http://youtu.be/b8z2DD9FplA

Rancilio Rocky, 6 weeks old.
Gaggia Coffee Deluxe, serviced 8 weeks ago. The only thing found to be wrong with it was scale in the boiler.
Freshly roasted Indian Mysore beans.

The pour looks good and the timing appears correct, but it tastes terrible. I have tried altering the grind/tamp/distribution/temp surf etc but nothing appears to improve the taste. I also struggle to tell whether it tastes bitter or sour (it just tastes awful to me!).

In case it was the beans I have tried some Colombia Bucamaranga with the same results. Good looking pours with loads of crema but terrible taste.

I tried both beans in the coffee shop served from a Jura Z5 and they were lovely. Sweet with only a hint of bitterness (which adds depth to the flavour). They also tasted less 'strong' if that makes sense.

I tried hot water from my machine to see if I could detect anything in it, but it tasted the same as hot water from the kettle so I think the hidden parts are clean and free from scale.

Are my expectations unrealistic on the equipment I have or is there something I am likely to be doing wrong judging by my commentary/video? I always thought results on manual equipment should be more variable but ultimately better than super autos when correct?

Thanks in advance.

James

Unfortunately, I can't comment on the beans, which are the most important factor in making good espresso. Perhaps some of our British members can compare them with other beans available in your country. I'll take your word for it that the local shop pulls much better shots with the same beans.

It's a little hard to tell from the video, but it appears that the shot blonded very early. There's at least a quarter inch of very light crema on top, which accumulated and rose to the top after the shot started to blond. I would expect the shot to taste quite bitter and watery (over extracted.)

Your shot time is in the right range, so I would try grinding finer and cutting the shot when it starts to lighten noticably. The shot time should still be in the 20-30 second range.

Alternatively, you can increase the dose using the same grind, but that will work only if there's enough headroom above the puck to keep it from slamming into the shower screen. For some coffees, updosing helps to tame bitter flavors, but usually results in an overall stronger cup.

It also looks to me like there was some channeling (light color) on the left side during the shot. This could be caused by uneven distribution or tamping. Make sure you distribute the coffee in the basket evenly and level carefully. Try a NEWS or nutating tamp to better seal the edges before the final tamp. The final tamp should be level so the puck doesn't get canted.

Diagnosis and correction are much easier if you use a bottomless portafilter. This will allow you to better catch the point of blonding and see any channeling. This site has dozens of links to videos of shots being pulled with bottomless portafilters. YouTube has a lot, too.

You might also try using a digital scale with 0.1g accuracy to weigh the grounds and shot. The ratio of the two can be quite helpful in determining whether you're over or under extracting, and also allows you to pull shots more consistently.

Thanks,

It's a little hard to tell from the video, but it appears that the shot blonded very early. There's at least a quarter inch of very light crema on top, which accumulated and rose to the top after the shot started to blond. I would expect the shot to taste quite bitter and watery (over extracted.)

After reading this I took another look at the video and it looks like the stream changed colour at around 14-15s? Is this the blonding point I have read so much about (but been unable to identify in real time!)?

It also looks to me like there was some channeling (light color) on the left side during the shot. This could be caused by uneven distribution or tamping. Make sure you distribute the coffee in the basket evenly and level carefully. Try a NEWS or nutating tamp to better seal the edges before the final tamp. The final tamp should be level so the puck doesn't get canted.

Diagnosis and correction are much easier if you use a bottomless portafilter. This will allow you to better catch the point of blonding and see any channeling. This site has dozens of links to videos of shots being pulled with bottomless portafilters. YouTube has a lot, too.

I have ordered a proper tamper and bottomless portafilter so hopefully these will help improve my technique and recognition of the blonding point.

You might also try using a digital scale with 0.1g accuracy to weigh the grounds and shot. The ratio of the two can be quite helpful in determining whether you're over or under extracting, and also allows you to pull shots more consistently.

I should have said that I have been weighing the grounds but I have not tried weighing the resulting shot. I will try this and see what my extraction ratios are.

jgoodman00 wrote:After reading this I took another look at the video and it looks like the stream changed colour at around 14-15s? Is this the blonding point I have read so much about (but been unable to identify in real time!)?

Yes. It starts with that big glob of light-colored foam plunging down the left inside of the shot glass. You can see the color change out of the other spout as well. This goes on for a good ten seconds before the light stuff floats to the top.

It's good to learn how to identify blonding but, as you have noted, it can be difficult to determine the blonding point in real time. It can also be quite subjective. As you can see from When did this espresso extraction go blond? [video quiz], opinion can vary considerably.

But the evidence in your video is pretty compelling. There's a lot of very light colored foam on top of the shot at the end. A shot cut just at the point of blonding wouldn't have this. Instead, the crema on top would be more cinnamon-colored, perhaps with one or two yellow dots of blond crema that dripped down after the shot was cut.

However, you should be aware that the blonding point doesn't necessarily mark the best point to cut the shot. Sometimes cutting the shot just short of blonding, or running it slightly past the start of blonding gets you to the optimum taste. This is something you have to experiment with on a coffee-by-coffee basis. Initially targeting the blonding point is a good way to start.

Of course, the blonding point by itself doesn't define the right time to cut the shot. In the example you provided, if you don't change the grind or dose and cut the shot at the point of blonding it would run only 15 seconds and the volume would fill about half the shot glass. It would taste horribly under extracted.

What you should shoot for, at least initially, is for the shot to run around 25 seconds to produce 1.5-2.0 oz of liquid just as blonding begins. You may have to tweak the shot parameters from there to get the best tasting cup, but that should produce something much more drinkable.

After you get comfortable with cutting the shot at the right time, try weighing the shot during extraction. Weighing the shot adds another data point that lets you nail a particular extraction ratio without having to depend on visual assessment of the shot volume. Shot volume is inherently imprecise due to variations in the texture and amount of crema produced by different coffees.

To learn more about target extraction ratios, take a look at Brewing ratios for espresso beverages

What Jim said.

When was your coffee roasted? Just looking at the pour, it looks as thought it might be a little too fresh. You've got a lot of gas in there.

A perfect pour should start with a few fat drops, progress to a cat's whisker, then a mouse tail, and finally get thick, round and furry (the fur is the gas in the crema). Yours jumps to thick, round and furry very quickly which is usually a sign of channeling.

It seems as if the bulk of the pour is coming from one small place in the puck. Without a bottomless, it's an educated guess that you have some distribution problems resulting in channeling; but in addition, it appears as if the puck is going in the pf well out of level. A good tamper will make leveling easier, but an awareness of a level distribution's importance and giving it due attention to is more important than equipment.

You may want to try some distribution tricks, such as stirring the grounds around in your pf with a toothpick once they've been dosed into it. That not only hopes distribute the fines evenly, but breaks up any lumps. That's a half-assed version of the "WDT." You can move up to a fully-assed Weiss Distribution Technique if you so desire by adding a plastic collar and a cryptic smile.

Even just (gently) whacking the side of the pf against your palm to get the grounds (more or less) evenly distributed will help. More, if you ritualize it. Look at the pf, using your immortal eye frame it's asymmetry, and slap the high spot into the low spot. Do it once when the pf is halfway loaded, and again more carefully when fully dosed.

Do a very light tamp, just enough to get the top of the puck flat and check for level. Assuming you've got a level top, go ahead and tamp. If not, tap the side of the pf a few times with your tamper (or give it a good whack into your palm) to break up the puck and re-level. (Don't tap the pf with the tamper as a matter of course, it was something everyone used to do but it's counter-productive unless you actually want to break up the puck for some reason).

I've been doing it that for twenty years, and... well... so far so good. Like masturbation, another form of whacking, I'll stop doing it the day it stops working.

BDL

Peppersass wrote:Yes. It starts with that big glob of light-colored foam plunging down the left inside of the shot glass. You can see the color change out of the other spout as well. This goes on for a good ten seconds before the light stuff floats to the top.

It's good to learn how to identify blonding but, as you have noted, it can be difficult to determine the blonding point in real time. It can also be quite subjective. As you can see from When did this espresso extraction go blond? [video quiz], opinion can vary considerably.

But the evidence in your video is pretty compelling. There's a lot of very light colored foam on top of the shot at the end. A shot cut just at the point of blonding wouldn't have this. Instead, the crema on top would be more cinnamon-colored, perhaps with one or two yellow dots of blond crema that dripped down after the shot was cut.

However, you should be aware that the blonding point doesn't necessarily mark the best point to cut the shot. Sometimes cutting the shot just short of blonding, or running it slightly past the start of blonding gets you to the optimum taste. This is something you have to experiment with on a coffee-by-coffee basis. Initially targeting the blonding point is a good way to start.

Of course, the blonding point by itself doesn't define the right time to cut the shot. In the example you provided, if you don't change the grind or dose and cut the shot at the point of blonding it would run only 15 seconds and the volume would fill about half the shot glass. It would taste horribly under extracted.

What you should shoot for, at least initially, is for the shot to run around 25 seconds to produce 1.5-2.0 oz of liquid just as blonding begins. You may have to tweak the shot parameters from there to get the best tasting cup, but that should produce something much more drinkable.

After you get comfortable with cutting the shot at the right time, try weighing the shot during extraction. Weighing the shot adds another data point that lets you nail a particular extraction ratio without having to depend on visual assessment of the shot volume. Shot volume is inherently imprecise due to variations in the texture and amount of crema produced by different coffees.

To learn more about target extraction ratios, take a look at Brewing ratios for espresso beverages

I tried a couple of shots last night. I tried weighing the shot for the first and stopped at 29g of espresso for 16g of ground coffee so 55% extraction I believe. The video wasnt of sufficient quality to see the blonding moment but the result was drinkable (just) and much less bitter than my previous attempts. I think it still blonded before I stopped due to channeling but until my bottomless portafilter arrives I wont really know.

For the second shot I choked the machine at the same 16g dose and got 30ml from 47s. It was worse than shot 1, but still better than previous attempts.

Before doing this I attempted to take some temp measurements from my machine as per this thread here. My measurements were not what I was expecting.

Ready light on - 84C (183)
60s after - 93 (199)
90s after - 89 (192)
120s after - 91 (196)

The boiler kicked in between 2-3min intervals. What was weird was the boiler shutting off at a seemingly low temperature which continued to rise to a peak 60s after the machine was 'ready'? That seems to defy the laws of physics???

For both shots above I brewed 60s after the machine was ready as opposed to immediately after. I wonder if this also made an incremental improvement in output quality.

another_jim wrote:You're picking hopeless coffees; they'd make a list of my five worst single origin espressos.

Espresso is dryer and bitterer than brewed coffee; so you want to pick coffees that brew to a more sweet than bitter or acidic taste, especially after they cool off. Also, most people also enjoy what espresso extraction does to the fruit, caramel and chocolate flavors in coffees, and do not much enjoy what they do to the spicy, savory, malty or woody flavors. The coffees you chose lack sweetness; and have spicy, woody and malty flavors.

Try Brazilian and Ethiopian coffees first of all; they are the friendliest. Medium roasted "honey processed" centrals can also be very nice. All these coffees are processed in ways that make for heavier bodied, sweeter and milder brews. This makes them easier to work with on entry level equipment. Italians don;t beleive in any straight coffee for espresso, and use blends that feature mostly the above coffees, along with a few extras for unique flavors. So try fresh roasted espresso blends. Those imported from Italy tend to be stale and deliver less than stellar results.

Your experience with the Jura is not quite relevant, since it produces something more akin to brewed coffee than espresso.

That makes perfect sense of my 'tasting less strong' comment.

I have also ordered the following to try:
http://www.hasbean.co.uk/products/Jailb...d-Mk4.html
http://www.hasbean.co.uk/products/Brazi...Decaf.html

I have been advised decaf is much more fickle, but I would like to find a decaf coffee my wife can enjoy.

boar_d_laze wrote:What Jim said.

When was your coffee roasted? Just looking at the pour, it looks as thought it might be a little too fresh. You've got a lot of gas in there.

A perfect pour should start with a few fat drops, progress to a cat's whisker, then a mouse tail, and finally get thick, round and furry (the fur is the gas in the crema). Yours jumps to thick, round and furry very quickly which is usually a sign of channeling.

It seems as if the bulk of the pour is coming from one small place in the puck. Without a bottomless, it's an educated guess that you have some distribution problems resulting in channeling; but in addition, it appears as if the puck is going in the pf well out of level. A good tamper will make leveling easier, but an awareness of a level distribution's importance and giving it due attention to is more important than equipment.

You may want to try some distribution tricks, such as stirring the grounds around in your pf with a toothpick once they've been dosed into it. That not only hopes distribute the fines evenly, but breaks up any lumps. That's a half-assed version of the "WDT." You can move up to a fully-assed Weiss Distribution Technique if you so desire by adding a plastic collar and a cryptic smile.

Even just (gently) whacking the side of the pf against your palm to get the grounds (more or less) evenly distributed will help. More, if you ritualize it. Look at the pf, using your immortal eye frame it's asymmetry, and slap the high spot into the low spot. Do it once when the pf is halfway loaded, and again more carefully when fully dosed.

Do a very light tamp, just enough to get the top of the puck flat and check for level. Assuming you've got a level top, go ahead and tamp. If not, tap the side of the pf a few times with your tamper (or give it a good whack into your palm) to break up the puck and re-level. (Don't tap the pf with the tamper as a matter of course, it was something everyone used to do but it's counter-productive unless you actually want to break up the puck for some reason).

I've been doing it that for twenty years, and... well... so far so good. Like masturbation, another form of whacking, I'll stop doing it the day it stops working.

BDL

I have been stirring the grounds in my measuring pot before tipping into the portafilter and I think this is helping, but still leading to distribution issues. I will try the WDT within the portafilter and see if that improves things.

The coffee seems very refresh and bubbly, I would have dropped the dose and tighten the grind. Also in the video it's pulling too fast.

Like other said, even with a good shot, if the coffee is bad, the shot will be bad.