I have a guy that owns a smaller commercial size roaster and owns a coffee shop near a place of mine at the Lake of the Ozarks. I have bought quite a bit of coffee and gift packs over the last few years so he humors me by doing custom blends that are roasted to order.
Probably as you did for yourself, we come up with some great blends. He also sometimes saves a half pound of off the wall experiments to have me sample — like a Hazelnut flavoring that went off the chart and he dark roasted the beans to boot — not that I often buy flavored, but this could be smelled a block away.
The Northwest regional taste with that beyond expresso roast taste does not really appeal to me but Starbucks found a niche for popularizing a commodity as standardized as coffee and they made some good money by that differintiation.
I prefer a general medium roasted verital — generally Central American.
It sounds like you have a good relationship with your roaster. I loved it when I had my coffee shop and my shiny chrome roaster was my primary feature. I had several customers who would come in and stand around with me while I roasted up their coffee.
It was fun.
The only flavoring I did was using a really good product that you mix in with the coffee after roasting. I still didn’t heavily promote flavored coffees.
Post brewing, I used Monin Syrups and Sauces. They are a really good product and blend well with milk. I personally prefer my coffee straight up black.