Description
Tank Coffee Italian Roast is our Italian style espresso blend: two arabicas — Brazil Santos and an Ethiopian Djimma — given weight and a bittersweet finish by Uganda natural robusta. It is roasted for the way Italy drinks coffee: short, sweet and thick, standing up to milk without losing its edge.
Italian style, from a country that grows no coffee
Italy grows not one coffee cherry. The plant only fruits in the tropics, and Italy sits a long way north of the coffee belt — every bean ever roasted in Naples or Trieste arrived by ship. What Italy invented was everything that happened afterwards: the espresso machine, the corner bar, and a roast built to suit a 25-second shot. Italian roasters took coffee darker than the countries that grew it and darker than the countries that drank it as filter — far enough to caramelise the sugars, soften the acidity and leave that familiar bittersweet finish.
That is the tradition this blend follows. It is not an attempt to copy a Milanese roastery; it is the same logic applied to the coffees we buy — a blend and a roast designed so that espresso tastes sweet and full rather than sharp.
Three origins, three jobs
Brazil Santos is the backbone: sweet, smooth and medium-bodied, with the creamy, mellow character that makes Brazilian coffee so easy to drink. It is what gives the blend its roundness.
Ethiopian Djimma, natural processed and sun-dried in the south-west of the country — the region most often called the birthplace of coffee — brings body and sweetness, with cocoa, jammy fruit and a black-tea finish.
Uganda natural robusta is the muscle: bigger body, deeper crema, a nutty, chocolatey weight and a gentle bite that keeps the shot from tasting thin once milk goes in.
Roast level
Italian Roast is roasted darker than anything else in our range — a medium dark roast, taken just before the second crack into the caramelised, bittersweet territory this style is built on. The result is low in sharp acidity, high in body, and at its best as a short espresso or with milk.
Farm info
Brazil: grown in the Brazilian highlands and shipped through the port of Santos, sorted for screen size and cup quality before export. Ethiopia: smallholder plots around Djimma in the south-west, where the cherry is dried whole on raised beds — the natural process that gives the blend its fruit and cocoa. Uganda: smallholder robusta from the west of the country and around Lake Victoria, sun-dried natural and screened for density and size.
Tasting notes
Cocoa, toasted hazelnut, dried fruit and a long bittersweet finish. In milk the chocolate turns to cocoa and caramel; as an espresso it lands sweet up front and bittersweet at the back, exactly where an Italian-style roast should finish.
How to brew it
Espresso: 18g in, 36g out in 25–30 seconds. Stove top / moka: fill the basket level without tamping and take it off the heat as it starts to hiss. Filter and cafetière: it works, but expect a heavier, less bright cup than our lighter roasts.
Grind and size
Available whole bean or ground to order for filter, cafetière, Chemex, Aeropress, espresso or stove top, in 80g, 250g, 500g and 1kg. Subscribe and save on 250g, 500g and 1kg, or start with the 80g taster bag.
Why buy from Tank Coffee
We are a small batch roastery: everything is roasted to order rather than to shelf. If you want to try this blend next to the rest of the world, the Around the World taster pack puts it in a box with three other origins from three other continents.
