I'm trying to dial in the grind, temperature and other factors for my new espresso machine, so I'm pulling a lot of shots. I've got a bottomless portafilter, so I can watch what is going on, but tasting is important too.

So.. how does everyone avoid getting over caffeinated? I thought that maybe tasting only the crema would be better than sipping from the shot, and in that way, I would avoid too much of a buzz.

Well, I seem to be getting the buzz anyway, so that part didn't work but I'm curious. Do you think crema tastes the same as the coffee?

No. The crema contains more of the bitter flavors. In one coffee I'm drinking now, the crema has a vaguely chocalate flavor, while the liquid is more fruity.

If you get buzzed tasting espresso, you can spit. This is SOP for tasters of coffee, wine, and spirits. Don't know about beer.

Thanks for the answer. Spitting it out should have occurred to me, but it didn't.

But that leads me to another newbie question: if you take a sip, do you hold it and roll it around in your mouth a bit, or just sip and spit and then analyze what taste is left?

I suppose this thread should be moved to Coffee.

Coat your tongue, identify the tastes, then spit. (you'll still ingest some caffeine, alcohol, etc doing this, but a lot less.)

Also, the initial part of the extraction is mostly physical washing of the coffee grounds. It is the latter part which contains more extracted alkaloids like caffeine. Thus the crema will contain a substantial portion of caffeine.

Alternately, depending on how severely caffeine affects your body, you could just build up a tolerance for it by ingesting significant amounts of it as you've been doing... maybe. Degree of caffeine intake is a rather personal decision that's of course strongly influenced by how the drug influences you; anyhow, my point is that spitting isn't necessarily the answer, but it's certainly a good one.

Other things to do might include stirring the shot (isn't the SCAA standard 3 prior to sipping?), which should increase its consistency somewhat. Jim's a certified judge, and I am not in the habit of stirring my espresso, so hopefully he'll take the final word on that.

Rather than stir, you could just swirl it in the cup. But, yeah, spit if you're going to be doing a lot. Drink some water between shots, too.

Thanks for your suggestions. I started sipping from the shot glass to coat my tongue and burned off some taste buds. Then I learned to suck in some cooling air with it.

Now, I've started pouring the shot into a small, warmed cup, swirl it, and then taste. That cools it a bit, as well.

Hmm. Is that what is called "cupping" ??

rickmonroe wrote:Is that what is called "cupping" ??

See CoffeeCupper.com's Reference or Coffeegeek's Beginner's Guide to Cupping for an explanation of cupping.

another_jim wrote:If you get buzzed tasting espresso, you can spit. This is SOP for tasters of coffee, wine, and spirits. Don't know about beer.

The beer tasters I've talked to all insist that swallowing does make important differences in the flavors of beer.

Ice cream tasters spit, too.