Drinking it striaght.

This suddenly hit me yesterday as I was drinking my espresso, that I had not made a milk based espresso drink for myself in over a week. I had also had yesterday five shots of espresso and of those only one was an americano, don't worry two of those shots were Deep Cello's Decaf Black Tie Blend. So what's the big deal with drinking straight espresso?

There really is nothing really all that great about drinking espresso, straight it doesn't make you more of a snob or anything of that nature, but it does prove something that I heard right when I started making espresso about a year ago, after a while as your espresso making gets better you be drinking straight espresso more and more. At the time I didn't really think much of this because this was coming from someone on an online forum whose espresso set up is many multiples the price of my first car. So while my espresso set-up is very nice, it's still pretty humble compared to what others have.

I think there is a lot at work here that has made me much more a straight espresso person than I once was. Besides the obvious that my espresso making probably has gotten better over the course of this past year and I have learned how to use my machine to most of it's potential I think a lot of it is just aquired taste. Espresso is a pretty concentrated coffee, and while I do find it to be 'sweet' at time, it's really a relative saying that there are sweet notes amongst the coffee taste, the best way I think I can describe what has occured is probably the way most people go from drinking sweet alcholic drinks to more bitter ones like going from a Long Island Ice Tea as your favorite drink to a vodka tonic.

This experience also in a way mirrors how I use to drink my drip coffee, with a touch of half and half. However, as I started buying better coffee and drinking more coffee I found that I was largely drinking my coffee black and only using half/half to cover up bad coffee.

Last but not least I think a little bit has to do with the new cups I got, they are just really nice to drink out of compared to my bodum espresso cups that I have. The thick porcelain and handle just make it easier to drink out of than before.