I'm still working on a graphic to make this thing more understandable. The previous chart was waaaaay too complicated. Here's the latest stripped-down version. Note that the ratios for ristretto, regular espresso, etc aren't requirements, or even guidelines. They're just observations about how people pull and name their shots.

You already know I am totally into this idea.

My next set of tests (when I am hiding from competition practise) will be something along the lines of how brew time starts to affect the whole thing. Using one blend and one brewing style, keep the volume consistent and the dry weight fairly constant and see what happens with different brewing times.

I am looking forward to the first roaster suggesting you dose 19g, brew at 202F and in 27 seconds pull 30g of espresso.....

King Seven wrote:I am looking forward to the first roaster suggesting you dose 19g, brew at 202F and in 27 seconds pull 30g of espresso.....

Would that (19g) recommendation be for a specific machine? There are so many types of espresso machines out there, perhaps just a recommended brewing ratio would be more useful?

Henry

AndyS wrote:I'm still working on a graphic to make this thing more understandable. The previous chart was waaaaay too complicated.

How about a stacked bar chart along the following lines?




Or a curve showing degrees of variation within each type:




Regards
Timo

King Seven wrote:My next set of tests (when I am hiding from competition practise) will be something along the lines of how brew time starts to affect the whole thing. Using one blend and one brewing style, keep the volume consistent and the dry weight fairly constant and see what happens with different brewing times.

Excellent

King Seven wrote:I am looking forward to the first roaster suggesting you dose 19g, brew at 202F and in 27 seconds pull 30g of espresso.....

..."in a LM ridged double basket."

In addition to the basket, since different machines provide differing amounts of head space above the basket rim, that too is a factor.....

I like your ideas, Timo, although I'm lousy at the graphics stuff. I would love to do something like your second graph, but instead of lines dividing ristretto from normale from lungo, I'd have a color gradient that smoothly went from one to the next.

The gradient would be nice, it would suggest a continuum rather than discrete borders. You can see that a loose ristretto is rather like a tight normale, at least in terms of the ratio of bean to beverage produced. I am sure there are graphics tools that could produce the effect you like, though I don't think any of the charting tools I have access to will produce a gradient effect left-to-right below the curve. The grid lines can be hidden, though, fairly easily.

Regards
Timo

Turns out Excel has a gradient fill feature. Sorry about the less-than-tasty beverage color.
From tight ristretto to lungo+.

timo888 wrote:Turns out Excel has a gradient fill feature. Sorry about the less-than-tasty beverage color.
From tight ristretto to lungo+.

That is very cool, thanks Timo.

I was messing around with this yesterday.

Decided I would do a little experiment where I kept the basket, grind and brew time constant (stuck it at 25s) and then vary my dose to see how things would change. As expected the higher the dose, the higher the brew ratio but what I didn't expect to see was a kind of choke point where suddenly you crossed over a certain dose threshold and the flow becomes dramatically slower. I didn't really do enough shots to have enough data to post anything, and it may not even be a worthwhile experiment but it has left me a little curious.