I'll be happy to answer this as it is a subject near and dear to all coffee roasters claiming to seek and purvey excellence. Your viewpoint on the use of robusta as a major part of a blend (as most Italian roasters do) is flawed from the outset. This is because you will not find any robustas palatable enough to do this with...end of story. The **best** that any robusta can hope to be, is to be as ***NEUTRAL*** as possible because as a general rule it results in wet coffee that is nothing more than woody and very flat indeed with no discernable aroma. It has a strange "woody smell", but not the kind of AROMA displayed by good quality high grown arabicas. The nastier robustas are simply undrinkable by anyone used to drinking any half reasonable arabica. Robustas are generally very high in oil content and caffeine therefore result in a kind of "thick" brew. This certainly may be one reason for adding small amounts of robusta to enhance "Italian style" espresso blends (i.e. to add body) but for the rest of it they may be nothing more than a cheap (to use instead of better quality input in a blend) "filler". If you use good grade arabicas and are proud of it, you dont need to use a filler. Beware my ever present lamet about the "marketing machines" of large roasters. Very often you will find that the blends they pitch into the higher price backets are the ones containing the cheapest ingredients... FRESHNESS to coffee, is like LOCATION is to real estate. It is not a marketing tool, it is a basic, indesputable fact. Would you in Australia buy a loaf of bread baked in Italy and exported to Australia?...Because coffee is not much different. It takes around 7 weeks for the ship to land in port in Oz from Italy. By that stage it's stale stale stale irrespective of the most common forms of packaging used, and the question of packaging is a separate issue on which I can also devote copious quantities of typing... Market dominance by incredibly large companies is related to lots of factors, usuallly none of them having anything to do with ***excellence*** in the product. Caffeine CAN be an EXTREMELY BAD thing. This really IS a subject close to my heart. I live most of my life in the building where we ROAST, blend, package and distribute fresh roasted coffee. I limit myself to very few cups of coffee per day for pleasure, and professionally, sip and spit. A couple of times a year I have to abstain from coffee for a couple of weeks at a time and wean my system off coffee otherwise I suffer the uncontrollable effects of caffeine overdose. This is not pleasant. I know other roasters who after years in the business suffer similar symptoms, and due to the great amount of dust that comes from handling raw coffee (also over a prolonged period) suffer from respiratory complaints or in extreme cases seem to become allergic to coffee. So... Yes caffeine CAN be an EXTREMELY BAD thing, and until you have suffered real caffeine overdose effects you may not understand. Those who brag about caffeine addictions or the craving for caffeine, or their need for "strong" coffee generally do not have much experience. I crave **smooth** full bodied coffee and I can happily do without most of the caffeine once someone comes up with a decaffeinated coffee that doesn't taste or feel any different to the real mccoy (ok so I know I'm living in a fools paradise on this one). I agree with you that "......I think the Local Australian Coffee roasters are coming out with some great coffee blends of which I drink regularly. In saying that though I think they need to be open to new ideas and robusta (in small qualities) maybe a good idea........" This is ofcourse subject to the type of blend desired. On the topic of using robusta as a major portion of a blend...ask yourself why Italians put as much sugar (by volume) into their ristretto as the volume of liquid...it's because the coffee is undrinkable without the masking effect of the sugar. Cheers, FC.
