Diamine 150th Anniversary ink: Espresso (40 mL)

Espresso is the colour of the coffee in the cup, not that of the foam (crema) that sits on top of the coffee like RO Caffe Crema’s colour. Of the 20+ browns I own, Espresso reminds me of Iroshizuku Yama-Guri. It is darker—or greyer—than Diamine x Cult Pens Deep Dark Brown.

It’s quite saturated, flows well out of wet pens without feeling neither watery nor lubricating. I’ve had some flow issues in average or stingy flowing pens, as the ink felt thin under the nibs. For such a dark and saturated ink, I’m surprised that I was able to get shading, depending on the pen and paper combos used. It dries to a flat finish without looking chalky, and has some black sheen outline at the edge of heavily saturated areas where the ink pools.

It’s readable from all my nib widths, from Sailor H-EF to H-B, on 1911L and S alike. It’s also dark enough to be used on lined, grid or dot paper because it covers the ink used for ruling, with one exception: on my Apica CD Premium notebooks, the ink used for the different rulings repels Espresso, like it repels other fountain pen inks; it’s a shame because I like how Espresso looked on that paper, but no harm no foul, since I like taking notes most with the H-MF nib on white plain paper.

Together with Diamine 150th Anniversary Tudor Blue and Lilac Night, these are my three favourite inks of that 16-ink collection.