Hey OzB,
So I’ve been trying out a few different roasters and their variety of blends/single origins over the last couple of months, and wanted to know what everyone’s thoughts were.
While I don’t consider myself a coffee snob and I agree many of the coffee rituals and workflow can be quite wankerish, I do enjoy a good cup and have always lamented the lousy cafe coffees or beans that I get sometimes (for reference, where I work, all the cafes, including the swanky looking ones, use Vittoria beans).
Feel free to share your set up at home too :)
I use a Rocket Mozzafiato Cronometro machine and have a Eureka Silenzio grinder to pair with it.
I’ll start with my current favourite blend:
Five senses crompton road
I got this from their recent 20% off with free shipping in vic offer. The coffee was delivered within 24 hours from dispatch from WA. The espresso itself was incredibly smooth and bold. It smelled of cocoa and had notes of toffee. Admittedly, I always cringe a little when I see that literally every hipster and mainstream blend that says “tastes like toffee chocolate” - but this one actually had a flavour profile of it! It was surprisingly easy to dial in the grind, and using the temperature and volume setting they provide on their website, I was very pleased with the result. With milk, the coffee is creamy and blends beautifully. The same goes for soy and almond. Despite coffee often lending itself to acidity (not necessarily a bad thing), and god forbid, sourness (a horrible thing), especially with alternative milk sources, this was not the case with crompton road. In fact even with almond milk, the acidity was subdued, adding only as a complement to the creamy and chocolatey texture - almost like it was subtly spiced.
Now to my not so favourite:
Inglewood Spirit of the Peace Single origin
Sour. This coffee was sour. Very likely this was operator dependent. But I had tried a wide spectrum of grind fineness (for completeness, also some coarser grinds but that quickly ended) and temperature differences. The obvious combinations yielded unpleasant sour tastes and the finer grind higher temperature revealed some flavour subtleties but still sour. They cry lychee and black cherry liqueur. I too, cried. And the only flavours I got at the better end of the grinding and temperature profile was ever only sour cherry liqueur. And no, not the good kind (is there even a good kind?). The espresso was a frightening experience of fresh rancidity - confusing I know. Don’t get me wrong, this coffee was no Nescafé blend 43, but it tasted like a freshly ground and refined version of it - not a compliment. Cow’s milk toned it down, but then I felt like I was drinking a hot mess. It wasn’t pleasant or unpleasant - it was just a means to an end for caffeine intake. And don’t even get me started on soy. This coffee was untouchable with it. Granted, I only tried Bonsoy with it, and others may have had better experience with other soy milk. But this was horrid. I had more than half a cup of foamy tofu. The rest was brown water - such was the extent of curdling and separation.
I never had the chance to try their SO as a filter/pour over. Maybe it would have tasted better? I don’t know. I’m not well tuned with filter and I’m still learning espresso. But they did market it as their espresso counterpart, so there’s that.
I have a few more blends to try and am trying to find one that I love but also relatively reasonably priced. Would love to hear others’ thoughts and share their experiences too!
Disclaimer: Inb4 username does not check out. I am aware :P
My personal favs for a few years now are Black Bag Roasters: https://www.blackbagroasters.com.au/. Love the taste and their availability in stores is second to none.