Picked up a couple pounds of Kenya this week but they're roasted a bit darker than what I'm used to/prefer (full city, perhaps?). As I usually use light roasts and anything medium & beyond just tastes "dark" and less-pleasant to me, so I'm hoping there's something(s) I can do to tweak this more to my liking.

My usual recipe w/light Yirgs & Costas is 17-18g doses for 30-35g shots.
The Kenya beans are bigger and darker, and I find myself needing to adjust the grind a little coarser and down-dose.
I suppose I should focus on letting the group temp drop between shots and not manually priming it up with mini-pumps.

I don't imagine I'll be enjoying this as straight shots, but a majority of my drinks are cortados anyway.
Should I perhaps try pulling a shorter or longer shot? With a 16.5g dose this morning I pulled both 30g and 40g shots with ~60ml milk in each, yet both were still too bold or dark for my tastes. I suppose I could always prepare them a bit more milk heavy than usual, but I try to steer clear of more than 2:1 ratios of milk:espresso. Open to trying anything, though, I'm only about 8-10 shots into about 2lb of these beans, and have all weekend to experiment.

I'd try a shot or two @ 15 grams with a slightly firmer tamp than usual.

Randy,

Try pulling it much cooler. Think of the AeroPress instructions, where brewing at 175F works well with roasts to start of second crack.

I just finished pulling a shot of Mr. Espresso's somewhat darker Neapolitan blend. I used my 1st generation La Pavoni Europiccola with the group not quite come up to temperature. I've even used this cooler pull technique with other machines and more traditional espresso blends, like the one roasted by Caffe Trieste in San Francisco.

jwCrema wrote:I'd try a shot or two @ 15 grams with a slightly firmer tamp than usual.

I'll admit that I tried a dose between 15.5 - 16 grams this morning, but ground finer and tamped lighter (mostly slap-shotted & level tamped). Meant pre-infusion was an ugly sight of quick watery drops rather than my usual slow creep of dark thick drips I figured my tamping was the culprit, and I sure hope that's the case.

drgary wrote: Try pulling it much cooler. Think of the AeroPress instructions, where brewing at 175F works well with roasts to start of second crack.

I figured this would be the ticket. Lately with my Yirg shots I was giving 1-2 mini pumps to raise the group just above idle temp. I'll try at idle temp, as well as powering the boiler off for 20-30 seconds after the p-stat is tripped before pulling the shot.

For what it's worth, I had this same Kenyan roasted lighter over the past 2 months and found it delightful. Next time I must pay more attention before having them bag up my usual selections.

I just pulled a shot of a roast of Indian Amrita that I purposely dropped at start of 2C as suggested by the store manager of Mr. Greenbeans in Portland. I used the same cool group method and it was delicious, even revealing some acidity. Once the group came up to temp I pulled a bitter shot.

My dosing and grind are similar to my usual pulls of lighter roasts at higher temperatures.