For anyone that read about my incredible water drama with LAMILL’s Ethiopia Wote Konga beans, rest assured that for espresso tastings, I only use bottled water with a maximum of 3 grains hardness… this water has never seen a cremini mushroom. 😉
As I noted in my previous LAMILL review, these beans were not freshly roasted to order, but they were only about a week old when I received them, so they were still quite fresh. LAMILL has several espresso blends available for purchase and I opted for the Bliss Espresso somewhat arbitrarily – I figured with a name like Bliss, it should be good.
Whole bean: fresh aroma… nothing particular stood out, scent-wise, just that it smelled good and refreshing and restorative.
Espresso: I had this pulled both as ristretto and normale shots and they were drinkable all around, but I liked it as a normale shot for the smoothness. The ristretto shots were a bit too intense flavor-wise for my liking, with cherry notes. The standard shots had a great balance of nutty and chocolate flavor and went down easily. They had a bit of an aftertaste of apple juice, which I found unusual, but it brightened up the end of the shot which was nice.
Favorite parameters: I feel like I could have experimented a bit more with these beans, but I enjoyed the shot I pulled at 205 degrees F, 17.5 grams in, 38 grams out, 30 second extraction.
With milk: I rarely drink milk drinks anymore but I braved a sip of a latte of this. I don’t actually think the milk complemented this espresso very well – it brought out some almost sour notes in it, and I didn’t really enjoy the drink. I would stick to consuming this espresso straight.
AeroPress: The beans tasted less complex when brewed in this method, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I think the apple flavor is muted by this method and the chocolate/almond/caramel notes stood out more. Delicious!
Summary: Good espresso for straight shots; less successful in milk drinks.
From the roaster: chocolate, almond, apple, caramel
Review conducted 14-18 days post-roast.