Bravely moving to Santa Cruz!!

To say that I could not be luckier or happier to be doing what I do is a serious understatement. The common dream of doing for a living what one loves is so often unfulfilled that it is something of a cliche. I cannot image a better profession or a better life. I am enormously appreciative of the wonderful people, coffee, and times that have filled the last five years. Here’s hoping (and working towards) many, many more!

Others, it would seem, have come across the idea that they can have the beans ground finer, use less, and save.**

What the hell? Was this suggested on some news network money saving tip program?? I’m too scared to do the search myself. Seen anything like this?

*I’d rather call it “ibrik coffee” too, but what are you going to do…

**sort of a “Step 1: Brew awful coffee Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit” kind of situation.

In the 2007 WCBC finals, Kyle G and Chris B shared the uh, stage-area for their overlapping 15 minutes of preparation/performance, respectfully. Before time had started, Sarah Allen engaged Chris in some light banter. I forget the lead-up, but she must have hit upon the subject of the cool new grinding toys, as Kyle is moved to good-naturedly taunt Chris: “You ain’t got no distribution!”

General laughter, as I think to myself, “what a great coffee insult!” But oh no, when that first espresso is ground, I see I should take Kyle more literally. Chris has a distribution, in the sense that he gets the coffee into the basket. Portafilter angling? Fork knocking? Grooming? Leveling? Tamping? Nope! (OK, he tamped) That modified Anfim is timed so accurately, and swept so efficiently, he just doses the full weight into a clean little pyramid in the basket. Beautiful.

This is all old news, of course. In the time since then, we’ve seen the mass production and proliferation of similar grinders. Technique has changed to adapt to this new machinery, much to the tune of what as demonstrated in competition that day. Still, I had never given much thought to applying what I’d seen and learned from this new generation of grinders to traditional doser models.

On a trip to Verve not so long ago, I spent some time harassing Jared and Ashley during their shift. After waiting for their bar seating to clear out, I grabbed a seat and enjoyed a great vantage of their workspace. And it’s from here that Jared gets me thinking about all of this. On the bar are three stock Majors: flat burrs, doser (maybe a little sweep mod? Didn’t ask.), untimed…but employed like a Mazzer E series. He rests the portafilter on the fork, no angling or rotating, doses a neat little pile, knocks it at regular intervals, and tamps. This being new to me, I have some questions. Jared obligingly answers them & pulls a shot to show me again. His general philosophy? In a year grooming will be another dark age relic of espresso preparation. I think I may be starting to agree with him.

Ok. Onto some complete thoughts on this:

My habit has been to reapproach and evaluate my distribution and dosing pretty frequently. This has its ups and downs. It certainly keeps me in shape, so to speak, but I’ve never been totally content with the concept of varied technique depending on dose weight, basket design and rated capacity, portafilter diameter and style, etc.

In trying out what I learned at Verve then, I’ve mosly stuck with a Synesso triple basket. This is already a deviation from what I’d seen, as Jared was cramming in 24g of Streetlevel into ridged Marzocco doubles. I’ve used the triple in testing for two reasons: I’m extremely fond of the added clearance between coffee bed and dispersion screen on even extractions, and it is generally more forgiving of me using too much coffee as I teach myself this method. It is also important to mention I’ve restricted my tests to a bottomless portafilter. We serve singles at Joebella, and thus have spouted portafilters to work with as well. Even with a little plastic mod installed there is still an angled pitch to the doser, and the contact between fork and spouts forces the portafilter dead center under the chute and restricts any lateral movement. With the bottomless I can place the basket in such a way as to collect the grounds nicely (just a little to the right on the fork). Perhaps I can adjust the Elvinator some more to eliminate this. Otherwise it will probably end up essential that I rotate the portafilter during dosing when spouted.

With these parameters I’ve taken two blends (our everyday Folly and one in development) and pulled them in this new approach. They are both intended to be updosed anyway (20 for the folly and 21-22 for the experimental), but the first few shots in that giant basket were absurd. Here’s my issue. You _have_ to updose with this method. I’m knocking the portafilter on the forks to settle at two points (first @ 1/2 dose, and again pre-tamp), and it seems this is essential to ensuring the evenness necessary to eliminating top-level grooming.

Part of this is my fault. That first knock has never been part of my distribution traditionally, and it compacts the coffee so much that I’m losing my usual visual cues as to how much coffee I have in there. On the dockets are plans to bring in my hyper-sensitive scale and train myself for better consistency in this method. While It may well end up being possible to use this with lower doses, I really don’t see anything below 20g working out.

Anyway, my first shots with Folly were probably in the 24-26 range. I’d never tried the blend (or anything?) that high, and it was completely unidentifiable in the cup as a result. I made efforts to reduce the dosed weight. Right off the bat, my extractions aren’t looking as even as with my typical Stockfleth’s. Nothing horrible, just enough channeling that the stream would oscillate around the center for the middle third of the brew. But the taste: awesome!

I assume this is strictly a matter of dose, so I revert to old technique for a dozen shots. Only now, I incorporate the mid-dose knock to fit in an extra two grams. Confirmed. Visual pretty extractions return & the taste keeps that recently-discovered extra edge. The idea of grooming being unnecessary is still tremendously appealing though, and so far promising.

I’ve given it a few hundred shots more now, and as I build muscle memory for the exact approach, the extractions have evened out nicely. I’m tremendously happy with the increase in speed I’ve gained over fastidious grooming. And additionally, as repetitive movement seems to be catching up with me, I’m definitely seeing a decrease in tension of my wrist as the range of motion required to prepare espresso has narrowed significantly.

As keen on this as I am now though, I will definitely update once I’ve spent some time testing weight accuracy more objectively and played more with the range capabilities in the method. But I’m excited! Once I can hit anything between 18 and 24g in any basket at will, I may never groom again.

At any rate, I got out of bed this morning with a burst of energy uncharacteristic of me pre-4 am. Liz had ordered a couple things from Intelli which arrived Friday. Their Aqua Preta remained unopened, so I rushed to cup it while setting up a siphon. It is a beautiful coffee that embodies everything I feel a Brasillian should be. And my siphon, made 75% by unconscious reflex, was very drinkable!

Joseph had left some very interesting roast profile exercises for me to produce, using some coffee very much at the end of its life: both in terms of a decline in taste as well as the conclusion of our contracted order. It was a fun challenge to replicate the curves he asked for, and something I hope to do more of. The production roasts came together nicely as well. Feels like the rare day that I can finesse my way through the day’s batches without some minor complaint: spilling a handfull of beans or adjusting the flame a second too late. I was very much with it today and it’s a great feeling.

As I’m off in five minutes to my bar shift, my only hope is that this harmony of good mood and great luck will just keep seeing me through some perfectly flowing espresso and gorgeous milk!

After using nothing but straight walled pitchers for years, I knew I’d have to make a few tiny adjustments in technique to compensate for the bell shape. What I didn’t consider was the lame extended pouring spout. My first pours with this thing were just disastrous! Every time I tipped it, milk would gush out from the spaces created between the spout and side walls. I could fix that by pouring super slowly, but both the poured milk consistency and art suffered. Comparing the design to my standard pitchers, it seemed I could simply  hack the little extra bit of metal off the end to mod the handle-less back into a usable tool.

I tried this last night with a cheapo hacksaw and a rock: simple enough, although it would have been really nice to have had a real metal file lying around to polish the cut up better. I tried running it through some paces last night on my home bar. Huge improvement! May not end up giving me any additional control compared to the handled varieties, but at least now it will pour defined lines at a usable speed without making an enormous mess. I start a bar shift in about 2 minutes, so I’ll get to really test it out! If it’s promising, I’ll hunt down a file and finish polishing the cut.

Left pics full sized for some nice metal shard detail!

Why do people who aren’t remotely open to trying new things even bother to leave their homes?

*Yeah, for a 5 oz drink…