Moving Back to Vita Espresso Beans

I'm allowed to change my mind, am I not? I've been getting my espresso beans from Victrola coffee roasters in Seattle by ordering online for some months now. See my previous post about Victrola. When I first started out I was getting their classic "Steamline" roast, and then more recently they came out with a new roast called "Triborough". I liked both roasts pretty much, but over the last few orders I have found it hard to get much if any crema out of the Triborough beans. I even bought some beans in the store when I was up in Seattle last month knowing they would be hot out of the roaster. Same thing!

So, this week I went back to my previous Seattle favorite Espresso Vivace Coffee Roasters and got my old favorite, the Vita espresso roast. Oh, and some green beans for my own home roasting. Oh boy! How good to see that rich creamy crema issuing forth into my cup...and what fantastic flavor. I just finished a flat white and am in heaven all over again.

Best Beans for Espresso Shots

For straight espresso shots, this is a winner

Are you someone who finds a straight espresso shot too bitter to enjoy? Well read on...have I found the beans for you!

Lately I have become a big fan of Victrola Coffee Roasters. I happened upon them by pure luck; I had been using their equally good Seattle-based competitor Espresso Vivace Roasteria and I had fallen for Vivace's Vita Roast, but in the interest of finding just as good or better roasts I tracked down Victrola since I had recalled seeing their name while in Seattle once.

Until about the last month, Victrola offered just one espresso roast on their website, Streamline, for which I fell even more. Though not quite as productive of crema as was Vivace's Vita roast, its flavor appealed more to me when it came to drinking the espresso shot "straight up". I am not one who can take too much of the bitterness characteristic of some espresso roasts, and Streamline had the upper hand on being sweeter.

Well, when placing my latest order a week ago, I noticed that Victrola were offering a new espresso roast called "Triborough Espresso - Organic" so I thought I'd give it a shot and added a pound of the beans to my order. Now I wish the whole order had been for the new roast!

Let me put it straight: If you are looking for an espresso roast for drinking straight shots, then so far this is it for me! I actually feel bad using it to make milk-based espresso drinks. There is absolutely no hint of bitterness. It is flavorsome, sweet, and "more-ish"!

This is how Victrola describe the roast:

This well balanced, heavy bodied espresso first hits your nose with a delicate floral sweetness, followed by a buttery caramel mouth feel. Take the time to savor the marzipan, clover honey, and bittersweet chocolate as they lounge around on your tongue.

For newbies at pulling shots at home, just note that what you gain in flavor, you might loose in crema production. It is a little more work to get good crema with these beans. I'm not saying they don't produce crema; they do. It's just a relative thing - of the three espresso roasts I recommend, Vivace's "Vita" is the most productive of crema, followed by Victrola's "Streamline" and "Triborough" in that order.

But note that is the order of my least to most favored roast, and this could be because of the amount of Robusta beans added to the blend: while these beans generate more crema, they exhibit a higher level of bitterness. So it's a trade off between flavor and crema. For me, the "Triborough Roast" wins hands down! Go get yourself some!

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Review Illy Medium Roast Espresso Beans

In our continuing search for the best and worst espresso beans out there I splashed out and recently bought some Illy Medium Roast espresso beans. As I mentioned in last week's post, Victrola Espresso Beans Are Great, I purchased 6 half-pound cans of the beans directly from Illy USA using their website at a cost of $72. This is about twice the cost of beans I have recently reviewed favorably from coffee roasters Victrola and Espresso Vivace. As noted above, the beans come in cans rather than the more usual plastic or foil bags. The can is sealed and has a tear top tab for ease of opening. As always, once opened, I transferred the beans to my "BeanVac" to keep them vacuum-sealed and fresh, not that it will take all that long for me to get through a mere half-pound of beans! The beans are mid-brown and dry as would be expected of a medium roast. (Dark roast beans are oily as the extra roasting time starts to "squeeze" the oils from the beans.)

It takes a little extra effort to get good crema production from these beans; I found I had to grind them a little finer than I have been grinding my beans from Vivace and Victrola. Once I did that good crema was produced.

The flavor is a complex combination of bitter and sweet, and it definitely is a roast that is pleasant to drink straight as a straight up espresso shot or short black as it is called in some countries. It also has sufficient punch to make good milk espresso drinks such as lattes, cappuccinos, or flat-whites.

Overall, these are beans that I would recommend, but they are definitely not worth twice the price of the beans from Vivace and Victrola in my opinion, and to my taste, do not have any flavor edge over those beans either. But I will enjoy finishing off the remaining cans.

Victrola Espresso Beans are Great!

Here's another great espresso bean find from one of the Seattle roasters.

Victrola Coffee Roasters has two locations in Seattle, one on 15th Avenue East on Capitol Hill, and the other on famous Pike Street in downtown Seattle. When it comes to coffee roasting, Victrola keeps it simple; in terms of espresso roasts, there is only one, known as Streamline Espresso offered online at $13 per lb. I recently ordered 3lbs. The beans arrived on the third day after ordering.

The appearance of the beans is pale brown and the beans are dry as would be expected for a roast that has not got to the point of creating "dark beans". The beans create thick dark crema without fail using my Gaggia Evloution espresso maker and Solis Maestro burr grinder. As to taste, this roast is perfect for the straight up espresso shot (short black as I discovered on my recent trip to New Zealand); there is no hint of bitterness, and in fact the flavor is quite sweet. Because of this you want to be sure not to overwhelm the flavor when using the beans to make your favorite espresso-based milk beverages.

So these are definitely an excellent roast to add to your line up.

My next taste test is going to be of Illy's medium roast espresso beans. I just ordered 6 8oz cans from the Illy website for $72 (free ground shipping), so about twice the price of the Victrola beans! I have had Illy quite often in New Zealand coffee shops, but they are not common in coffee shops in the United States. Let's see if they are twice as good...

I made mention to my Gaggia espresso machine and Solis grinder above. I just realized that they are both about 2 years old now, and they have turned out an average of 3 double-shots of espresso per day. Some days a lot more than that when I have guests over. This is definitely the longest trouble-free experience I've had with a domestic espresso machine, and it's still going strong. You can read my reviews of the Gaggia Evolution espresso maker and the Solis Maestro burr grinder.

Do you have an online supplier of espresso beans that you'd like to recommend? If so, let me know by posting a comment below.

Review of Dark Magic Espresso Blend by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

It is several years since I bought coffee beans from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters based in Vermont so I thought I'd give them a taste test. I actually found it hard to locate their espresso roasts, and searching for "espresso" on the site did not appear to return any results. Eventually I found their Dark Magic Espresso Blend by navigating through to their dark roast blends. The beans cost $6.79 per 10oz bag, and I ordered 4 bags.

The three reviews on the site were all positive although one reviewer stated he or she was using the beans for filter coffee, which is surprisingly a suggestion made on the website by GMCR themselves which struck me as a bit odd.

The beans arrived in a timely manner; I chose 2nd day delivery to ensure they arrived fresh. As expected for a dark roast the beans were dark and oily. In using the beans, however, I have found that the beans do not produce much crema despite winding down the grind finer that I would normally. And the taste is unpleasantly bitter so I am rather disappointed. Perhaps I'll do as suggested and use them for filter or French press ("plunger"). Meantime, my personal favorite continues to be Espresso Vivace Roasteria's "Vita" blend.

See my follow up post Does Green Mountain Coffee Roasters censor negative reviews of their coffee beans?

Espresso Vivace Coffee Roasters

Espresso Vivace Rosteria Cafe Seattle

Here are reviews of Espresso Vivace Rosteria Cafe in Seattle from Yelp. This is the place from which I currently buy my espresso coffee beans online from their website. Next time I'm in Seattle I've got to check them out. I was turned on to their coffee beans when a friend in Seattle gave me a bag of their beans as a gift. Anyone out there been to the cafe? And has anyone started buying their beans on my recommendation? How are you finding them? I highly recommend their Vita espresso roast.