Revel Coffee - Revel Espresso Blend

About two weeks ago Revel Coffee started selling here on Roaste, and I my interest was piqued by this little roaster. When I say little this is a little operation out Billings MT. Yes I said Montana, not exactly the place you would expect to find good quality coffee roasted to order, but alas here it is.

Just to show how little the operation is here is a picture of the coffee shop from Revel Coffee's website below:

http://www.revelcoffee.com/_/rsrc/1327191595045/location/kiosk.JPG?height=300&width=400" border="0" align="absBottom" width="400" height="300" />

As you can see from the photo above it's more koisk than it is actual shop. This is fine and is exactly the sort of thing that is up my alley because I really enjoy finding things that are not in the places you would think, i.e. this is a long way from San Fransico.

What really struck me about this operation is that it was founded by a guy who just started out as a kid roasing for fun at home here is a blurb from his webside:

"Revel coffee had its beginnings with a fifteen year old putting unroasted coffee in an oven.  After a kitchen full of smoke, an unimpressed mother told him to take it outside.  Things have progressed from the oven to popcorn poppers to air roasters to a small commercial drum roaster ... various methods with years of trial and error experience that cannot be bought."

So I ordered a bag of the espresso blend.

I like ordering blends because I find they tend to be pretty well balanced in comparison to SOs and since I had a new machine coming in the mail at the time I knew I was going to need a lot of espresso. That being the case I used the whole bag on espresso when I normally make a little drip/pour over too.

I found this blend to be very solid over all, it was more in that sweet carmel type of blend as oppose to a big bad chocolate blend. It was very pleasant and did well with my drinking style, Americanos and short milk drink < 5 ounces of milk.

I found that working for about 16.5 grams, at about 200 degrees (shooting for on my part) and about 30 grams of liquid to be a good point for me. This brought out that sweet flavor with a little bit of spice/slight citrus.

This was a really competent blend and I look forward to trying out some more coffees from this roaster in the future.

It should be noted to those that care it was just backed in a wax lined paper bag, obviously due to the small nature of the operation. On par with Deep Cello in that department.