Everyone has heard of "bad hair days", but the last couple days have been bad espresso days for me. It began at our regular get-together at Counter Culture Coffee. Although you might think that we meet in their espresso lab to dazzle each other with our barista skills, more times than not the air is punctuated with comments like "Dan, it's been 15 minutes, will you just pull me one? I don't care how it tastes, I need the caffeine!" It's all in good fun for the last four years we've been meeting each Friday; for me, it's a pleasure I look forward to all week. I endure a lot of friendly ribbing about my sloth-like prep before the La Marzocco, but usually the pours are at least acceptable. Lately I've even garnered a few "Wow, that's good!" comments from my otherwise hard-to-please coffee buddies.

This Friday I arrived early and expected a good session, if for no other reason that the espresso gods have been smiling on me lately. My success rate is typically much worse than what the poll How many espresso "sink shots" do you pull? respondents report (78% claiming one or zero sink shots out of 10). I console my bruised ego with two possible explanations:

1. Approximately 78% of the respondents to the poll are liars, or
2. Approximately 78% of the respondents will drink anything that's brown, hot, and caffeinated (*).

Unfortunately my winning streak ended Friday. Through two coffees and two grinders, nothing was close to "wow", though a couple pulls of Toscano hit the very good territory. It may come as a surprise, but one of the biggest challenges of working in Counter Culture's espresso lab is finding coffee that isn't too fresh! "It's down to room temperature" is our running joke when asked how well rested the coffee is.

Saturday morning, I'm back to my own milieu and fully expect to be right back in the groove. Four shots to redial in the grinder was not a good sign. My six year old son was hanging out with me, alternating between offers to help me with the "flatter" (his word for the tamper) and drawing on the whiteboard across from my espresso bar. With eight extractions down and still unsatisfied with the results, I'm losing my patience for a good espresso. "What the heck has happened?" I thought, "For weeks now I could do no wrong, now I'm all over the map." Temperature issues, distribution issues, early blonding issues... I was having them all. Evidently I've offended one of the espresso gods.

My son is oblivious to the frustration building inside of me as he cheerily twirls one tamper after another on the countertop for the pleasure of seeing which would spin longer. Ten extractions down and finally, finally something worth drinking to the bottom! Of course he's too young to drink coffee -- and even if he wasn't, the boy is already naturally wired enough -- so instead I offer him a smell of the coffee beans. He wrinkles his nose and says "Smells like coffee," as expected. Then I spy behind him a bag of Biloya on my desk that I snagged at Counter Culture. "Try this," I say and offer him the opened bag.

"Ooooh, smells like blueberries!" he chirps enthusiastically. I was proud of my little guy's budding abilities. My wife would not appreciate the source of my pride, but I'm sure members of this board do: It was the highlight of what was certainly not an exceptional espresso day.

(*) Of course I am joking!



The following is an entry for the semi-retired Overextracted - Blog about espresso and life...

Misery loves company; I'm glad I'm not alone. I too go though these spells it seems. I can't explain it either but I do know that I can drown my sorrow in a cup of delicious press coffee until I get my groove back. I think I would go crazy if I didn't have a whole kitchen full of brewing apparatus' and I'm so glad the Mrs. understands.

Life is good, even when the espresso isn't.

I did some soul searching with that poll. I answered zero because my sink shot ratio is better than 1 in 10, but it is not zero. The Lusso is very forgiving and my standards are pretty low at 5:30 AM.

Dan, where are you getting biloya yet? Is it any good? I seemed to have saved my (green) biloya too long and it's no longer riding that fine "fermented/juicy" line - it's now firmly in the fermented camp. Do you have a fresher source?

Ah, yes. I'm an idiot. Well, then, how is the Biloya from counter culture?

Here's the link. I thought it was quite good as a French press and was very surprised to discover the Biloya made a tasty espresso. I expected a lemony pucker, but as a ristretto, it was rich, fruity with a sour/sweet character. Though not balanced by barista competition standards, it was one of the better espressos I've had in the last couple weeks. Nathan mentioned it's almost gone.

Those mysterious bad espresso days are usually the work of bad coffee (and I include in that category the over fresh and over stale). A change of blend/batch usually drops me straight back into the groove. The first and 2nd runner ups in my case are overdue cleaning cycle and a drastic change in humidity. Of course, blaming myself would be just, well...unthinkable.

OK,

I'll fess up. I said 1 in 10, not because I'm that good, but I mainly drink Americani which is MUCH more forgiving than straight espresso. Also, if I pull a mediocre shot I give it to my wife who uses so much cream & sugar, I'm surprised she can taste coffee.


Jeff