Las Marías Espresso (Workshop Coffee)

Workshop Coffee’s Las Marías Espresso is a specialty coffee from Nicaragua. It’s an interesting combination of cassis (black currants) and damson (plums) notes with dark chocolate. It is roasted on the darker side, which may be a good choice for those who are just beginning their journey with specialty coffee.

Being a darker roast it wants to be tamped on the heavy side to make sure that you get that 36g of espresso out of 18g of ground Las Marías beans within the customary 24s to 30s. (Tamping controls compaction of coffee and the harder you tamp coffee, the slower the flow of water will be.)

In my own tests, grinding at setting 3 would produce a more acidic beverage than doing it at setting 2 or 1. Setting 1 seems to be optimal for this one, if you want to enjoy nicely defined fruity notes. Interestingly, dark chocolate, so often dominant in many coffees that list it amongst their notes, is never massively pronounced and seems to always take the back stage. What it seems to be doing is tapering off the acidity in a way that is rarely found in other coffees.

MIXING WITH MILK

If you mix it with milk, use setting 1 for a tasty, fruity concoction.

WHERE TO BUY

Las Marías Espresso is available in the UK from the Workshop Coffee’s online shop.

EQUIPMENT

• Coffee grinder: Sage (Breville) Smart Grinder Pro

• Espresso machine: Sage (Breville) Bambino Plus