Coffee

I buy medium-dark roasts for espresso, and pay attention to a proper extraction ratio.

I've moved countries 10 times now, and one brand that is consistently available across the globe is Borbone Blu. They are not exactly the number 1 beans out there, but easily an 8.5/10 overall, and really exported globally from Italy.

Here's one seller I found in the US, but it's literally the first hit on google, so I'm sure there will be more if you keep looking: https://piazzamercanti.com/products/borbone-espresso-beans

Of my rotation of brewers, I find myself enjoying the coffee that I get out of my cucumella, the Neapolitan flip over brewer, the most.

Intense, rich flavor from just about any kind of dark roast, even a little viscosity, with a minimum of fuss compared to a moka pot.

My moka pot gives even more intense flavor, but it's just too much work to clean, and takes too long because it actually requires you to boil the water inside it to actually work.

I really, really hate prying the filter funnel out of the moka pot boiler.

So much so that I put a dent along the edge of the funnel so that I can more easily pry the damned thing out, which is something I have to do twice in the brewing process, which gets old really fast.

Get better coffee. Not grocery store brand or Starbucks. Check the roast date - keep it within the past two weeks. Grind your own, don't buy pre-ground.

Try to go with things like light roast, washed processed - more "speciality".

I highly recommend cxffeeblack - I use their Guji Mane for espresso and it's amazing.

Italy uses medium and dark roast coffee beans depending on the regions you were in. Roma, Napoli, Milano, all have diff beans so start there and find similar beans. Then to make it, Espresso is unfiltered, high bar. But at home, Italians use Moka pots which mimics this process. There’s a couple tricks for it (like grind size), but in the end it’s not complex and the taste is there. You can find the Lazzo brand in most stores like Trade Joes, and Lazzo is also common in Italy and also happens to be made for Moka pots.

Source: I lived there for a while and love espresso but don’t care to go through so many hoops to make it. I promise you, Italians don’t either.

Trade coffee subscription, single origin light roasts. V60 pouover using James Hoffman's technique. Pretty consistently great coffee!

If your coffee is tasting watery, you probably need to increase your brew ratio. For a drip coffee, you want to be in the range of 1:15-1:18 depending on the bean and personal preference.

If your issue is the body/texture of the coffees here, you might prefer a brew method that doesn't involve paper filters. Something like a moka pot or a french press would be a cheap way to dip your toes into this, and a moka pot brew with water added is probably the cheapest way to get something close to an Americano, which is what I assume you mean by black coffee.

Also, you're going to see people recommending that you buy specialty coffee from a local roaster, but I don't think that should be the first move you make if your goal is recreating your experience in Italy. American third wave coffee has a tendency towards highlighting origin characteristic and bright tones, which don't lend themselves toward getting the result I think you're looking for. If you want a roast-forward flavor profile, try using a mass-produced Italian supermarket brand like Illy or Lavazza.

Personally, I'm usually making a cortado with a bit of a longer ratio (1:2.5) to get more punchy fruit flavors out of my roasts. But if I'm evaluating a new bean/tweaking my roast, I'll also brew on a V60/Orea V4 so that I can get a bit more flavor separation and nuance. Also since it's summer, I'll sometimes do a Japanese iced coffee in the afternoons.

Italy cares about their coffee. America views it as just a drug delivery system. These are gross generalizations that contain elements of truth. You can get damn good coffee in the states, but it's not going to bump into you like it will in Italy, you have to seek it out.

light roast pour overs, using trusted local roasters. I agree that coffee at some random restaurant may not be up to par, but if you're making it yourself and it's shitty... that's on you my guy.

In this weather? A big pot of decaf iced pourover.