Diamine Espresso (150th Anniversary II)

[namrehsnoom]

Diamine Espresso (150th Anniversary II)

 

The ink maker from Liverpool is one of the staple brands in ink-land. They consistently produce solid inks for a very reasonable price. In 2017, Diamine released their second ink series to commemorate their 150th Anniversary. I obtained my set shortly thereafter, but more or less forgot about them when my attention drifted to Japanese inks. About time to do the reviews. Fortunately, these anniversary inks are still easily obtainable, so if you like what you see you can still get them.

 

The ink’s name was well chosen – Diamine Espresso is a fairly dark cool brown, definitely not a latté. Espresso can handle all types of papers and all nib sizes equally well. Good flow and lubrication – in that respect a typical Diamine ink. Being a dark brown, the ink shows good contrast even with the extra-fine nibs. It also looks quite serious and businesslike, which makes it a perfect choice for use at the office. Nothing exceptional, but more of an all-round workhorse that you can depend on.

 

The ink itself is on the wet side: combine it with wet pens, and you get a deeply saturated line of very dark – almost black - brown. With dry pens, lighter brown tones appear, and you also get that subtle shading that gives some extra punch to your writing. Personally, I prefer this Espresso in combination with a dry pen – it just looks better. Espresso can handle all types of paper, even the lower quality ones. That’s a good thing for use at the office, where you usually need to cope with that lower-quality copy & printing paper.

To illustrate the colour span of this Diamine ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Espresso has a fairly small colour span, with low contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to soft shading when writing with dry pens. With wet pens, the increased saturation means that you lose most of the shading – there is just not enough distinction left between light & dark parts on the strokes. 

 

On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved well. There is smearing, but the text itself remains crips and clear. Water resistance is only so-so: most of the dyes disappear, but a faint-brown ghost image of your original writing remains, which is still readable with some effort.

 

I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you:

• An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip
• 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation
• An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen
• The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib
• A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib
• Source of the quote, written with a wet Gazing Far tm2 pen with M-nib
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari)

The multi-paper writing test shows that Diamine Espresso interacts well with all paper types. It’s surprisingly good with crappy paper – like Moleskine – with only minimal feathering, and just a tiny amount of bleed-through. Use it with a fine-nib EDC pen (like a Kaweco), and you’ve got a great office ink. Drying times are mostly in the 10-15 second range, with some increases to 25 seconds on very hard-surfaced paper (like the Tomoe River and Kobeha GRAPHILO).

 

Because scans don't always capture an ink's colour and contrast with good precision, I also add a photo to give you an alternative look on this Diamine ink. In this case, both scan & photo capture the ink well. The photo seems to give the best colour indication.

 

Writing with different nib sizes
The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a TWSBI Micarta v2 with F-nib, and a Pelikan M800 with F-nib. As you can see: not much shading going on. It’s mostly with the calligraphy nibs that the whole saturation spectrum is used, ranging from light to dark brown, with some expressive shading as the result.

 

Related inks
To compare Diamine Espresso with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Espresso manages to look different from my other browns of the same style.  It sits somewhere between iroshizuku yama-guru (more gray) and Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz (more yellow).

 

Inkxperiment – a Day at the Races
As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. For me, that’s where the fun starts: I really like playing and experimenting with my inks in a more creative context. These little one-ink drawings are always a great way to push my creativity. I love doing them! 

 

A major news event this week was the passing away of Queen Elizabeth of England. During her life, she got to experience the rapid technological progress of the past century. Which, if you think about it, has been truly amazing. Elizabeth also loved her horses, and especially the Royal Ascot Races. A horse race drawing would have been awesome, but that’s beyond my capabilities. But cars I can draw, so that’s what you’ll get.  

 

I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercoulor paper. I penciled in the outlines of the drawing, and used water diluted ink for the background. I then used Q-tips and multiple water-ink ratios to draw the grandstand, and added the audience with my fountain pen. Finally I used a piece of cardboard dipped in pure Espresso to draw the checkered flag pattern. Final touches to the drawing were done with my B-nib Lamy Safari.  Espresso worked better than expected in this more artistic context. I had not expected that much variation in contrast, but with some water added you can coax a lot of brown tones from this Diamine ink.

 

Inkxpired – computational art
I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper.

Starting from the car race inkxperiment, I cropped the drawing to a square form, and applied a filter that adds some green/red tones to the drawing. The resulting colours work well for this racing theme, and the result is a bit more expressive than the original inkxperiment. 

 

Conclusion
Diamine Espresso is a saturated cool & dark brown, that works well with all nib sizes and with all types of papers. Not a very expressive writing ink (my opinion), but a good all-round workhorse that is a very fine choice for an EDC pen that sits in your pocket. In a more artistic context, it worked much better than expected. With some water dilution, you can coax a wide range of brown tones from Espresso, that combine really well together. 

Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib

 

Backside of writing samples on different paper types

 

 

[Misfit]

Such an excellent and timely review. I’m getting a bottle of this for my birthday in a little over a week. I do like brown inks. I think when my Pelikan Cafe Creme is empty, this ink will be in it next. 

[InkyColors]

Wonderful review!  I had a hard time deciding between this one and Diamine Macassar. I bought Macassar (love it) but this one looks good too. I wonder if they’re different enough to “need” both!

[LizEF]

Great review, @namrehsnoom!  I find that the more I'm exposed to brown inks, the more I like them.  And your comparisons are very helpful in confirming that this is neither red-leaning nor green-leaning, just brown.  It's gone onto my list of inks to sample when I run out ().  Looking forward to 2024...

 

Thanks as always for sharing your art experiments!  In my mind's eye, I'm seeing the Queen's horses under the hood of that car.

[mizgeorge]

Thank you @namrehsnoom as always for such a fab review. I loved the artwork too,

 

This is an ink I use a lot - in fact I think it was the first of the anniversary inks that I got, and along with Silver Fox remains a real favourite.

 

I particularly like it for sketching, but enjoy writing with it as well - especially if diluted by about 25% to bring it into my real comfort zone.

 

Fab. Just fab.

 

 

[Frank C]

Thanks for posting this very thorough review. I like dark brown ink. Very nice.

[yazeh]

Great review as usual 

It's pity it has no water resistance, because it's truly a very tempting colour.... 

I also enjoyed the inkexperiment. Lots of horsepower

 

 

 

 

[InesF]

Thank you @namrehsnoomfor this comprehensive review!

As always, it's a pleasure to read your review text and to absorb the mood of your drawing!

I almost regret that brown is not among my favourite colours ....🤫

[PithyProlix]

Thanks for another great review! The copious amount work you must put into your reviews is greatly appreciated, especially because they give such a great 'feel' for the ink. Brown inks are some of my favorites, I don't have this ink, and it's one of the Diamines I'm most interested in so I really appreciate the review. And it's turned out to be really useful for me.

 

I have to admit that, especially seeing it next to some of the other inks I have (like Stone Road and Ochiguri-iro) or don't have but I'm interested in (like Yama-guri and Swan Illusion), it's not exciting me much. I don't think it's unattractive - it just doesn't seem all that interesting to me. Perhaps it could benefit from dilution or a dryer pen. And it looks more like milk chocolate to me than it does of espresso - nothing inherently wrong with that - it's only a psychological thing because I like espresso but really don't like milk chocolate very much. 😉

[Loke]

Wow, thanks for the detailed review namrehsnoom, much appreciated!

[rudyhou]

👍 looks like a nice daily brown. 

[Intensity]

I've almost bought this ink a few times now.  It's very intriguing.  Instead I own and absolutely love Iroshizuku Yama-Guri (happy to see a direct comparison to that one in the review!) and Dominant Industry Winter Wood; both in that similar cool dark brown family.  Both look more interesting than Espresso to me.

 

Thank you, namrehsnoom, for your incredible reviews.

(Actually I've been trying to remember what ink review you had a quote about witches in...   It intrigued me at the time, but I forgot to note down the book name.)

[inkstainedruth]

I need to stop reading these reviews -- I have too much ink already.  But this one DOES look nice (and just different enough from both Edelstein Smoky Quartz and Iroshizuku Yama-guri).  

@InkyColors -- I have Macassar and it's a lot darker brown than this one appears to be.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[namrehsnoom]

16 hours ago, Intensity said:

(Actually I've been trying to remember what ink review you had a quote about witches in...   It intrigued me at the time, but I forgot to note down the book name.)

Witches? That must have been the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett.

[Intensity]

1 hour ago, namrehsnoom said:

Witches? That must have been the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett.

Ohh!  Could be yes, I will check it out.  Thank you!

[InkyColors]

On 10/6/2022 at 5:17 PM, inkstainedruth said:

I need to stop reading these reviews -- I have too much ink already.  But this one DOES look nice (and just different enough from both Edelstein Smoky Quartz and Iroshizuku Yama-guri).  

@InkyColors -- I have Macassar and it's a lot darker brown than this one appears to be.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

I think I'm going to pass on this one and stick with Macassar.  I love it and don't really need another brown.  If you buy it I'd love to see a side by side comparison.

[Quadratus]

Thank you for this review- one of the most comprehensive and thorough ink reviews I have ever seen!  Happily I had a bottle of Diamine Espresso in the cupboard lying unused. I have now inked up a pen with that wonderful ink to remedy that omission!