Organic espresso beans, whole bean, in 1 lb bags. USDA Certified Organic, Fair Trade, 100% Arabica, roasted in small batches in Miami, Florida for thick crema and a shot with almost no bitterness.

What makes a bean good for espresso

Espresso is the most unforgiving way to brew coffee. You are pushing water through a compressed puck at nine bars of pressure in under thirty seconds, and every flaw in the bean shows up in the cup. Underdeveloped beans go sour. Scorched beans go bitter and ashy. What you want is a bean roasted to a full, even caramelization of its natural sugars, because those sugars are what carry the body and produce real crema.

Our two picks

Honduras Espresso Roast is our family recipe and the reason people come back. Dark roast, cocoa and dark chocolate with mild earthy tones, rich and low acid, bold without the burnt edge most dark roasts carry.

Brazil Cerrado is the classic espresso base for a reason. Semi washed processing leaves the fruit sugars in the bean, which gives you a heavy, syrupy body and a nutty chocolate sweetness that cuts through milk beautifully.

Dialing it in

Start at 18 g in, 36 g out, 25 to 30 seconds, water at 200°F. If the shot runs fast and tastes sour, grind finer. If it chokes the machine and tastes bitter, grind coarser. Change one variable at a time and give fresh beans two or three days off the roast before you judge them, since very fresh coffee off gasses CO2 and can make extraction erratic.

Not just for espresso machines

Espresso roast describes how far we took the roast, not the only way to brew it. Both of these make an excellent moka pot, a rich drip cup and a serious cold brew.