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.
Personally, I wouldn’t have said that it sounds like they haven’t had good espresso. I’ve had similar conversations (in person), and I used phrases similar to “yeah, I don’t really like dark roast, either, and eapressos pulled with dark roasts tend to be too bitter for my taste. However, I’ve pulled some amazing shots from medium and light roasted coffees, with floral and fruity flavor notes that had me question everything I’ve ever thought I knew about espresso.” Then, during one such conversations, I pulled him a shot using some store-brand medium-light I had on hand then. He didn’t like it, but admitted that it tastes very different than he expected, which challenged his preconceived beliefs about espresso. So, I didn’t convert him to an espresso drinker (he was a tea drinker), but that wasn’t really my goal, and he did open his mind to the challenge of the ‘espresso is dark roast’ mindset. I’d call it a win.
To be fair, I did have past conversations where I used the phrasing you did, and they didn’t go well, so I tried something else with next conversations.
I recommend not entering the conversation with the intention of converting their beliefs, but, instead, with the goal of simply broadening their understanding of the subject.
I appreciate the feedback, sincerely, but, it was an online conversation and I was summarising it here … however more polite I could have been, part of the issue was that we weren’t speaking the same coffee language.
I didn’t want to rudely presume that Canadian coffee makers haven’t explored lighter roasted espresso (which isn’t hard to come by in cafes in Melbourne Aus) but they didn’t seem to know about lighter roasted espresso either … so I was wondering what the go is in Canada/US or if there’s something I don’t know about coffee in general or what preparations use lighter beans and why (french press, for instance, seemed to be their favourite).