Intelligentsia Espresso, Mild Roast Entire Bean Espresso – Natural El Gallo 11 Ounce Bag with Taste Notes of Milk Chocolate, Honey and Cola

Light Coffee, yet Effective!
I absolutely love the label, and from what I read about their other products, I decided to buy this Medium Roast from the company. The beans are very tasty, like perfect basic beans. I grind them myself into a fine powder, and I have to use more than usual to make it as strong as I need it to be. But it works, somehow! It’s better coffee than the store bought stuff. So…. I say get it! It’s also very, very smooth, and tastes nice! Enjoy.

Excellent Espresso (IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT WEIGHT)
Pros:Very complexRichExcellent for doubles and triplesCons:A bit expensiveMerely adequate for singlesOverall:I very much like Black Cat Espresso. I consider it the bar against which other espressos are measured. I like it more than Kicking Horse, Lavazza, and Stumptown. Its flavor profile is very complex. It has its fair share of caramel and chocolate, but it also has a spicy, savory nature to it, and very fruity notes that come out well in singles.This is not a large-scale, homogenized coffee. Different regions and roasts result in different flavors from each bag. Sometimes that spiciness becomes a sort of salty flavor, and the fruits can turn very flowery. It is an easy espresso to make. Even shots that aren’t perfect come out tasting pretty good. It’s also a forgiving blend in that the shots are not prone to channeling.Singles are good, because any good coffee becomes light and toasty in a single, as opposed to the rich, crema-bombs of doubles and triples. Still, this espresso is very much intended for doubles or triples.In drip coffee, it’s alright. And by drip, I mean any immersion process, be it French press, Aeropress, drip, pour-over, etc. The flavors get blown out, with the spices overwhelming the chocolates and caramels and resulting in a coffee that’s not terribly smooth. Of the immersion processes, Aeropress tasted the best, probably because it most closely approximates espresso.Black Cat is a bit expensive, but not terribly so. Especially when one considers the increases in coffee as of late, -even Starbucks Tribute was $14 per pound- the price isn’t crippling, but it is definitely above many other brands. You can save a little money by buying in five-pound bulks on Intellgentsia’s website, but it’s not a good idea to keep coffee beans around for that long when you can just as easily get it fresh.All said, Black Cat is espresso that more often than not finds its way into my machine.UPDATE:Something that I forgot to mention in my initial review is that Black Cat is a very complex blend. That means that cheap stepped grinders WILL NOT grind the coffee correctly for espresso. Some higher-end stepped grinders will do the job, like the Rancilio Rocky, but you’ll want a good, stepless grinder to fine-tune the grind. This is especially important if you have an espresso machine that’s very picky about grind.Finally, this is not a terribly cremariffic espresso, which means to get a good amount of crema out of it, and thus really have a good canvas for latte art, you’re going to have to prepare triples.UPDATE #2 ABOUT WEIGHT:It is very important to realize that the various sellers selling this are NOT SELLING THE SAME PRODUCT. The beans are the same, and most of the sellers are selling freshly-roasted beans. They are selling different weights, though. Need Caffeine is selling one-pound bags (16oz), whereas Trade Concepts and Abernook are selling 12oz bags for the same price.If different sellers than the above mentioned become available, e-mail the seller to ask the weight of the bag. It’s the only way to ensure that you are getting a full pound. This is supposed to be the product page for the full-pound bag. That’s why there is a separate product page for the 120z bag. I am very disappointed in Trade Concepts and Abernook.

3.5… quite good, but too many sour/citrisy flavor notes for my taste
reviews of coffee are clearly subjective as people like different flavors, but I read the label speaking of “dark chocolate, raw sugar and marshmallow” and I was like “sign me up!”. I, however, was not able to taste these flavor notes in my espresso. There were hints of dark chocolate, but i tasked way more lemon and heavy sour flavors. I was able to moderate this someone by using the finest setting on my bean grinder, but it only brought me up to thinking this coffee was ‘so-so’. I think the beans were of a high quality and arrived fresh, so I’m going to try other blends from Intelligentsia with either a medium/dark or dark roast as a comparison.

Great

Actually a really nice coffee, perfect taste