This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Dialling in a new bag of coffee can lead to a lot of waste. When I worked at a coffee shop — while it was never good to waste coffee — it didn’t seem as catastrophic as it does now.
The bags of coffee were bigger. The bank account wasn’t mine. And I had time to really dial in and nail it. Now, I rarely have time to make two coffees a day. So sometimes it’s a solid week before I get a coffee to a point I’m happy with.
Dark roasts can be nicely bodied, but it’s heavily dependent on the roaster’s skill. Light roasts, however, are almost too brutal for me to play with now. One false move and the entire brew is ruined. Because of this, I try and keep to medium roasts. They give enough variety, flavour, and consistency without being too stubborn. Like I said, it’s my bank balance now. And time isn’t so generous.
But dialling in — whatever the roast — is a worthy process.
A quick look at the coffee’s origin and roaster’s notes and I have a ballpark target. Open the bag and I smell the sweetness of freshly-roasted beans — the utopia that cannot be touched or tasted by us mere humans. At first, I may be a mile off something that resembles a balanced cup. But with every small adjustment — to grind size, dosing weight, extraction time, or yield — I smell and taste that distance closing. And all things considered, the final satisfaction of a well dialled-in coffee is incomparable.
My palette still isn’t at the point where I can sense the small nuances to a brew, or pinpoint certain tasting notes. No, it’s still very vague compared to the pros. My vocabulary limited to only balanced, only bodied, only, “f*ck me, that’s delicious.”
But the hard labour it took to grow, farm, process, and roast the beans don’t feel completely wasted on me. And the processes of dialling in and brewing become a celebratory, ritualistic experience that I get completely lost in. Because I make something. I complete the final phase of the coffee journey. Turning solid bean into liquid gold.
Current espresso recipe:
Roast: Medium
Dose: 18.5g
Yield: 40g
Time: 28-32secs
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