[attaboyjon]

Before we had reasonable espresso in Austin, I had my own PID'd Silvia. I had had good coffee Vivace in Seattle and wanted to replicate it.

But boy was it a lot of work, your home-roasted beans have to be the right freshness, the milk has to be super fresh and your tamping technique has to be spot on.

Now that we have good coffee in Austin I cant see going back to doing it myself.

[adevine]

Meh. I live in Austin, and I have yet to find a shop that makes espresso drinks as well as I do (at least to my taste).

Don't get me wrong, Austin has some great shops. However, I feel like there was such a strong move away from the "burnt Starbucks norm" that all of the good shops feature extremely light roasted coffee that, IMO, doesn't stand up in milk drinks well and is usually way too acidic for me. If you know of a place that serves a great medium-roasted, chocolatey/nutty cappuccino, would like to find it!

[jowiar]

Much like there was a "hop escalation" in IPAs, there's definitely been a "sour escalation" in coffee. It's fallen off a bit in recent years, but around 2012, it was bad (I'm looking at you, Intelligentsia!).

Roasters became accustomed to the sourness of the coffee, to make each new coffee taste "right", they had to make it more, and more sour. For those of us who didn't consume coffee in quite the volumes of the professionals, it didn't go over well.