Today, I'm gonna talk to you about
how I dial in an espresso.
What I've got in my hopper here,
is a coffee I've never used before.
I've never tasted it.
I don't really know how to dial it in,
the grinder's definitely not set up for it.
So I'm gonna go through the process of dialing in,
going through adjusting my dose,
my grind, my recipe, my ins, my outs.
All of those things to get the best tasting shot that I can.
Now, the audio in here is not great,
so I'm gonna be talking to you afterwards,
talking you through the process
and I'll try and capture as much as I can
of what's going on here
behind the machine.
So this is the setup.
I'm using a Mythos One and using a Black Eagle Gravitech
and a little old house there to track my doses.
It's an 18 grand BST basket in there
so I'm going to dose about 18 grams
disturbing the poke with a teaspoon
like this is not ideal, but
if you're trying to get somewhere quickly, it's okay
as a way to kind of trim your dose down
without messing with the copy too much.
I'll explain more about this particular technique
a little bit later in the video.
Now, this coffee, I had a quick look at
at the start and it was pretty light, right?
So I could see for espresso, it was going to be a challenge.
I didn't know much about it it was a single origin coffee
but it was a pretty light roast.
So this first shot, I'm just going to see what I get
you know, see what the grind is, see where everything is,
that's my starting point.
Now this shot was
bad.
If you look at the recipe, you're talking
about 18 grams in 40 grams out in 34 seconds.
So my gut feeling was that would be a little bit slow,
taste-wise harsh, muddy, intensely sour, unpleasant
not at all good and the aftertaste was bad.
We've brewed too slow.
I wouldn't say necessarily overly under extracted
but it's just not a particularly delicious espresso.
So I'm going to go a little bit coarser
I'm going to keep the dose at about 18.
I'm going to aim for about 38 out and I'm just
going to track my runtime to see where my grind is.
Like I'm looking for something
in the very late twenties I suspect to taste good
but that's just, you know, typical
of my kind of setup and my kind of espresso preference.
So let's see how this one brews.
The shot finishes in about 25 seconds
and it doesn't taste good,
it definitely tastes under extracted.
We've definitely brushed too fast.
I have made too big
of an adjustment to my grind I've gone too coarse.
So that's what I'm going to do now.
I'm going to work on just moving that grind
just fractionally finer to get me closer
to where I want to be.
Again everything else I'm really going to keep the same.
So here's shot number three.
And just by going that little bit finer
we've gone a little bit slower,
we're at like a 27 second brew time now,
just a little slower
but definitely more extracted, the espresso did taste better
a little bit more extracted, a bit more balanced
but it's not quite there yet.
Again, I'm going to take my
grind up just a little bit finer here
I feel like I'm trending in the right direction,
shots are tasting better.
I just want to up that extraction a little bit more.
Now at at 18
in 38 39 out in 29 seconds, it's looking pretty good.
The shot isn't bad by any stretch
but I still feel it could be improved.
I'd still like to get more extraction out of it.
So as I'm cleaning up here, I'm thinking about it
and I'm thinking, why don't
I just keep the grind where it is
and just push a little bit more liquid through it.
I'm using the little decent dosing funnel just
to help redistribute the coffee.
If it's not perfectly distributed coming out of the grinder
that just helps provide a more, even bed before tamping.
So all I'm going to do is, is basically repeat the shot
but let it go from 38, up to 42 grams
that's going to give me more liquid in the cup.
I'm going to lose some concentration
but I'm happy to trade that off
for a bit more extraction and a little bit more sweetness.
And this shot, this shot is really pretty good.
I enjoyed the shot, it had good clarity.
It still had enough texture it was on the more acidic end
but ultimately that's the raw material that I'm working
with in this situation with a lighter roast
I should have realistic expectations
about how much acidity I'm going to have
in my balanced end espresso.
Now I do think I can improve this recipe
a little bit further.
I think there's one last change that's worth making
before I make that change.
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And so we're back to this final change.
Now, one thing I want to do is actually just
drop my dose a little bit more.
I want to up the extraction here a little bit more.
So I'm going to go a little finer again.
I'm going to go from 18 down to about 17
but I'm still going to aim for 42 grams out.
So again, this is a much weaker kind of recipe here
but I think I'll be rewarded with a little bit
more extraction using this coffee
makes extraction a little easier.
I can go finer, there's less coffee to extract
and by using this higher ratio, I stand a much better chance
of getting a more balanced espresso here
and that's what I got.
This was super drinkable, super tasty, sweet, clean
not a ton of texture, but enough to still feel satisfying.
Now when making this video
it became clear that this is just one coffee.
This is just one opportunity
and I can't really get into every aspect
of dialing in without exploring lots of different coffees
lots of different styles of espresso.
So I'm going to make this a series, this is the first part.
This covers a kind of light roast
high grown single origin espresso.
And in future
I'm going to tackle different styles of coffee
and change the way that I dial in around those things.
So that's the idea behind the series.
I would love your feedback on it.
I'd love to hear your questions, your thoughts
what kind of coffees you want me to dig
into and dial in and explore a little bit more.
I would really love to hear your thoughts
as always thank you so much
for watching and I hope you have a great day.