Next Roasted Espresso 11/10: Sweet Maria's Liquid Amber Blend

I wanted an espresso blend that was potent, sharp, intense enough in flavor to cut through steamed milk, but clean enough in flavor profile to work as a straight espresso shot. I wanted it also to be complex and hint at all of those tastes, and more. Here's the product of a lot of overly-caffeinated days of experimentation: the Liquid Amber Espresso Blend. It is named for the rich color and multitude of crema it produces. The blend was fairly complex to come up with ... after I found the general tastes I wanted, emerging from aroma and first sip through the very long aftertaste (if I don't cleanse my palate with water I will taste this coffee for a very......long.....time) I needed to play with the exact percentages. The specific blend, hey ... it is my secret! But I will tell you that the 5 coffees that really worked toward the flavor goal I imagined ended up surprising even me! We've refined the recipe over the year, and at the moment, there's a washed Central, wet-hulled Indonesia, a monsooned coffee, and even a modicum of quality Robusta. And to keep this a mystery, the blend contains some coffees not on our list. I admit this is a pretty wacky blend by the current fashion in espresso toward lighter-roasted and acidic coffees; it's downright dated really. But it works in its own way. Some emphasis here is on the physical character of the espresso, hence the use of the monsooned coffee, which has properties in terms of crema that no other coffee possesses. Even in cupping the dynamics of the foam/bubbles are clearly different from other coffees due to the changes in the bean from the monsoon processing technique.