Espresso Beans Vs Coffee Beans!
What are the best espresso beans?

Important Pro Tip 

It's espresso, not expresso, don't let a coffee aficionado or your local barista catch you pronouncing an X sound or you'll never hear the end of it!

What makes an espresso shot, an espresso shot?

An Espresso shot is created by forcing pressurized, near boiling water through very tightly packed and finely ground beans. The high pressure extracts the oils from the coffee beans into the shot and also enables a quicker brewing process.

You've probably also heard the term crema thrown around. Crema is the light brown, frothy layer that often sits on the top of an espresso. The crema consists of a subset of lighter oils that have been extracted from the coffee beans during the brewing process. The specific beans used and the exact extraction parameters are optimized to produce a desirable crema!

At the end of the day, Espresso simply refers to the process whereby a highly concentrated liquid is produced via a pressurized hot water extraction process.

Espresso Beans Vs Coffee Beans...

While it is true that any coffee bean can be used as an espresso coffee bean, you should keep in mind that the output will be highly concentrated! The best coffee beans for espresso typically exhibit a high level of sweetness and low level of acidity, but this is by no means a hard and fast rule! 

The taste and experience of an espresso shot is often very different as compared to a cup of coffee made by the same beans through a different brewing process. You may notice things that you did not previously pick up on at all!

In conclusion, the best espresso beans to make the perfect espresso coffee for you are probably some of your favorite beans that you use for regular coffee! Experiment with single origins, blends, and if you dare, try making your own blend! The possibilities are endless.

Myth: The best espresso beans are darkly roasted beans.

This is quite simply not true. It is common for espresso coffee brands to be darker roasts, as the acidic content is typically lower and sweetness from the roasting process is present.

Darker roasts may represent the safest bet to avoid a sour result caused by highly concentrated acidic content. There are plenty of medium and light roasts that translate very well into espresso coffee.

Best Espresso Beans

While we highly encourage you to experiment for yourself, here what we feel to be 4 of the best coffee beans for espresso to get you started. You can't go wrong with these! Click View Profile for a detailed look at each coffee!

And that's that, we hope that you learned something! What are your favorite espresso beans? Let us know, we're always excited to try a new shot!

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