Some interesting happenings over on coffeed…
Jim Schulman and Andy Schecter have been doing some experiments with dose in a standard (LM) double basket. One of the interesting results was their finding that certain espressos taste better when downdosed to between 13-14 grams. This is in stark contrast to the majority of shops in Vancouver, who are probably dosing in the range of 18+ grams for a double basket. I decided to give this idea a try at the cafe, but was slightly hindered by the fact that dosing 13 grams in a double basket makes distribution darn near impossible (at least if dosing just 13 grams). My dose ended up being about 14-15 grams, but this still made for some interesting results. The espresso became very smooth, and had a somewhat less intense taste. However, it wasn’t weaker per say, just much smoother, in the same way aging smooths out alcohol. The body on this particular blend, when downdosed, was really thick, compared to a medium body at the standard dose of about 17-18 grams. Several local coffee people had a chance to taste the shots, and the general consensus was that they were definitely smoother and lighter than shots pulled with the standard dose. The one negative aspect I found with downdosing was that you seemed to lose a lot of the character of the shot - I was having a hard time picking out distinct flavours. Still, the concept of downdosing is really interesting, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to experiment with it some more, and maybe get a better understanding of why the taste changes in the manner it does.
Matthew
4 responses so far ↓
Michael // February 6, 2007 at 2:09 am
Not sure of you have seen the draft of the study (http://users.ameritech.net/jim_schulman/aspects_of_espresso_extraction.htm), but it goes into a lot more detail than the coffeed post. It’s a really interesting read.
As for distribution with such a small amount of coffee, the Weiss Distribution Technique (http://www.home-barista.com/weiss-distribution-technique.html) works really well. Ignore the part about preventing overflow by using a funnel as there is not enough coffee for that to matter. This gives a near perfect distribution every time, but is probably too time consuming for use in a commercial environment. Also, you loose the “feel” of the coffee you get when distributing with your fingers. I’ll bring a distribution device to work on Saturday if you want to try it.
Barrett // February 6, 2007 at 6:45 am
Artigiano started down-dosing when they started roasting for themselves. I love it. Takes some practice, but works great.
Jaime // February 6, 2007 at 4:36 pm
It’s interesting to see this discussion. Not to take away from the techies pushing this discussion but there have been people doing this style for ‘years’
What happens when you do a very light roast of a SHB style dense coffee and the 13g is so small volumetricaly it can hardly be tamped into the basket?
Jimmy // March 3, 2007 at 1:04 am
It’s a pretty kewl technique, altho some of the coffees I’ve been trying with really seem “designed” for big doses and tend to overextract at lower doses or have flavours associated with overextraction. Still, good to see others using it to deconstruct possibilities in a blend or SO coffee
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