#4 A Weighty Issue
#4. A Weighty Issue:
From time to time we come across different variables in coffee that we never considered before. For most of us, the first awareness of an inner artistry behind espresso comes in the form of latte art, gradually most of us then become aware of the less glamorous but equally fascinating dose and/or yield.
Yield (the weight of liquid coffee out) comes up first. We want to know what goes into making a cup of coffee, this invariably leads into the idea of what is literally making up our cup (the weight in).
I remember initially my premonition that my Robur E grinder was spitting out a different amount of coffee each time I pressed the button. This sudden realization that the trustworthy Robur was not dosing exactly to my recipe led me to further dig into the variables: dose, time and yield.
But I believe out of these three dose has almost never been truly examined in detail. I mean sure other blogs such as Barista Hustle have gone into depth about what dose does to your cup. For me, this still doesn’t fully satisfy my curiosity about how we can bring it to bear as a creative force. Afterall we use a different yield from day to day to make coffee more tailored to the nuances of temperate and room fluctuations, why not change dose to better suit our immediate needs.
A word of caution however before I go into the geek realm:
When I started making coffee it just happened to be around the time Barista Hustle was writing a three-part blog on ‘dialling in coffee’. For those of you not in Australia, ‘dialling in’ is basically how the Melbourne crowd referred to the process of coming in before the shop is open and running shots of all the available coffees of any given day. This allows them to lock in the recipes they wanted to use. Barista Hustle basically spilt the beans (pardon the pun) on how to get better tasting coffee consistently. But, a big part of this post was in ‘locking in’ your dose before you moved on to more complicated objectives like playing with the time and yield.
I wholeheartedly agree with this approach, don’t make stuff too complicated for yourselves. Why would someone just getting their head around what dosage and yield do for the cup, want to make their own job even more difficult by introducing another changing variable?
Don’t.
And don’t try and learn all your coffee science in the half hour before the café opens, your boss won't like it and your thirst for knowledge will crowd out the immediate need to get the coffee tasting as good as possible. Pull shots throughout the day for yourself to test your theories. I spent many years using whatever dose the roasters of the coffee recommended and it wasn’t until I moved into Barista Competitions; rotating cup sizes/ratios and potentially different roasts and freshness levels of beans, that I started to really consider going back through everything I knew about coffee dosing and started to push the boundaries.
That being said - let's get a few things down. These are some assumptions that have served me well over the years, regardless of who’s coffee I'm using:
A higher dose will not change the strength of the coffee, but it will alter the perceived strength of the beverage. This means that the coffee will gradually become more intense with dose, and the flavours it did have will become amplified somewhat. Putting a higher dose in the basket will allow you to keep using coffee that is past its prime for a few more days. This has often helped me consolidate my oversupply and comfortably serve good coffee to customers in tricky gluts.
Lower doses often (but not always) lend a coffee a lighter quality. This point plays in with my first one. I would say as a rough guide that a 21-24 gram shot will experience a ‘malty’ quality similar to a strong beer (think IPA). While a 15-17 gram shot will have a thinner ale-like feel to it. Note that I am talking about the mouthfeel here not the tasting notes.
Another consideration is the basket size. I would recommend VST baskets as they come in a variety of different sizes that are suitable for a gradual progression for your tests 20 grams and 21 grams. Some manufacturers such as Pullman’s new basket being used in the current barista competitions in Australia have made the oversimplification of making only one size basket labelled ’19-21 grams’. This is effectively saying “well the 21 grams fits all your smaller doses so just buy that,” enough has been written already on the importance of appropriate basket sizes but I will say I sincerely hope Pullman remedy this in the future with a wider range of basket sizes.
So with these points in mind how can our dose be altered creatively? ONA Coffee in Canberra has been experimenting with 17 gr shots of coffee for a few years now. I have noticed this across the board with a lot of their blends and singles, I can keep the settings on a machine around 93 degrees water temp and 9 bars of pressure and have coaxed longer 1:3 brew ratios into giving up sweetness AND body. This has quite a high value and I don't believe its genius has really been discussed.
So to Recap: developed medium roast, a smaller dose, pulling longer shots. Previously the only recipes I saw entering the realms of 1:3 brew ratios were uber light filter roast EK espresso’s. Typically extracted at super fast times with little, to no body. Although I know a lot of the folks out their love their espresso this way I have seen this trend lessen in the last couple of years, principally I would theorise because it suffers from a VERY strong disconnect with the kinds of coffee options our customers are seeking out (even black drinkers struggle with 70gr doubles). The ONA blends and singles break new ground by pulling lungo shots while also showcasing; acidity, sweetness and solving the issue of making an espresso that has a creamy body. The 17gr dose with long ratios also lends itself to milk as they typically have medium roasts which develop brown sugar tasting notes that carry well with milk.
The opposite of these super long shots are, of course, ristretto. But ristretto implies that we followed the Barista Hustle concept of locking that dose in and then consciously pulling the yield to only; 1:1 or 1:1.5. I'm very tentative about brewing coffee in this way and often if I decide to ‘cut it short’ it's for the opposite reasons, I've just wanted more fruit and pulled it back gram by gram shot by shot. After this hasn’t hit the mark (eg im still not getting enough fruit at 21 grams in and 39 grams out), I’ve turned to updosing.
I have had 35-day old coffee that has reached its absolute peak after degassing for 30+ days then being run on very short yields, I would hazard a guess that the distinct lack of carbon dioxide in degassed coffee mixed with a 22gr dose has made these coffees very strong without flavours that the carbon at lower doses aggravates (acids).
Often for me, I will do this with a light roasted single origin that I know can be a fruit bomb through milk, it is given a massive boost of strength (get those refractors out 9.2 and above). Reformatory Roasters in Sydney have run several excellent Columbians that did well with higher doses at 40gr out. Also, Craig Simon from Venenziano ran his 2018 Southern Region Barista Championship winning coffee, to 21 grams in with 44 out (1:2). The coffee in question was a 90+ Panama Geisha that had to cut through a 150ml cappuccino. Again a great example of bringing creative concepts to bear on problems, few (if any) would have the foresight to follow this through with such a light and floral coffee via dairy milk.
That’s about it for me here guys, hopefully, it didn’t get too geeky at the end there. Keep pushing to reinvent the wheel and remember talent is about doing something well, genius is about doing something no one else considered.
Keep brewing, Cal.