresso coffee. It doesn’t work that way. There is no universal standard that defines an espresso roast by color or...
Before coffee can be roasted, the seed inside the coffee cherry must be separated from the fruit and dried. This stage is known as processing, and the method used can influence characteristics such as: sweetness acidity fruit intensity body clarity texture...
“Espresso beans” and “coffee beans” can sound like two different things. They are not. No separate coffee species or special type of bean is called an espresso bean. Espresso is a brewing method, and the beans used to make it...
Coffee for espresso behaves differently when you add milk. A straight espresso can highlight characteristics such as: acidity florals fruit subtle aromatics Milk changes that balance. It adds sweetness, texture, and volume while softening some of the sharper or more...
“Specialty coffee” is one of the most widely used terms in coffee. It is also one of the most misunderstood. For years, the simplest explanation was: Specialty coffee is coffee that scores 80 points or higher on a 100-point cupping scale....
Oxygen is one of the main factors that accelerates roasted coffee staling, which makes vacuum storage sound like an obvious solution: remove the air and the coffee should stay fresh. There is some truth to this. Reducing oxygen exposure can...
Roasting does much more than turn green coffee brown. It changes the coffee both chemically and physically, affecting: aroma sweetness acidity bitterness body solubility extraction behavior That is why the same green coffee can produce very different espresso depending on...
