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
11 Comments:
Wormholes? What is this? Star Trek?
Methinks you're working yourself into too much of a lather over this. While I don't subscribe to much of the "science" out there in coffeeland, I think it's a good thing that people are out there thinking too much about coffee - trying out different theories.
Personally, it's the flavor that matters. Is the cup delicious? Yes? Then that's all that means anything.
The rest is just stuff for coffee geeks to while their hours away.
Wormholes are from Star Trek? You're definitely not from the midwest. Wormholes are from worms.
Brian said:
"We roll with it and stop water flow when we see the coffee is fully extracted (not over-extracted)"
Can you explain to the civilians how, visually, you can determine if the shot is over-exstracted, please?
One thing I find enjoyable about drinking a shot of your espresso is that the taste evolves as I drink it. I usually take three sips to drink my demitasse full of Ambergris... sip 1, 2, and 3 all taste different as I get different amounts of crema with each sip. I like all 3 sips, and I like that they are not each the same.
Indeed.
A lot of people time their shots. We don't do that because shot times vary. Just as we adjust the grind based on a visual rate of flow, we stop the shot when the proper extraction has taken place (visually). You can tell by the color change, the behavior of the shot coming out of the portafilter, and if you pull a lot of shots, you know when it's about to happen. You develop barista intuition. A type of Espresso Sensory Perception.
Brain,
Impressive write up, as usual. I continue to learn from you guys at the DoubleShot.
Also, I'm not surprised to read or hear about people who seemingly refuse to listen and understand. It's not that they don't understand, they don't want to understand.
Sadly, this is true at all sorts of levels in life, education, coffee and so on. :)
Thanks for writing this, Brian--I knew you thought J. Hoffman was wrong about crema, but I didn't understand why that would be the case. For all i knew (although maybe i just wasn't thinking either), he could have been right...Now that you've explained the science behind it all, it's much clearer. which is great!
Brian, you didn't mention if you have ever tried tasting a shot after scraping off the crema.
I've never had a cupcake after scraping out the pesky cake part. I've never bought a book and ripped all the pages out. I've never bought my girlfriend flowers and torn off all the petals before giving them to her. I can't think of any reason to buy a new car and have the engine removed.
There are a lot of things I haven't done. And I'm sure there are people out there who think all these things are better without cake, pages, petals, and engine.
Me? The reason I get these things are for the cake, pages, petals, engine... and crema.
This comment, "I've never had a change in weather change my grind setting. Ever. There. I said it." confounds me. Try working in a drive thru coffee shop. We have to adjust our grind constantly to get the proper flow rate. We use Ambergris in our shop and have come to the conclusion that a corse grind with a hard tamp is the best. I can only guess that perhaps where James works it must have great temperature and humidity control. Here in Oklahoma our weather conditions change so often there is NO WAY I could get away with not adjusting the grind. James baby what's up with your comment?
I suppose I should respond, though I shall make it clear from the start that I am not particularly interested in some sort of online slanging match.
Where to begin? (Aside from complaining childishly about people spelling my name wrong, made all the worse because some poor barista in NYC called James Hoffman keeps gettting lots of flak for something he didn't say.)
Let's start with the grinder changing thing:
I made a comment, based on my own experience. I've never changed a grind based solely on a change in weather. If that wasn't weird, or I didn't consider it unusual, then it was pretty likely I wouldn't have commented about it. The almost shameful nature of the confession was designed to make this clear.
I did not say: weather doesn't affect coffee, no one has had to change their grinder based on weather, or that humidity doesn't affect and influence coffee.
I think you read too much into the tweet.
Next - the crema thing.
If you went beyond the first video then you'd see that the goal was to get people to experiment, to try something different and maybe learn something. I still drink espresso with crema intact. The reason I think crema tastes bad has nothing to do with CO2 (I will come onto that in a second) but more because the crema traps quite a lot of fines and suspended pieces of coffee that can add to mouthfeel, but also increase bitterness.
I think it is a shame you didn't try the experiment. Everyone else tried it and had lots of fun. Whether they agreed or disagreed wasn't really the point.
So we move onto the freshness and degassing thing.
Here you seem to have second guessed me again(incorrectly I might add).
I am not sure if I've seen anything recent in the industry about degassing coffee. Resting coffee for a few days after roasting has been going on for decades. Gas flushing with inert gases seems to be more recent. Can you point me to recent discussion about degassing?
CO2 doesn't protect coffee (any links to the contrary appreciated), and the staling of coffee is more complex than CO2 disappearing and oxygen suddenly being able to oxidise the coffee.
I like to bag and rest coffee for a few days before using it. I find that within the first 3 days after roasting the excess CO2 disrupts the extraction, and often I get a slight smoke note from the roasting that disappears after a few days. This is just personal opinion.
And finally you level the most troubling accusation: That I (we) do all this because it is convenient for us, and without the customer being our primary focus.
That is just rude, a bit unnecessary and completely misses the point of the vast majority of what I write about and work on day to day, online and within my business.
I have no issue with being wrong (it is a regular occurrence) or with people disputing things I've said or disagreeing with me. It is somewhat frustrating to have an articled level at me and things I didn't say.
On a final note - you will find me in absolute agreement with your statements about Reg Barber. He does indeed rock.
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