The TRUTH about Coffee: BONUS Part 3.1: Espresso!

This is a bonus episode of the TRUTH about coffee series. What does that mean? I'm still researching and writing Part 3: Roasting, but I would like to expand on the overall arch that I had planned and talk about different types of beverages that people enjoy with coffee.

An interesting conversation with @thedoctor123 sparked the inspiration to write this post, and for that I thank him!

Do you make Espresso?

This is a question that I have received many times in several ways, and for years I had no idea how to answer. 'No', I would say, 'I make coffee'.

Thanks for the information.

But really, deep down inside, my problem was that I had no idea what Espresso was!

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Let's get down to it:

What is Espresso?

First I have to mention something that became clear to me long ago, people love their coffee! And preparing good coffee is more than just an art form to many writers on the internet. Espresso, at least on this website, is compared to a finely aged scotch.

But its safe to say that Espresso, as the rich, aristocratic coffee beverage of choice, is a beverage-side decision. That is to say that consumers decide how to prepare their beverages, not generally farmers.

Expresso is made by forcing piping hot steam through finely ground coffee beans. You can do it with any beans!

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But, as advised by the internet, brewing expresso is finicky. Any notes or flavors particular to that coffee are deepened, expanded on and brought to life. This can be good, or bad. Single-origin coffees, like the type I grow with my wife, could make good espresso, but maybe not. An example on the same website explained that a coffee with citrus notes, when made into expresso, could be too sour to stomach, or not. Only by continuously experimenting with brew and blends can espresso-baristas make good and consistent final products.

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Blends? Are there blends for espresso?

What coffee brewing companies have done over the years is to create mixes of coffee beans, called blends. Each coffee has its own flavors, in this way they can layer complementary flavors over each other and creating a product that, when espresso'd, will reliably taste good. This is an espresso blend.

A note here about reliability. Coffee is notoriously unreliable, it absorbs aromas and odors from all around it, perhaps as soon as it is released from the fruit. I have heard claimed that coffee harvested when eucalyptus trees are flowering will have a more minty flavor than coffee, from the same fields, harvested when the eucalyptus are not flowering. Can the essence of the coffee be affected as early as pre-harvest, even before the beans are picked, by flowering and aromatic plants growing around the coffee? Many say yes, and if its true, would lend great credence to cultivating shade-grown coffee with a diversity of other plants.

I produce a single origin coffee together with my wife. Because it is dried in the fruit, it is protected as long as possible from outside aromas, and absorbs for as long as possible its own coffee essence from the fruit and coffee mucous (which is sweet!).

Tell me already, does your coffee make good espresso?

This website really hammers home the idea of consistency. These espresso brewing companies need to know that their product can be consistency produced by different baristas.

We make what I think is a rather consistent (and delicious) single-origin coffee, due to the nature of our dried-in-the-fruit process, which will be reviewed in a future article. But no single-origin coffee is designed or hand-selected for espresso, its just coffee beans down here on the farm.

We've come full circle, and I still don't know.

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But you can help me by experimenting! I need someone or somepeople, hopefully familiar with brewing espresso, to try our coffee out after blasting it with hot steam and mixing it with cream! If you are interested, contact me in the comments!

As always, have a blesséd day.