This coffee is brilliant if prepared properly with the right espresso recipe and the beans are used about 2 weeks after the roast date so they have de-gassed sufficiently and they're always stored air tight in the freezer until finished!
When made, I get a very well balanced, smooth, strong taste of chocolate and nuts for my flat whites (6oz cup) using a full cream Lacto free milk. I have a lot of specialty cafe's where I live in London and my housemates think my coffee tastes better than our local cafés, I'm not of the same opinion but I would say almost most of the cafés.
My set up:
I use an upgraded and modified Gaggia Classic with a PID and pressure profiling and a Eureka Specialita grinder. My portafilter has a Pullman 876, 17 to 19g precision basket.
My recipe is:
Dose 17g in aiming for 28 or 29g out with an extraction time of 25 to 28 seconds and my temperature is set to 94 degrees, due to the small boiler it sits about 92.8 during most of the extraction. I also have a 13 second pre infusion phase, 3 sec on to get to 2 bar then off pausing for 10 sec then on again to 9 bar decreasing slowly to 6 bar.
I admit this is obviously a lot of effort and way over the top for most people reading this but the results are well worth it if you are able to do this on your machine, a simple 9 bar shot is what most people can only do and the results are very nice with this too, but a precision basket and a quality grinder with temperature control makes a massive difference not to mention good technique!
Note: a precision basket is a very small price to pay for a very big improvement, I would start here regardless what machine you use.
This coffee is my go to so far due to the flavour profile providing a nice chocolate, caramel and nut taste, I have tried many others but taste is subjective what matters is you can get good results with this single origin consistently. For me its delicious!
