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.

  • maegul (he/they)OPEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thank you!! This makes sense!

    I don’t know when it happened, but where I’m from, light-roasts for espresso definitely became a normal thing at some point. Just yesterday I was in a nearby cafe checking out the beans they sell and there were plenty of “natural” and “light-roast” beans. Though that place really do like their fruity espresso. Generally though, we’ve developed, even amongst “non-snobs” (unless we’re all snobs) an idea of coffee as not needing to be dark etc. I’d never thought about it before, but I’d say we’ve developed an almost dessert like taste for coffee?

    Thanks again for the reply … just what I was hoping for!

    Do you have any insight on where the culture comes from?

    I know in the case of where I come from (Melb, Australia) that the common understanding is that the majority of our Italian migrants came after WWII, not before, and so we imported a coffee and espresso culture quite different from other Anglo-phonic countries that was also allowed a blank canvass to shape our coffee culture.