Tigers and espresso

Posted on December 12, 2003 @ 14:19 in Espresso

iTunes is playing Miles Davis (Smooch if you have to know), so this seems a good moment to reveal that I'm making progress on making espresso and cappucino. The espresso machine's been in service for some six weeks now and I've gone through a couple of kilos of beans, trying out various types and roasts of beans. For the moment I've settled on using the dark espresso roast from Geels. It's easy to make an espresso with this roast that immediately tastes like an espresso you'd get in a coffee bar, so it's a great starting point to refine my technique. Eventually, I recon, I'll switch, because Geels' dark roast tastes a bit simple, a bit flat. The best I've tasted so far is the Sumatra from Brandmeesters, but this bean has such a specific and full taste that I find it hard to make out the small, but crucial differences in brewing quality. Espirito Santos shares the second place with Geels dark roast, and gets brownie points for having a great name :-)

As for pulling the espresso shots, a couple of days I ago I started to see "tiger striping" in the pour from the portafilter, which is generally considered to be a sign of fine espresso. I haven't been able to make the tiger striping last for the whole pour, but about half the pour now has tiger striping each time I pull a shot. Some shots still taste a bit too bitter, which is a sign of overextraction, but some shots are coming out all silky smooth. I achieved the tiger striping by changing how I tamp down the grounds in the portafilter. I started out with some advice from the Coffeegeek forums, tipping about two-thirds of the coffeegrounds in the portafilter, giving it a light tamp, then topping it off with the rest of the grounds and tamping hard. Now though, I tip about two-thirds of the grounds into the portafilter, smooth out the surface with my finger and then add the rest of the grounds, smooth out again with my finger, and finally tamp the grounds down hard in one go. After I changed my tamping method, the volume of the shots drop from 120-140 milliliter shots (~2-2.25 ounce) to about 60-80 milliliter shots (~1-1.5 ounce). There's still quite a bit to improve, but I'm getting really decent results, so I'm not afraid anymore to invite someone for an espresso.

As for the cappucino, the steamed milk is more consistently starting to turn out all smooth and frothy, instead of too hot milk at the bottom with large bubbly foam on top. It's not yet "microfoam" quality, but then, I do need to buy a decent pitcher to steam the milk in, because right now I'm working with a too tiny 250 milliliter pitcher. The trick though, was not to steam the milk for too long. Steaming too long makes the milk too hot and destroys the fine frothy foam. That's pretty hard though if you're only steaming about 120 milliliter of milk in a 250 milliliter pitcher.

So... I guess that's about it for the moment. I'll write up a review of the ECM Botticelli 2 espresso machine in the not too distant future, but for the moment I guess you'll just have to swing by our place to know more, or rather, to taste more.

Comments and Trackbacks

  1. well coffee is a growth industry, so if this scholarly pursuit thing just doesn't work out, it looks like you are building quite a future:)

    Posted by jeremy hunsinger on December 12, 2003 @ 15:10

  2. Coffee would be a good career, I agree. Maybe even better would be writing CSS code. Outsmarting the different browsers quirks and making a design really work makes me very happy. Maybe I could make a living making coffee related websites?

    Posted by Frank on December 16, 2003 @ 17:45

Post a comment

Comments and trackbacks have been closed on this site. My apologies.

Since MT-Blacklist inexplicably stopped working I had no other recourse than close comments and trackbacks to stop the spam. I've been meaning to correct this for quite a while, but life got in the way... in a good way I should add.