On a recent trip to NYC, I had some extremely nice shots at shops like Cafe Grumpy and El Beit. My favorites tended to be SO Ethiopian Naturals or blends heavy on them. The fruit was always expressed very clearly and sweetly. I'm pretty sure the baristas were pulling heavy doses short, as NYC baristas tend to do.

I'm far from rocking a Robur/Synesso combination, but I was still hoping to have better luck reproducing this experience at home (Mazzer Mini/Andreja P). Take, for example, the Heartbreaker blend I brought home with me from Grumpy. Lightly roasted by Novo, I believe it contains some Harar, Yirg, and Colombian. ~19g triple, ~199 deg, 28sec, ~1.5oz (not split). Decent shot, but not very similar to what I tasted in the shop. I've also experimented with some of Novo's Gololcha Harar and a few other coffees that purport to be fruit bombs.

Generally, the acidity is there, but the sweetness seems to be lacking. Dry red wine instead of berries. I can of course sweeten things up with the aid of milk. I do not like to add table sugar to my espresso, as it imparts a sweetness that I find dissonant with naturally occurring milk/espresso sweetness.

If you got the results I'm getting and you wanted to sweeten up the fruit flavors, which direction would you go with the shot? Someone will probably advise me to dose lower & grind finer... but the baristas that served me in NY were getting great results with these coffees in the updosed style. And it's not a caramel/chocolate sweetness I'm seeking, but a fruity one.

I hate to blame equipment, but could I just be tasting the "clarity" difference between the small flat burrs on my Mazzer Mini vs. the big bad wolf conicals?

Cut your dose.

another_jim wrote:Cut your dose.

Or adjust your grind to yield more like 2.5oz from 19gr tripple basket...

What Jim said. Cut the dose to 14 grams in a double basket, 12 may be better but you will have to experiment. You could try the higher extraction as well but my experience, a lot of those super fruity Ethiopians work well with a lower dose to get the profile right.

Thanks all... I did not find that a lower dose enhanced the sweetness. Extracted some more bitters to balance the sours, but still a bit rough.

In retrospect, I believe I was overflushing my machine. I claimed to be pulling at 199F, but it may have been closer to 195F. In blends that include a Sidamo and a Brazil, it's tricky; I want the temp low enough to avoid ashiness in the Brazil, but high enough to fully extract the sweetness from the Sidamo.

Does a low temp seem to be an obvious cause for dry, sometimes vinegary flavors from Ethiopian coffees?

Could be that once I dialed in the temperature, I would indeed benefit from a lower dose. Makes sense.

portamento wrote:I'm far from rocking a Robur/Synesso combination, but I was still hoping to have better luck reproducing this experience at home (Mazzer Mini/Andreja P). Take, for example, the Heartbreaker blend I brought home with me from Grumpy. Lightly roasted by Novo, I believe it contains some Harar, Yirg, and Colombian. ~19g triple, ~199 deg, 28sec, ~1.5oz (not split). Decent shot, but not very similar to what I tasted in the shop. I've also experimented with some of Novo's Gololcha Harar and a few other coffees that purport to be fruit bombs.

Generally, the acidity is there, but the sweetness seems to be lacking. Dry red wine instead of berries. I can of course sweeten things up with the aid of milk. I do not like to add table sugar to my espresso, as it imparts a sweetness that I find dissonant with naturally occurring milk/espresso sweetness.

For whatever it's worth, I stumbled into a couple of incredibly sweet, fruity shots back-to-back somewhere within the first one or two dozen pulls I made with far inferior equipment. (Gaggia Evo, Capresso Infinity holdover from my drip/vacpot days. Heck, I even used the included plastic tamper as I'd been shipped the wrong-size metal one.) No idea what temp I pulled the shot at (no measuring capability quite yet) and an unknown dose mass (no scale to calibrate the volumetric dosing i was doing). In short, I pretty much took a shot in the dark with cheap equipment and got a cup full of fruit. It's possible to get that sweetness without having a "big bad wolf". It's probably not just a clarity difference. The sweet shots were higher volume and quicker than your example pull, so the dose lower and/or adjust grind for more volume sounds like the right track to me. I'm still chasing the same thing.

After reading most of the dosing threads and absorbing the wonderful information put forth by Ken, Jim and others, a question has come up for me. Does location have an effect on dose weight and dosing parameters? I'm refering to the effects of relative and seasonal humidity on the bean weight. I live at sea level and I would think that humidty affects my bean weight differently than somebody at high/ dry elevation such as Denver and that the very humid locations in the south and east would be affected differently as well. Is my 19 gram dose in Vancouver the same as a 16 gram dose in Denver? Any thoughts.
-Ian

Roasted coffee is about 2 to 3 percent water at any altitude. Ground coffee will supposedly absorb another 2 to 3 percent, but I doubt the short interval from grinder to basket allows a lot of variation to creep in. In any case, a 3 percent moisture difference, which seems maximal, would still only amount to a 1/2 gram difference in dose, whereas we are talking about 3 to 5 gram differences.

Humidity and static differences create clumpy or fluffy grinds which can make repeatable volumetric dosing tricky. Weighing the dose is ultra accurate. The other highly accurate method (1/3 gram) is checking the dose with your tamper. The upper level of the tamper's piston should be the same height above or below the lip of the basket every time you make a shot. By feeling for this alignment with your fingers when you tamp, you can dose very consistently (tip courtesy of Cannonfodder)