AndyS wrote:I never really know what people are talking about when they make statements like the one you made above. OK, you raised or lowered the dose 0.5 grams, but what else did you do?

'Bout time you chimed in. I started taking your name in vain some three pages ago.

If you go back through this thread, you will see arguments that accurate dose measurement is unnecessary. There is no discussion of other factors, just attempts to discredit those "mad scientists" who (gasp) use a scale. I was primarily responding to those posts.

So in this case, no other changes were made. A couple of years ago, you kept brew ratio constant, while studying the effect of dose on shot time. Gross time differences were observed for 1g changes in dose. I recently performed a very limited test, keeping shot time constant, and observing the effect of dose on shot volume (actually mass). Gross volume (and brew ratio) differences were observed for 1g changes in dose.

"Yeah, but how does it taste?" I assume this was the thrust of your comment. No, I did not drink those shots, simply weighed them. Measuring a purely physical quantity like time or mass is much simpler than quantifying a psychophysical sensation like taste. To my knowledge, nobody has yet measured Just Noticeable Differences for taste and coffee dose. So until then, I shall take physical evidence of dose-dependent changes in pour characteristics to be a strong indicator of taste changes in the cup. Anecdotal evidence (my taste buds) supports this view.

AndyS wrote:John, this comment isn't directed towards you in particular, but your post is a convenient jumping-off point for one of my mini-rants.

I never really know what people are talking about when they make statements like the one you made above. OK, you raised or lowered the dose 0.5 grams, but what else did you do?

Nothing? Adjusted the beverage mass so that the brewing ratio remained constant? Adjusted the grind so that the shot time remained constant? Adjusted grind AND shot mass? Ended the shot by color without bothering to compare shot mass? Adjusted the brew temp a hair?

All these other variables influence the taste of the shot, but it's a rare day indeed when someone mentions what else they did or didn't do. That's why the endless "I can taste a dose change of 0.x grams" statements seem so lame to me.

Before the "anti-quote police" get all bent out of shape, I considered quoting less but couldn't find a way to do so without effecting Andy's meaning.

I would change John's quote a bit, which perhaps changes its meaning and intent, but the result would be a statement I think most home baristas could agree with. Here's my quote,

"among the factors that a barista can change easily, the most powerful one, as relates to shot timing, shot appearance, extraction, and taste, is the mass of coffee that is put in the PF."


In this statement I am comparing the obvious factors, e.g. dosing, grind, temperature, and tamping. And yes, if you were to change your grinder setting all the way from one extreme to another, you could go from a yellow gusher to a choked shot, but I'm talking about the sort of reasonable changes that most people would do on the fly. This means, for example, that adding 4% more coffee to the PF will change the extraction much more than a similarly modest change in grind setting, tamping, and temperature.

And with the above caveats, I'm sure that a 0.5g change in dose, with nothing else changed, stopping the extraction based upon the same cues (be they timing, shot appearance, volume, or any of the other reasonable ways that most people cut their shots) would be visibly different and "tastably" different to a whole lot of folks, although I'd hesitate to guess at the percentage.

ken

Ken, you have perhaps stated this a bit more strongly than I would have. I do not know whether dose is more important than grind setting, brew temperature, brew pressure... but I do believe it is important. And oddly neglected on the coffee boards, compared to relatively unimportant topics like tamping (which has spawned far more threads than dosing).

There is the odd mention in this and other threads of adjusting a new coffee to specific weight as if there is some magical number of grams that provides the optimum shot for a given shot volume in a given time. Perhaps if one drinks a very narrow range of coffees, this could be true. For a wider range of coffees, optimum dose could range from 7 to 12g for singles.

Dose is inextricably tied to grind.

cafeIKE wrote:There is the odd mention in this and other threads of adjusting a new coffee to specific weight as if there is some magical number of grams that provides the optimum shot for a given shot volume in a given time. Perhaps if one drinks a very narrow range of coffees, this could be true. For a wider range of coffees, optimum dose could range from 7 to 12g for singles.

Dose is inextricably tied to grind.

I can say, without reservation, that there is not a single coffee that I would enjoy dosed at 12g for a single, or 24g for a double.

ken

And that's your taste.
But it is in no way generalizable.
Other people like some coffees updosed past that (arbitrary) point; and others like some coffees downdosed below that (arbitrary) point.
They are not wrong.
You are not wrong.

It's all personal taste.

And in terms of the whole "I can't learn anything from professionals, we should get together and learn from each other" thing.... that's great if your goal is to be as good as your nearby other home baristas -- or if your assumption is that professional baristas are not any better than home baristas.

If the former - cool. Go for it. We each have our goals in life.

If the latter - you're wrong.

malachi wrote:And in terms of the whole "I can't learn anything from professionals, we should get together and learn from each other" thing.... that's great if your goal is to be as good as your nearby other home baristas -- or if your assumption is that professional baristas are not any better than home baristas.

If the former - cool. Go for it. We each have our goals in life.

If the latter - you're wrong.

Chris,

With all due respect . . . . there aren't very many good cafes and those that exist are not exactly evenly distributed. There are very large swaths of N. America, for example, that don't have a single cafe worth visiting.

Even the good cafes have particular styles and their style, although pleasing to some will not provide an enjoyable experience to others who have differing tastes. If you don't like their approach or the coffees that they use, however much they might please someone else, learning to do things as they do things will yield a beverage that does not satisfy. So simply "learning from a professional" has no more merit than spending time with a bunch of home baristas and picking and choosing what it is that they do that pleases YOU.

And finally, being as good as other home baristas, the sort of home baristas that are passionate and spend time on this internet board -- will probably yield results in the cup that are better than 98% of the cafes that most of us have the opportunity to frequent in the towns that we live in.

ken

GC7 wrote:That is total and utter nonsense - not your feeling which you have every right to express - but your conclusion is flawed. Your "joyless tedium" is another persons automatic reproducible routine that might add an extra minute per drink in a home setting. I for one enjoy the process and enthusiastically await the drink each and every time. After all isn't that what we strive to achieve with all this? I am most certainly on a mission to improve and learn. That video taught me NOTHING. I would, however, appreciate and learn as suggested by getting together and making drinks with others and with different equipment as well.

If I read him right, Jim wasn't talking about the process, he was talking about the attitude.

We can and should do what's necessary, but we can lighten up about it

RapidCoffee wrote:If you go back through this thread, you will see arguments that accurate dose measurement is unnecessary. There is no discussion of other factors, just attempts to discredit those "mad scientists" who (gasp) use a scale. I was primarily responding to those posts.

I really don't think anyone was saying that.

No one was saying a repeatably accurate dose is not necessary, although several asserted that they do not feel they need to weigh every time to achieve a consistent dose, whether because they use a timed grinder or some other method.

If anything there was an unspoken acknowledgment that the only way to be sure that every shot was perfectly dosed would of course be to weigh it, but many questioned whether that was necessary or even desirable to heighten one' s enjoyment. Some felt they could be accurate enough using other methods, others that they quite liked experiencing small variations.

Early on there was a great post by Cannonfodder Dave (nice ongoing Maximatic review guys! ) summarising the matter of whether redistribution in the basket or levelling is necessary in terms of type of equipment and grinder in particular etc. That post put much into perspective.

You yourself acknowledged you do not weigh every time.

Equally the discussion about dosing was peppered with comments about the validity or otherwise of various other preparation methods, which were quite happily summarised in advance by Dave's comment that it depends on equipment.

There were likewise comments that dose isn't a factor in isolation. John must have missed them.

Various experienced posters attempted to help newbies in particular with feedback about what sort of dose variation in a shot that otherwise appeared to have successfully kept all other parameters constant would result in a different taste or disappear into the "background noise" as Jim calls it.

And there were a lot of cavalier comments by experienced members about how they had managed to dispense with roundhead methodical preparation over the years, probably for exactly the "sprezzatura" Jim mentions - they've got their technique down to a T.

That's my summary - for John and anyone else coming in here who doesn't have the stamina/caffeine in the system to go back through everything.

Just out of curiosity this morning, shoving a couple of Sidamo's through the SJ doser, I thought I'd just eyeball them for dose and then weigh them to see how I had managed. One of them was dead on 8 g and the other 7.9. Of course it was a fluke But I was helped by knowing how grinds come out of the SJ at the settings I use, how long the grinding takes, how much doser clicking equates more or less to what I want, and how far my dose translates into distance up the basket wall in relation to the ridge in my single baskets. I probably wouldn't have acquired that facility without a fair bit of practice using scales as a reference, and I'm sure I just lucked out this morning - but that's a dosing technique that works for me day to day... And on the Nino I use the timer. Which is supposedly accurate to 0.1 of a second but may actually be less accurate at dosing than me. Ha!

Now that I've finished bragging, here's what I consider the important bit.

In my experience you can weigh out the dose very accurately every time and things will be different anyway because of changes in humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure etc.

We live in a flux and coffee is organic, after all.

Different days, different equipment, different techniques, different temperaments.

In my opinion we need to go with the flow. That's what making coffee is all about in more ways than one.

That doesn't mean not being methodical or not adjusting for changing conditions or reconciling ourselves to sink shots. It means we will inevitably get small differences cup to cup.... and between each other... and can enjoy them.

Drawing rigid lines can hurt and we've seen enough of that in this thread....

Cheers

Mike

PS: That wasn't directed at you John, or anyone else in particular. I was just using your post as a springboard - hopefully not to dive off at a tangent!