The espresso blends that I've been happiest with over my career all have one thing in common
and that is they've all had some coffee from Papua New Guinea in them.
Not every coffee from there is going to be appropriate
for an espresso preparation but if I can find one that is
that's what I'd like to buy.
Anything that I'm going to use in espresso is something that I'm going to roast a lot of so if I can
figure out if I'm going to use the coffee for espresso that can influence how much of
the coffee I want to buy
or if I want to buy it at all.
I have a few samples of things that are available and I'm starting by roasting 100 grams
of each sample.
Basic protocol cupping roast, light roast 8 to 12 minutes.
With the IR-1 I find that the longer side of that range works best for me.
With batches this small temperature measurements aren't accurate
especially toward the end of the roast but the error consistent enough that
it's reasonable to abuse this is a sample roaster.
The main drawback is that the sample trowel becomes useless
so I can't smell the coffee and visual monitoring is just through the sight glass.
Some people say they can evaluate a coffee for suitability for espresso at the cupping table
I've never been able to figure out how to do that reliably
but it is possible to eliminate some coffees from consideration at the cupping table.
There are two things that I consider
absolutely critical in a coffee that I'm going to use for espresso.
First, it needs to be free of defects.
One bad defect can make a cup of coffee taste awful
and when that's further concentrated into a shot of espresso
it doesn't get any better.
Second, the coffee needs to be uniform.
Five cups in a protocol cupping.
For the size of cups that I use that's 12 grams of coffee per cup.
Most espresso tends to be made as a double
which will be made with a little more coffee
One in five cups not being uniform on the cupping table can
easily translate to 1 out of every 3 or 4 espresso drinks tasting different
so good luck dialing that in.
Cupping is a really good technique for evaluating those properties
and that's also going to give me a good idea
of what I have available to work with when I'm deciding how I want to try roasting
that for a drip preparation.
you can already smell the lack of uniformity on that one
phenolic
no
one of these samples is pretty bad
not uniform, has defect
the other two are better and similar to each other
I'm getting pineapple, coconut, cherry,
there's a bit of a paper-like taste that I don't like and
this is a concern because that's a taste that sometimes goes away for production roasts
but sometimes it doesn't.
These aren't the greatest coffees from Papua New Guinea I've ever had on the cupping table
and if this were the end of my sample I'd probably pass
on all of these but 2 of these are good enough that I'd like to see how
they might do
as part of an espresso blend.
The only way I know how to tell how a coffee is going to taste as an espresso is to try it
as espresso.
but running a cupping roast through the espresso machine isn't going to get me anything palatable
so something that I like to do is take another 100 grams from the sample
and do what I call an espresso sample roast.
Just like sample roasting for cupping lets you
evaluate the quality of the green coffee and gives you an idea of what you can do
later during product development to bring out the best
in that coffee for a drip preparation, sample roasting
for espresso isn't aiming to necessarily be the best expression of that coffee in espresso
but gives you a ballpark idea of what's available to work with in that coffee.
The same concerns about using the IR-1 for this apply.
Temperature measurements are consistent but pretty far off
from what they would be with a larger batch and the sample trowel doesn't work.
A traditional sample roaster would probably be better suited for this
but I make do with what I have and with some practice
it's possible to do this reliably.
My preferences for espresso tend to traditional tastes.
I want something that's smooth with excellent body.
I want something with good intensity of flavor.
the coffee should be sweet but never acrid or astringent
a good espresso sinks into the tongue
and if you don't rinse the taste out of your mouth it can stay there for a couple hours.
I want something that has enough complexity that it stays
interesting to taste during that time and remains pleasant so you don't want
to wash the taste out of your mouth.
My espresso sample roast is geared toward those preferences
but there's a lot of room in espresso to do very different things
and lots of people are making amazing espresso that I can taste and enjoy
but that I personally wouldn't want to drink every day.
If you're looking for something that's very different from what I like I think
the general technique
I'm using is still applicable but you might want to experiment with different
roasting parameters with coffees you already have and see what gives you the
best predictive ability for the sort of espresso you enjoy.
What I'm shooting for here is a roast
between 16 and 17 minutes to end with a coffee that has between 17 and 18 percent
weight loss
my temperature readings will be off at the end but if they weren't
I'd be at about 450 degrees Fahrenheit by the end.
That's about 20 degrees hotter than the start of second crack so I'm
firmly in dark roast territory but stopping well before I'll end up with
something that's going to taste like a French roast.
With a batch this small you don't get many shots
so it's also nice to roast a slightly larger batch of something similar
just to get the grinder and dose set about right.
If you're not consistent at making espresso
you'll either want to practice that before attempting this
or get a good barista to help you. That's not a bad idea even if you can pull the shots yourself
and some help also makes it easier to do the evaluation blind.
Here I have a couple samples that I'm considering.
The first one is tart and sweet
decent body, the acidity is a little overpowering
and there's sort of a paper-like taste to it that was
also observed on the lighter cupping roast. It's not very well balanced
and it's the sort of coffee that in my experience isn't going to be well structured.
An espresso using this would likely come across
as sort of a muddled experience that isn't very good.
Between the poor suitability for espresso and how this performed on the cupping table
I'm not interested in buying this one.
The next one I'm immediately getting an aroma like cloves before even tasting the coffee.
The cup is sweet and well-balanced
there's a good intensity of flavor and it's really interesting.
There's a lot going on with this shot and it's all delicious.
It's a lot better than I expected.
Here is something that I haven't done any product development with
and it's still one of the best single origin shots of espresso I've ever tasted.
It can probably benefit from blending
but it's exceptional as is. I'm definitely interested in buying this one
Considering this technique more generally
it's common to find coffees that are good but not excellent
as espresso on their own and it's important to keep in mind how you might
combine a sample with other coffees in a blend.
It's also important to remember that this isn't
tasting a finished product. Maybe a coffee is good but it needs a different roast to
control how the coffee expresses itself in espresso.
The more practice you have trying different roasts in blends as espresso
the better your intuition will be
in connecting what you're tasting here to a coffee buying plan.
Now that I have the coffee
it's time to decide how I really want to roast that.
and I'm using the same procedure as usual.
Try something, pull a bunch of samples, see how those do on the cupping table.
here I have a roast
that's slower than my cupping roast and my first sample from that
is a little darker than that but still prior to the start of second crack.
The nearest to my espresso sample roast
is the seventh cup but this roast gets there a little faster.
The first cup isn't bad on the first sip
but as that coffee cools the acidity starts to dominate in unpleasant and unbalanced way.
The 2nd through 10th samples are all pretty good.
That represents a very broad range where this coffee is good
though there are large differences in how these taste
as the coffee gets darker.
The main problem with cups after the 10th one is that the intensity of flavor drops off.
What this means is that
if I need to adjust the roast for what I want in espresso
chances are good that this will still work
well on its own in a drip preparation, though that would need to be confirmed through tasting.
Considering other ingredients that I have to work with I decided to start
by replicating the second sample
at the production roaster with the idea that I would use this to bring up
acidity and intensity in an espresso blend.
Trying that as espresso the coffee is bright and sweet
medium body. On its own it isn't as good as the espresso sample roast from
earlier but as a blend component it's more interesting
I can use this to punch up the intensity and complexity of the blend.
The next step is blend construction.
I might have been tempted to try to replicate the darker sample roast from
earlier to get that neat clove note but I observed that in an espresso prepared
from another coffee.
This is a coffee from Sulawesi that I've roasted to a French roast.
As espresso it's smooth and really sweet.
The roast might look unusual to some. This particular lot
is very susceptible to roast defects and uneven roasting
unless the earliest portion of the roast is taken slowly.
That's not true of coffee from Sulawesi generally
but it's an issue with this lot. I found that I liked
the coffee best when moving through second crack to the end relatively quickly.
The spice characteristics needed higher temperatures to develop but not a lot of time.
For a third coffee I have one from Brazil.
As espresso this one is smooth and chocolatey.
It's lacking in intensity but other coffees in the blend can compensate for that
The finished blend with these three coffees turned out very nice
sweet well-balanced and interesting characteristics from
all three coffees come together nicely.
The last thing to check is that this remains delicious in a milk drink.
Sometimes you can get a coffee that makes a nice espresso
but when you make a cappuccino out of it you can no longer taste the coffee and I
would consider that to be unacceptable
but this blend passes the milk drink test.