Today’s drop sounds like heaven in a cup. The biggest torture will be letting the beans rest until the first brew. Hope people can post here their experience and recipe.
This natural was soooo fruity and juicy. Absolutely fantastic. I shed a tier when it was finished. I liked it so much that I ordered a kg of another natural Rwanda they had in their web site.
I could not find any more at the fellow site so I traced the roaster. They are in Belfast and I hope the broker and duty fees (coming into the US) don’t turn this into the most expensive pourover coffee of my life, and if they do… I hope it is worth it 😂 FedEx contacted me and I had to fill in an FDA form; not a simple process. That is what is scaring me.
I was really looking forward to this coffee I let it rest properly, but while this is a honey, the amount of funk coming out in the cup makes it hard to drink. Ive tried enough things and brewing options and I just can’t get past it. It feels more like a natural or anaerobic experimental.
Has anybody gotten any good cups with this? I am giving up on it and this is my last try to get some hope before disposing of whats left, which is 3/4 of the bag.
Preparing the puck is much simpler than what posts say… I was over engineering it and spent way too much money on useless tools
- You do need to distribute the coffee - I grind into the porta filter and distribute as it is falling with a simple wdt (mini rake :) No clumps no nothing. Just make your bed even
- Tap lightly the porta filer into the counter, little slow taps for the coffee to compact a bit. It does various things:
a. It will “level” the coffee making tamping a lot easier
b. It will help to distribute the coffee - you can slightly adjust the top so you have an even top
c. Because of a & b - you pretty much eliminate funneling
- Tamper with a regular, simple, weighted tamper. I use my stock Lelit Bianca and I love it. It is awesome. Some key points:
a. Just sink the tamper staring and lightly press - if you press hard it is easier to screw up your evenness.
b. The pressure you apply bears no impact on puck resistance
c. Self-leveling tampers or distribution tools screw up a simple process
The quality of your shot is all dialing. Always focus on your 2:1 over 30 secs @ 9 bar and SLIGHTLY adjust yield based on taste.
Pressure or flow profile can do WONDERS for your coffee. Don’t try to get too many recipes, techniques, etc. it is actually very simple:
- Don’t use automated programming. Puck variability will kill
You. Use manual profiling. You can adjust based on puck resistance on the fly.
- low pressure/slow pre infusion and maintaining a low pressure (4 to 5 bar) is wonderful for modern and bright espresso.
- It is really hard to beat a good full flow/pressure for medium dark or darker roasts. You might increase body or sweetness, but it is marginal gains compared to what profiling does for medium or lighter roasts that accentuate acidity and clarity.
Rest your coffee for at least three weeks for medium dark and four for medium - it makes a huge difference and you still get crema.
Switch between medium and medium dark… medium dark roasts is why most of us got into espresso in the first place.
Beans are important, but keep it simple… roasters are trying to differentiate too much, leading into some really shitty coffee. There is nothing wrong with lavazza or Illy, you will get amazing shots.
Not all beans do well as espresso. Some beans are impossible to dial.
The grinder is important bit you don’t need to go crazy. Anything will do. I use a df64 gen 2 with stock burrs and I think my shots are much better than any coffee shop i have been to., where they spend tens of thousands in equipment. As a side note, grinder and burrs are more important for pourover. I do think it is messy if you have a lot of fines as your filters clog and coffee tastes like shit. On that front, the df64 sucks for pourover. I ended up using a k6 and upgrade to a k7 and get great results.
At this point, I think I can immediately tell If a coffee will do well as espresso and dial with two shots. You truly get the hang of it if you keep it simple.
What inspired me to write this was a recent cruise. The coffe shop di not rinse the portafilter, their puck prep was… well you can imagine and they were serving lavazza. To be honest , I enjoyed my espresso every day. Much better than many I pulled during my learning days, when I was kidding myself that I was doing great.