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I alternate between Larry's organic single source beans and this coffee. Nice mild-ish flavor without sour notes in my PID-controlled Silvia. Fine coffee. This coffee generates more crema--probably due to the inclusion of robusta beans.
Lacks depth & complexity. Whether this is normal or not for this roast, I don't know.All the other italian, and dark/full-bodied roasts I've had have been much darker, bordering on blackish, and have at least some oil on the bean surface.This coffee brews extremely light as an espresso. There are no of those darker-roast flavors (smoky, chocolate, toast, etc). I know it's an italian roast but it's much more medium to light than other italian roasts I've had. I wish I could return this. I'd say it's nutty and a bit sweet as well.
or heartiness.If you're a fan of espresso, french roast, sumatra, and other bold/dark-roasts, this coffee is not for you. I bought this coffee expecting a dark roast to use in my espresso machine. The color of the beans is similar to the top of the bag (a medium brown), not oily at all (in fact, they look completely dry). It is smooth, but so is water.
For normal coffee they're fine, but still not in any way remarkable. I've decided to just use them for coffee as they make a pleasing cup of moderately strong coffee if you use enough beans. I still gave them a try, and the resulting brew did taste better than expected, but was nothing to write home about. These beans also cost half as much as the Kono beans do, so I guess that's tolerable. I expected a rich, flavorful espresso bean.
I would not recommend these for Espresso. They do make a very nice cup of regular coffee if ground using the 'course' setting of my bur grinder. These beans appear to be under roasted. I expected a lot from these beans after reading some of the reviews here on Amazon. They are very light in appearance and don't have any of the customary oil that I find thinly coating other quality coffee beans.
I use approximately twice as many beans as I do with the 100% Kona that is my usual bean to get coffee that tastes substantial.
Light roast, lots of crema, no aroma, little flavor. If you adjust the grind for a 25 secondextraction and increase the temperature a bit, you can get some espresso like brown substancefrom these beans, but still a little thin and sour.
I'm back to buying Sumatra or Ethiopian locally roasted.I won't buy these again. The beans also appear to be 'under roasted' or unevenly roasted. Upon opening the bag, the beans are below normal in size and a good number of them look like they should have been rejected. These beans were inferior both in appearance and in the espresso brewed from them. Maybe I got a bad lot. I bought a bag in Dec 2009 and the date on the bag was Jan 2011 so I anticipated something reasonably fresh. The espresso was without the customary sweetness that I so enjoy.
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