Review: Drive Coffee Detroit Dark Roast
(2022) When the official coffee supplier of Formula One produced a dark roast coffee with tasting notes of dark chocolate, maple, and cherries, it had to get snatched up. Colorado-based Drive Coffee has roasted some delicious and clean-tasting coffee roasts. Their newer addition Detroit, a dark roast, strives to maintain bean integrity while producing rich dark roast. With winter weather mimicking Detroit (20 degrees F), we brewed up a hefty serving of dark roast to warm up.
Detroit, MI, was once the mighty home of American car manufacturing. In the eighties, Detroit - specifically Ford/ Cosworth - went for the ultimate flex and hosted Formula One with a track that passed Ford’s headquarters. The track was a unique street course often found in American Formula One suggestions. It featured a railroad crossing and a reputation for being a difficult track to endure. Ayrton Senna would win the Detroit Grand Prix a total of three times before its Formula One demise in 1988.
Drive Coffee’s Detroit dark roast attempts to do two things: honor Detroit’s past as a producer of emblematic cars as well as roasting a dark bean that doesn’t taste burnt or appear oily. The lead sled Cadillac, complete with iconic tailfins, adorns the label. Many of the dark roasts in the offices of creakybottombracket.com are blends, but Drive Coffee’s dark roast is a single origin bean from Mexico. Once the coffee was finished brewing, we found the deepest mug on the cupboard and enjoyed the aroma of pouring the coffee out.
The word that immediately came to mind after the first sip was smooth. Some dark roasts are caustic in exchange for a deeper roast, but not Detroit. This single-origin was clean-tasting and delightfully anchored by the chocolatey taste. The lesser flavors of maple and cherry came through at the end to encourage the next sip. Meanwhile it was easy to get carried away with thoughts of Detroit as the blue skies betrayed the low temperature outside. Coming back sip after sip meant the morning was warming and enjoyable.
Being fans of dark roast, especially in the winter, Detroit has stretched the range of Drive Coffee’s options into the longer roasts. It was a roast we were heavily anticipating, especially in the darker days of winter when coffee powers many through the slower days and long nights. With an aroma as inviting as a soft blanket and warmth of a fireplace on a cold winter’s night, Detroit will not stay on the shelf long here; it will get consumed as quickly as it could be brewed. In the meantime, we will anticipate the 2022 Formula One season by queueing up old videos of the Detroit Grand Prix and admire the smoothness of Drive Coffee’s Detroit contrasting Ayrton Senna blasting over railroad tracks in the eighties.
