Testing a blend from a local, norwegian roaster

Saturday was a strange day for me, as I left Trondheim after living there more or less since 1995. But I´m out of work, applying for a new job. I have bought a brand new apartment in Oslo, which will be ready in november-december. I will move to Oslo soon, but right now I´m staying in a very small place, Hundorp, just north of Lillehammer. There are no cafés around here, but I have installed my Elektra in the kitchen, no need saying.

The day I was moving out, I checked my letter box one final time, and I was thrilled to find a very unexpected postal parcel. It contained espresso coffee -one bag of freshly roasted coffee from Skien Kaffebrenneri! How nice -thank you! The roaster, Håvard Larsen, has been reading this blog. He thought I would like to test one of his espresso blends on the Elektra Micro Casa a Leva. The best coffee one can have is when it is roasted just a few days ago, at its peak of taste potential. This is when it has finished resting, some 4-5 days after roasting. Maybe it reaches its peak even later than that. It is a fine thing to know which day the coffee was roasted :-)

Skien Coffee Roaster roast mostly for local cafés. It is something genuine about having a local roaster, delivering one or more unique blends, even giving cafés an opportunity to have their own blend. The freshness a local roaster can deliver is another great advantage. They use a gas fired drum roaster, with a capacity of 2-5 kilos. Very few places in Norway are lucky to have local "mini"-roasters, Oslo is of course one of them, Skien another.

The blend contains some robusta. I don´t know other details about the blend, except the beans are all dry processed, enhancing body and crema and therefore often chosen as the main ingredient (base) in espresso blends.

The blend is very good with the Elektra. First, I had some problems finding the correct grind, as the optimum grind seem to be a lot coarser than other blends I´ve tested. This is a characteristic of the freshness of these beans. Older beans need a finer grind because they lose water. Since these are very fresh beans they can be ground pretty coarse. I will do some experimenting with the dose and the tamp later.

There´s a lot of nice looking crema produced, medium dark brown with darker spots and some tiny bobbles in it. I can´t include a picture at the moment, but I will do that later. The taste has a noticable sweetness and is not at all affected by robusta characteristics. It seems to contain a balanced amount of robusta. I will emphasize the good mouthfeel this blend has. That´s a hard-to-describe sensation of the coffees density and viscosity. As with all coffees coming out of the Elektra, a clean taste is a characteristic, and I´m getting more and more used to it and I appreciate it now. I don´t associate with berries, chocolate, spice, earthiness or anything that is easy to describe, but I will say the coffee is very balanced, harmonious, with a crisp acidity. I must work with my taste vocabulary...and with my tasting skills! But I appreciated this coffee very much :-) I will try this espresso blend in cappuccinos very soon, it might be suitable with milk too.