Espresso, Weather, Crema, and James Hoffman
I can't help but comment on this. I've held my tongue a lot lately... about a lot of stuff. But today I'm going to respond a little.
I think we've gone through a little bit of the differences between the way we (at the DoubleShot) make espresso and the generally accepted methods in the Specialty Coffee Industry. But I'll rehash a little.
We tamp HARD. What does that mean?
When making espresso, we grind the blend of coffee beans (which we call Ambergris Espresso Blend) and dose them into the portafilter (the thing we hit on the knockbox so loudly). We level the grounds in the portafilter and mash them with special tampers that were made by Reg Barber. We love Reg and the gang. Mashing the grounds in the portafilter (tamping) compresses them into a compact puck. If you've done a good job of grinding, dosing, and tamping, when the water flows through the puck at 9 times the force of gravity, it will evenly extract the delicious flavor compounds from the coffee. If you don't do a good job, you can get wormholes in the puck (water will take the path of least resistance) or maybe one side will extract more and the other side less (due to an uneven tamp). We tamp really hard. Most people in the industry tamp very softly. We get down ON IT. We do that because, in my experience, a harder tamp produces a sweeter shot. This isn't just my opinion. It's true. At least with our coffee.
Now, there are many variables in making espresso. A few of them are grind size, tamp pressure, water pressure, water temperature, extraction time, volume... And there are a LOT more. They're all dependent upon one another. So when one thing changes, you can adjust something else in order to compensate and achieve a similar result. Since we tamp pretty much as hard as we can, we have to adjust the grind coarser to make up for it. Probably one reason the coffee is sweeter with a harder tamp is because less surface area of the coffee bean is exposed to the water during extraction.
With all these variables to deal with when making espresso, we try to keep as many constant as possible. We keep the water temp, water pressure, and tamp pressure the same. Little things cause changes in extraction, so we use extraction time (slightly), volume (slightly), and (mostly) grind size to make up for it. That's why you see us changing the grind adjustment collar on the grinder every so often. And some days the coffee pulls longer shots than other days. We roll with it and stop water flow when we see the coffee is fully extracted (not over-extracted). One of the main things that we've found to affect the grind and length of shots is the weather. Generally on hot, dry days, we pull shorter shots. And on rainy days, it seems like the coffee will pull forever before the good stuff is fully extracted. When it's hot outside, we have to make the grind finer and when it's raining, we have to make the grind coarser.
Today I read this: http://twitter.com/jimseven/status/3823889688
James Hoffman is a former "World Barista Champion." He has been writing things like this lately, trying to challenge long-held beliefs in the industry. Nothing wrong with that. But the things he's been writing are... Well, I'm just going to say it. I think James Hoffman is wrong.
The last time we heard from him, he proclaimed that he thinks the crema on espresso tastes bad. He thinks it's better to scoop the crema off the espresso before drinking.
No, I'm not kidding. You can watch him explain here: http://www.jimseven.com/2009/07/06/video-1-crema/
Espresso is a brewing method that has been developed to coax the tasty flavor oils and aroma gasses out of coffee. That's what crema is. It's basically bubbles of oil with aroma inside. When the crema dies, the aroma has mostly dissipated into the air. That's why we want you to drink the espresso right after we pull the shot into a demitasse. If you don't like crema, you probably shouldn't make coffee using a brewing method of which the sole purpose is to produce crema. There are a lot of different brewing methods out there.
I won't go into another harangue, but with the recent idea in our industry that coffee needs to "de-gas" before being used to make espresso, it's no wonder James doesn't like crema. Once the coffee de-gasses, all the carbon dioxide (which protects the flavor oils) has escaped and been replaced by ambient air. The oxygen reacts with the oils, and the oils become rancid. So the crema is basically rancid coffee oil and ambient air. Nothing special. The fresh coffee aroma-containing CO2 has long been gone before they decided to dump the coffee in the hopper.
I disagree with all of this. They're not doing it for you, the consumer. They're either doing it to make it easier on themselves (consistency and reduction of time-constraints, like Starbucks) or they're not thinking clearly. Every time I interact with people of this persuasion I walk away trying to make this decision: are they ignorant or unscrupulous? Either way, they're wrong.
There, James. I said it.
posted by Brian at 12:50 PM
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