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Handy article about dialling in espresso
http://europeancoffeetrip.com/pdf/5-LCwG-handling-and-dailling-in.pdf
Several interesting tips like:
Several interesting tips like:
My starting point for beverage weight is:
• Darker roasts: 66% EBF, 1g coffee to 1.5g beverage weight, aiming for about 22-25 secs
• Medium/ light: 50% EBF, 1g of coffee to 2g beverage weight, I aim for around 27-30 secs.
• Light roasts (often called filter roasts): 38% EBF, 1g coffee to 2.6g beverage weight in 19-22 secs
Comments
Where he says:
I noticed that a shorter shot with the same dose & grind can be pleasant in a "stronger/salty" way, whereas a longer shot can "open up" a coffee, make it more expressive, speak/sing more, bit it will indeed also show more clearly if something is missing.
Since I get my roasts better, I enjoy more of the 'longer' shots. A Burundi that I roasted the 15th, 8 days ago, was delicious today with 17.6g in the basket, 36.3g in the cup, TDS 10 and 21.4% Extraction on the VST refractometer.
I like it that Gwilym Davies only changes the temperature of his brew group as a very last resort. There is so much you can already do with grind/dose/tamp/timing.
I think some owners of different machines with a PID get lazy and think they must tweak the brew temp to "get it right". And while they think they tweak the brew temperature, they change the boiler temperature and often have no clue what the brew is doing, so they keep hunting for that wonderful shot they had yesterday in a way they cannot seem to reproduce.
and the basket that comes with the naked portafilter. is it a 20g?
thanks!
Espresso brew formula (EBF) is a fancy term coined by some propellor head in the coffee world that simply means the dose divided by the brew weight
So, if you used 18g of coffee and the weight of the resulting beverage was 36g, that would give you an EBF of 50%
The basket for the "Double" or the "Naked" PF that comes with the L-I is the 16g basket that likes doses in the 15.6-.8g range as a maximum.
Get a bigger basket if you want larger doses.
Thanx for posting this, I pulled some shots with my Vesuvius (yes, polar opposite from the Londinium) with two light roasts- Bali Kintamanti and Ethiopia Sidama Bonko. With just over 18g in and getting around 45+ out in 22 seconds using a profile that acts like a typical pump machine (5sec @ 2bar, the rest at 9) I got out some very pleasant shots. This did mellow them out a bit, this might be a good introduction to espresso for the un-initiated.
I did have my temp up at 203º, and ran out before I could drop the temp.
When I get the L II it'll most certainly NOT be pulling shots like this, more the medium roast 1:2 ratio.
This pdf got me out of my 'box' so thanks for sharing. Just another reason to sample everything instead of tossing them.
I ask about timing because I see he's using a NS Aurelia II and my guess is that he is talking about from pump on to pump off time. SOME people don't start timing until they see espresso falling from the spouts, which is problematic as a bottomless PF will appear to start a few seconds earlier.
In order to keep things simple I'd suggest we all consider the start to be when water hits the puck. Pre-infusion or whatever you want to call it.
Thank you for the head's up on that site BTW. It's nice to see the basics reinforced with a smile and a pleasant accent (well, to me anyway).
I don't know.
I personally start the timer when the first drop hits the cup. It will make the flow, the amount of grams per second, correct, rather than the average being lower because the first 7 seconds of pre-infusion there was only soaking and no flow.
As long as one uses one method consistently, it's fine with me. If someone says he pulls an espresso 7 seconds quicker or slower, I don't mind it much. If someone extracts twice the amount of espressos from the same dose/basket in about the same time, that's when I know we are talking of very different drinks and tastes.