La Colombe Nizza Medium Roast Whole Bean Coffee – 12 Ounce , 1 Pack – Notes of Milk Chocolate, Nuts & Browniewith a Honey-Sweet Roasted Nuttiness

My ‘house espresso’ blend
A few years ago I handled an arbitration in Manhattan and ended up living at the Tribeca Grand hotel. That turned out to be a short stroll away from a very comfortable La Colombe café, where I satisfied my espresso habit for a few months. Nizza is the blend the La Colombe cafés use for the standard espresso pull.While I have tried dozens of single origin and blended beans for espresso at home, Nizza has been my ‘house blend’ since then. Until recently, I ordered direct from La Colombe, but discovered that amazon will do prime delivery and sells the 24 ounce format for less than buying direct. I’ve ordered dozens of times now; never have I received ‘old’ coffee, ground coffee instead of beans, or less coffee than I paid for.I drink straight shots, pulled from an ECM Synchronika, ground in an ECM V-Titan grinder. My wife drinks her espresso with milk. Each of us goes through two or three 20 gram dose/40 gram pulls a day.Nizza is NOT ‘very dark roast’ as some have said here. It is a Full City to Full City+ roast, well before the beans begin to get oily and turn toward black. The Nizza flavor profile is exactly what I look for in my straight shots: dominant tones of creamy milk chocolate and toasted hazelnut, moderate acidity. My wife tells me Nizza goes well with steamed milk — I don’t touch the moo juice, although I have had shots of Nizza marked with a tablespoon or so of foam and that’s a perfect macchiato in my book.I shoot for a 1 gram dose: 2 gram shot ratio, 200F at the brewhead, about 32 to 36 seconds extraction with a few seconds of preinfusion. I use a puck screen to minimize my maintenance needs, along with a stainless steel portafilter, VMS shower screen and VST 22 gram ridgeless portafilter basket. For some reason, I always find it is uncommonly easy to dial in grind, tamp and time with Nizza beans; and I always get a pretty reasonable head of crema. I don’t think there is robusta in the blend, as often is the case with blends from Lavazza and other Italian commercial blends, so you won’t obtain the kind of crema —or the blast of caffeine — you may expect from those.I’m pretty serious about my coffee and have been for about half a century. I see some very negative reviews of Nizza here on amazon and have to wonder whether the reviewers had one of those now and then bad experiences that occur with any product, or with fulfillment of an order — or whether they just don’t have a clue what they’re doing.In any event, I’ve never been disappointed with this blend; or with amazon fulfillment of my order. And at around $20 for 1.5 pound of beans of this quality, buying the 24 ounce format Nizza whole bean coffee from amazon is a very good deal.

Smooth
I enjoyed this coffee even though nothing spectacular jumped out at me. It was smooth and tasty but no particular “notes” came through. I would buy it again but I’ll try some other beans first.

Our favorite way yo start the day with this organic coffee
This coffee is delicious! Its strong enough and has a spectacular taste! If you appreciate fine coffee you will truly enjoy these beans! I love that its organic. We keep trying other brands, so far this is the family favorite!

Do not buy coffee from OCTOS store
La Colombe Nizza coffee is usually delicious, but the package I received from the OCTOS store via Amazon contained beans without the usual aroma. The brewed coffee from my freshly ground beans had a flat stale taste. This item probably was on the shelf for months and the beans lost their flavor. Lesson learned – do not buy coffee from Amazon.

after some initial trouble with the vendor/supplier on Amazon, the product did arrive and I have changed my rating to 5 stars