Use naturally dried coffee beans for best tasting espresso at home

When I want to make the best tasting espresso at home, should I use dried coffee beans or washed coffee beans? Expert Italian coffee roasters will almost always recommend using naturally dried coffee beans instead of washed coffee beans because dried coffee beans are naturally sweeter than washed coffee beans. As a result of using dried coffee beans, you will get a naturally sweet espresso at home.

According to expert Italian coffee roasters, there is no need for expensive specialty coffee beans or premium gourmet coffee blends. If you want to have better coffee instead of bitter coffee, Italian coffee roasting experts recommend using dried coffee beans instead of washed coffee beans. In addition, Expert Italian coffee roasters will recommend using dried coffee beans from small farmers in larger coffee producing countries.

Most importantly though, any expert Italian coffee roaster will advise you to use freshly roasted coffee beans if you want to make the best espresso at home. A fresh roast is roasted within the past 8 days and never older than 14 days past roasting. Using dried coffee beans instead of washed coffee beans is better when you apply expert Italian coffee roasting. During the extended profile of an expert Italian coffee roast, the dried beans will release more of their natural sweetness. Asa result, you will be able to enjoy the best tasting espresso at home.

What is Peak Flavor Coffee?

We noticed that coffee in Italy always seems to taste better. This is because Italian coffee is freshly roasted with dried coffee beans. Freshly roasted coffee reaches best or "Peak Flavor” on days 8-14 after the fresh roast. Compare this to coffee from the grocery store, which is often >120 days old. Peak Flavor Coffee taste can only be achieved by a local roaster, who uses dried coffee beans and focuses on small batch coffee roasting. You will get best or Peak Flavor Coffee at home if your local roaster roasts your order on demand and delivers a fresh roast to you within days.

But there are some additional things that expert Italian roasters do to make sure their espresso tastes better, not bitter. Italian roasters use naturally dried coffee beans from smaller farmers in larger coffee producing countries. Importantly though, expert Italian roasters use Italian roasting expertise with an extended browning phase to make all that natural sugar in the coffee beans come out and caramelize, so you can taste the natural sweetness in your home-made espresso. Italian roasting is about roasting better coffee, not bitter coffee.

At Peak Flavor Coffee, we are committed to blend with dried, high-altitude coffee beans, roast fresh in small batches, and grind specifically for your home coffee maker. Only when you order. We make sure your order arrives at your doorstep on or before day 8 after we roast for you. This ensures that you can enjoy best tasting coffee or Peak Flavor Coffee from your home coffee maker. I invite you to try our coffee and taste the difference for yourself.

Melicent

I want better espresso, not bitter espresso. I want my espresso with natural sweetness instead of added sugar. I want my espresso with mildness instead of bitterness or acidity. I want my cappuccino to be creamy from the naturally occurring oils in coffee beans. I do not want creaminess from added milk-fat or artificial flavors.

Introduction

I have tried many things to get best tasting espresso at home. But somehow, I still find that espresso in Italy always tastes better. Instead of using my home espresso machine, I often go out to expensive coffee shops to have a professional barista make my cappuccino for me. But I often end up with small amounts of coffee and lots of milk or other ingredients in my cappuccino.

My coffee shop espresso or cappuccino often needs sugar, lactose free milk, milk-fat, soy, artificial sweetener, or chemical flavors to mask the burnt or bitter notes of the local coffee shop’s roast. 

When I decided to buy specialty beans or gourmet coffee at the grocery store, I noticed that supermarket coffee is not freshly roasted. In fact, I noticed that supermarket coffee is often more than 120 days old. And when I end up buying an expensive specialty coffee blend at the supermarket it often brews coffee that is bitter and acidic. Reading some of the specialty coffee labels makes me wonder if “fruity taste” rather means sour or acidic.

I wish there was a coffee that makes it easy to make best tasting coffee at home without being expensive. I wish there was an espresso in America that would make best tasting espresso at home easy, like indulgent Italian espresso or cappuccino. Why can Italians enjoy indulgent, good-value cappuccino at home whilst we have bitter, old supermarket coffee?

That’s why I went in search of how to blend and roast for naturally sweet coffee. That is why I wanted to know if I should use dried or washed coffee beans to get the best tasting espresso at home.

Read on and discover why expert Italian roasters use dried coffee beans instead of washed coffee beans to make the best tasting espresso.

Expert Italian roasters select naturally dried beans instead of industrially washed beans because dried coffee beans have more natural sweetness.

Natural coffee beans or dried beans are “natural” because the drying takes place in the coffee cherry before the coffee beans are de-pulped. Natural dried coffee bean processing allows for natural fermentation in the cherry-fruit, which helps develop natural sweetness in the coffee beans. This natural drying process is mostly used by smaller coffee farmers in the mountains at higher elevations to ensure that their higher quality beans deliver superior taste.

Compared to industrially washing of coffee beans, natural coffee bean drying process allows for the development of significantly more fructose and sucrose. As a result, naturally dried coffee beans can release more sweetness and caramelization during the browning phase of expert Italian coffee roasting. In terms of delivering sweetness, naturally dried beans are superior in comparison to washed coffee beans. Naturally dried coffee beans can deliver natural sweetness to your home coffee. Using naturally dried coffee beans, you don’t have to use much sugar or artificial flavor to mask acidity or bitterness that usually comes from industrially washed coffee beans

Washed coffee beans or industrially washed beans, on the other hand, are mostly used by larger coffee brands and large coffee producing organizations. The main reason why large coffee brands use industrially washed beans is to save cost and time.

Industrial washing allows larger coffee brands and supermarket coffees to use more beans from lower altitudes, which are cheaper and less developed in terms of sweetness. Another important reason for large coffee brands to use industrially washed beans is to purchase large coffee bean amounts in bulk to avoid complex flavor blending. Washing coffee beans causes the coffee beans to become lighter-bodied with more acidity, more bitterness and less natural sweetness.

At Peak Flavor Coffee, we don’t use washed beans because acidity is exactly what we try to avoid. Instead, at Peak Flavor Coffee, we use only naturally dried coffee beans from smaller coffee farmers at higher elevations in the mountains with the aim to bring out their superior amounts of natural sweetness during expert Italian roasting.

Expert Italian roasters use bean blends from larger coffee countries because they have more consistent quality.  

No need for expensive specialty coffee beans or premium gourmet coffee blends. Bean blends from larger origin countries, such as Brazil, Honduras, and Vietnam, are more likely to produce abundant cream for the perfect espresso or cappuccino at home. Coffee bean blends from larger countries are much preferred to the more expensive, rare specialty beans from smaller countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, or Togo. This is because coffee bean harvests from larger coffee countries are fresher and much easier to work with for mere mortals like me. Larger-origin countries also grow more consistent coffee bean harvests of better quality with fewer defects. Columbia and Indonesia also have larger bean harvests with more consistent quality. No wonder, expert Italian roasters prefer coffee bean blends from larger countries.

Italian coffee roasters always use fresh roasted whole beans. A fresh roast is never roasted more than 8 days ago.

Most importantly, your naturally dried, high-altitude coffee beans should be freshly roasted. “Freshly Roasted” means that the roast happened within the last 7 to 8 days. In its handbook for coffee freshness, the Specialty Coffee Association defines fresh roasted coffee as: “roasted within the past 8-14 days”.

Once the expert roaster has done his (or her) roasting, roasted coffee beans need to rest for about seven days to develop their full flavor and get rid of excess gasses. This coffee bean resting process is called de-gassing. On day eight to fourteen after roasting, coffee reaches its best or Peak Flavor. Between day eight and day fourteen after roasting is therefore the best time to use the freshly roast whole beans to make best tasting coffee at home

Expert Italian coffee roasters have no problem indicating the roasting date prominently on the front of their packaging. In fact, if you ask me, you should never buy a coffee brand that does not have a roasting date prominently displayed on the front. How else will you know when the coffee was roasted? And how else can you choose a fresh roast?

Roast freshness is the single most important “ingredient” in making best tasting home coffee. Getting freshly roasted coffee at your home is difficult. On Average, most coffee packs on the grocery shelf, are 120 days past their roasting date. These “old” coffee beans make it difficult to get perfect coffee taste at home. Some small, premium specialty and gourmet coffees in the grocery store could be even older because they sell at slower rates and thus sit on the shelf for longer.

You can imagine that old grocery store coffee has lost most of its flavor by that time and turns stale, bitter and rancid. If your roast is not fresh, it is impossible to make best tasting coffee at home.

Typical Italian roasting has an extended browning phase during which your coffee develops its natural sweetness and mildness.

There is a reason why Italian espresso is generally considered the best espresso in the world. Besides always being freshly roasted and using sweeter, dried coffee beans from larger coffee producing countries, Italian coffee roasting brings out natural sweetness and more taste.

To do this, you don’t need expensive specialty beans or premium coffee from origin countries you have never heard of. Using expert Italian coffee roasting methods, you can make any coffee bean deliver natural sweetness and mildness, no matter it’s origin. We use Italian coffee roasting for the best espresso at home.

Expert Italian coffee roasters extend the browning phase or “natural sweetness phase” of the roasting process. Generally, there are three phases in any coffee roast. During the first roasting phase, green coffee beans lose their humidity until there is none left. The end of this phase is called “dry end”. 

In the second phase of expert Italian coffee roasting, coffee beans start to turn color from green to brown. The reason for browning is called the “maillard reaction”, a well-known process whereby sugars (carbohydrates) caramelize and turn brown. Caramelization is the reason why your coffee beans are brown. If this process is rushed, the beans will acquire a burnt taste.

If this second phase of the roasting process is extended, like during expert Italian coffee roasting, more caramelization takes place and the coffee will acquire natural sweetness. If you use dried beans with more sweetness to begin with, your caramelization in this second phase will be better and it becomes easier to roast with natural sweetness.

In the third phase of Italian coffee roasting, the expert Italian coffee roaster will roast well beyond “first crack”. This will release the natural coffee oils, which contain most flavor and aroma. In this third and last roasting phase, the beans become gradually darker. This darkening is what most coffee amateurs in the USA speak about, when they talk about light, medium or dark roasts.

Summary:

Expert Italian roasters recommend using a blend of naturally dried instead of washed beans. If your coffee beans are naturally dried instead of industrially washed, they will contain more natural sugars. Expert Italian roasters find it easier to deliver naturally sweet espresso from dried coffee beans.

Once you have secured dried coffee beans, always make sure you use a fresh roast. A fresh roast is never roasted more than 8 days ago. Italian roasting applied to dried coffee beans will extend the browning phase for more natural sweetness to come out into your coffee.

Try Peak Flavor Coffee for yourself and indulge in the best tasting espresso at home.  

Melicent