I wouldn't use the term 'rubbish'... but then again i'm not frickin English!!!

James invites us to taste pure crema - yuck! (no duh)

Then, to try a skimmed espresso. ok, it's pleasant,. easy on the palate, maybe even sweeter.

I know... it's like the Reader Digest version of espresso!

I am a huge believer that all preferences are personal and therefore valid (especially to that person)... & that goes for this one. As for me, I will continue to drink my 'spro like the creator meant it to be - bittersweet & complex - fully realized and almost never perfect... but just often enough to keep me trying.

I'm not sure what I think about "pure crema," tasting ... but I just wanted to say hello to Sebastian (greatinfusions): you recently worked on my Elektra Semi-automatica .. It's working!

Howard

glad to hear it howard.

I tried it again with 13g of Nicaragua Jinotega, Angelina Estate, roasted (by Mojo Coffee) a little on the darkish side of medium. This time it was on my Pavoni at home. As always, it was split with the dual spouts on the portafilter. Skimming the crema this time unmasked a nuttiness that I hadn't noticed before or in the other half of the shot. I'm really enjoying the dual spouts and skimming one to compare the flavor.

I believe the point of all this is not so much to start a trend of skimming off the crema, but to reverse the trend of "crema uber alles."

It might be scientifically interesting to pull a shot that is 90% or 100% crema, but the coffee is what we're after. Crema is an indicator to my eyes, but the final score comes from how the coffee works in my mouth.

Hmm, after watching Jim's vid, I tried with my SM "Monkey" frenched, and personally I like the "straight" shots better without the crema and with milk drinks, better with. However, a certain amount of the crema stays in the glass when pouring it out into the latte cup. Crema alone is, ugh, bitter! On my single origin coffee I have gotten lemon, even berries out of the crema.
Without the crema on the monkey, it seemed to open up the coffee in a deeper level of flavor. Have to try the mixing method next.

Cheers!

Personally I like the taste of crema, maybe I'm weird. Most of the time when I have espresso I swirl my cup and mix the crema with the espresso.

RapidCoffee wrote:Interesting discussion, but the entire assertion is ill posed.

+1

I'm a bit late to add to this but I think if the Crema tastes bad, it might be due to your grinder creating too many fine particles that make it into the coffee. I use a Kyrocera hand grinder and noticed (maybe more so if I grind more finely?) that sometimes when making a cappuccino, there's the dark coffee crema/foam that mixes with the cappa foam, when I tasted it, it tasted like fine particles of dirty overextracted coffee. The original poster has a similar grinder to me, which MAY explain why he doesn't like Crema, because it contains the 'light weight' small particles of coffee grounds, which aren't so tasty anymore.

I grind a little coarser and haven't noticed it too much, but yeah I'm going to invest in a high quality (and unfortunately high priced) grinder soon to avoid those fine particles as much as I can.

*update* I went to a highly rated local cafe here, actually TWO and I did notice the crema (well, darker coloured foam in my cappuccino, I pressume its the crema mixed with milk foam) it did have that same super fine (not so good tasting) coffee powder flavour I tasted at home. And they both used the $2000 Robur grinder, so I guess my new vario won't change that! Doh.