Why I Started Roasting Coffee for Espresso

The coffee side of Bee & Brew started because of one espresso I had in Italy.

I was visiting my grandparents' village and we walked into this little coffee roaster. He had his roaster and espresso machine set up side by side.

Pretty much the same way ours are set up now.

I ordered an espresso and I remember tasting it and immediately thinking, this is what espresso is supposed to taste like.

It had body. It had texture. Chocolate, caramel, good sweetness.

That cup stuck with me and when I got home I started looking for it again.

I couldn't find it.

I kept chasing that espresso

I tried plenty of coffee and plenty of espresso after that.

There was a lot of good coffee around, but I kept coming back to that cup I had in Italy.

A lot of modern specialty coffee had gone much lighter than what I was looking for. More acidity, more fruit, lighter body.

There is nothing wrong with that style of coffee.

It just wasn't what I wanted.

I wanted traditional espresso.

Something with body and texture. Something that tasted good straight but still had enough backbone for a cappuccino or Americano.

Eventually I realized that if I wanted that espresso, I was probably going to have to learn how to make it myself.

So I started roasting coffee.

That's where Rustic Roast came from

Rustic Roast is our signature espresso blend at Bee & Brew.

The goal with it is pretty simple.

I want good body, good sweetness, chocolate and caramel, with enough roast character that it tastes like traditional espresso without just tasting burnt or bitter.

Getting that balance right is harder than it sounds.

Too light and I lose the body and character I'm looking for.

Push it too far and all you taste is roast.

So we keep working on it.

We change the blend. We change the roast. We pull shots. We taste them. Then we go back and adjust it again.

That's one of the things I like most about roasting our own coffee.

The roaster and espresso machine belong together

One thing I still remember about that little shop in Italy was seeing the roaster and espresso machine sitting beside each other.

Now ours are too.

That wasn't really planned as some kind of tribute. It just ended up making sense.

We roast the coffee here and then walk it over to the espresso machine and see what it actually does in the cup.

If something isn't right, I can change the grind or change the extraction.

But I can also go back to the roaster and change the coffee itself.

For me, those two things belong together.

The roast doesn't matter if the espresso isn't good.

And the espresso machine can't fix coffee I don't like.

Why we use a lever machine

We pull our espresso on a Profitec Pro 800 spring lever machine.

There are easier ways to make espresso.

We use the lever because I like what it does in the cup.

The pressure naturally changes through the shot, and with the kind of coffee we roast, I think it gives us the body and texture I'm looking for.

It also doesn't hide much.

If the grind is wrong, you know it.

If the coffee isn't behaving the way you want, you know it.

That makes it a really useful machine when you're also the one roasting the coffee.

I'm still chasing that cup

I'm not trying to perfectly copy one espresso I drank years ago in Italy.

I probably couldn't even if I wanted to.

What stuck with me was what espresso could be.

That cup gave me a direction.

And I'm still chasing it.

Every time we change Rustic Roast, change something on the roaster or pull another shot, that's really what I'm working toward.

Traditional espresso with body, sweetness, chocolate, caramel.

If you're in Fort Worth, come by Bee & Brew and try it.

I'll pull you one.