Hi all! Happy to find this community!
Just wondering if some might be willing to help with some confusion I’ve had.
I was talking to someone here (Masto actually) about the best forms of coffee, and espresso hadn’t been mentioned. So I said, how about just espresso … clearly the best form of coffee.
They responded with “I don’t like dark roasts”. And I said it sounds like you just haven’t had good espresso and that you don’t need to have use dark roasts with espresso, as it can be quite light, floral and fruity. They didn’t seem to like what I said and didn’t respond.
This person comes from Canada, and I come from Melbourne Aus. From what I know, we have different coffee culture from Canada, or at least used compared to the US. For instance, I’d never really seen espresso be tightly bound with the “dark roasts”.
Naturally, being a snob, my impression was that this person and their coffee culture don’t know what good espresso can be, but I truly don’t know what’s going on over there.
Any insights?!
EDIT: This conversation was much more polite than this … I was just trying to summarise it and the feeling I had that they didn’t quite appreciate that I thought there was more to explore in espresso than what they knew.
Otherwise … thanks to those who answered and more or less confirmed my suspicion that some think espresso must be made from dark-roasts but it’s not true and one’s understanding is probably due to what they’ve been exposed to.
To be fair to myself, I think I was much more polite than that. I was just trying to get the idea across that I was challenging their idea that espresso=dark-roast and that there seemed to be no where for the conversation to go as neither of us knew where the other was coming from. I’ve never had coffee in Canada nor encountered the espresso=dark-roast idea and the seem to have never had lightly roased or light tasting espresso.
Thanks for the response!
Yea, my local bean supplies often provide lightly roasted beans and often need an adjustment (I’m using a Flair BTW for manual espresso), but can be really lovely!
I get the sense it’s a bit of a trend in my area at the moment to go for fruity, light-roast, even “natural” beans (dried or roasted with the fruit still on the bean). So much so that my partner doesn’t like it as much as I so it’s just reserved for me.