Recently I entered the Starbucks café located at 118, rue Monge in the 5th arrondissement. My intent was to taste their “espresso of the day,” purchase a 250g bag of the roasted beans, take them home, and then prepare my own espressos with my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine.
Starbucks was serving an espresso made from their light roast, “Espresso Blonde,” but after tasting it I did not find its flavor to be compelling. I then tried a pour-over coffee made from their medium roast, “Pike Place.” I was satisfied with its flavor, so I purchased a 250g bag, took it home, and prepared a few espressos with my 9Barista.
I was not very satisfied with the result: the coffee prepared as an espresso tasted bitter. But when I prepared “Pike Place” as a pour-over coffee, using Melitta paper filters, I was happy with the flavor.
Determined to find a coffee at Starbucks for which I could use my 9Barista, I returned to purchase a 250g bag of the dark roast, Caffè Verona. (It was not being offered as an espresso, so I could not sample it. I made my decision to buy it by reading the tasting note on the side of the bag that promised a “toasty sweet & dark cocoa” flavor.)
Information on the Starbucks’ Website indicates that Caffè Verona is a blend of Latin American and Indonesian beans that have been roasted to a dark brown sheen by a process that they call Italian roast. Information on the bag indicates that the beans are roasted in Amsterdam.
The bag I purchased displayed a production date of August 11, 2025. I bought it on October 6.
Taking the roasted beans home, I proceeded to prepare them as an espresso using my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine (pictured above). For the first few days, I was able to produce an espresso that indeed had a satisfying dark cocoa flavor. After I had consumed about 2/3 of the beans, however, I realized that the flavor had changed over time: from dark cocoa to bitter cocoa to simply bitter.
I’m sure that the change in the flavor profile came about because once a bag of coffee is opened, the beans are exposed to oxygen. This exposure changes their flavor.
I think that the solution to prolonging flavor might be to store the beans in a hermetically-sealed vacuum canister right after opening the bag. There are various options about this on the Internet, which I will explore.
Starbucks
118, rue Monge
Paris 75005
