Bluecold wrote:I think that the speed aspect of espresso gets lost sometimes. Skimming crema comes to mind. And latte art. Maybe I have a negative

Well said. It is supposed to be casual, just enjoy a great booster shot and move on.

Tim,

Just try one of these...

The Arrarex Caravel

ciao
PC

I'll admit I don't use my lever nearly as much as I would like. I hope to have a Vario here in the near future and with two grinders I hope to have both machines dialed in and ready to go head-to-head...

To follow-up:

I pushed my brew pressure up until the espresso started to get grainy in body and slowly backed it down until the grittyness went away (7.2-bar or so). The body is smooth creamy and the shots taste sweet and full flavored (not under extracted).

The espresso has never been so good, and my baskets don't require a lot of attention to get even pulls...

another_jim wrote:A food science lab at the University of Salamanca published some consumer studies a while back and got a near tie with 9 and 7 bar espresso, while the 11 bar shots were thought a lot worse.

But the overall impression I get from all this work is that pressure is not a major game changer, more a fine tuning variable. I think you are the first who's developed a really large preference for lowered pressures on a pump machine.

Well "we" don't have it wrong, I did.

Last night I reconsidered my pressure setting. This morning just out of curiosity I put the pressure back to 9-bar/blind basket.

For a moment I thought I was going to have to adjust finer to slow the time down for the higher pressure. I decided to grind and pull a shot just like I was at 7-bar to see how ridiculously fast the shot would actually be. What stunned me was that the shot wasn't fast, ok maybe a couple seconds but at 7-bar my shots were a typically 30 seconds, now they are closer to 26 or 27 seconds.

The flavor was very good, not assertive at all. Much more crema (obviously) but the shot remained sweet and quite delicious. I'm actually most surprised at how little the shot did change even after the 2-bar adjustment upward.

The way I figure it is that I've been grinding too fine all along, making the shot gritty in body and flavors overall bad. When going to 7-bar I had to loosen the grind in order to get a decent shot time, that's when the shots also tasted much better. So all along it appears it was my grind, not my machine pressure.

Interestingly I still use the grind, dose, level and tamp and the shot beads evenly and flows dead center. That's what really surprised me. I can't explain it (and in many ways) things are just falling into place.

Probably obvious to most of you, and Jim you were right. I don't think I was having a preference for low pressure shots, I was liking the espresso once I was forced to produce a better grind. At 9-bar the shots are just as lovely as they ever have been, it was my grind (and my ignorance) that was holding me back.

Unanimity has been restored. I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad.

TimEggers wrote:What stunned me was that the shot wasn't fast, ok maybe a couple seconds but at 7-bar my shots were a typically 30 seconds, now they are closer to 26 or 27 seconds.

Interesting. Once again, grind turns out to be the critical factor.

I was reading in Rao's book that at a certain point, more pressure will actually slow the flow rate, probably due to compression of the cake. So maybe you are close to the turning point at 9 BAR.

On the surface of it, it would seem the finer grind overextracts, which is what you didn't like. What kind of shot time did you have with finer grind and 9 BAR? When you say gritty, do you mean literally, like a lot of fines in the cup, or just way too much body?

Something I did notice today is that the higher pressure shots were hotter in the cup, even after a rest they were still quite hot. Indicating to me too high a flow rate (the coffee was unable to draw some of the heat from the water because the water passed by too fast).

While I was surprised at the results I did notice some things were just "different" than before. The coffee was the same (the same flavors) but the character was different. The shots seems a little less sweet and heavier in body.

Tomorrow I'm going to try a slightly finer grind to try to slow the flow rate down, but I'm already giving up quite a bit of sweetness (but gaining the creamy body).

I'm still in the "learning" phase whereas I feel like a toddler learning the colors, soon I'll be able to use those colors to finger paint.

I can't say what setting I prefer (at this point) and I do have some measuring devices en-route so I can attempt to collect some more meaningful data. So far I've had amazing espresso at 7-bar(ish) pressure, some of the best I've had the pleasure to drink. At 9-bar the character is a little different and the body amazing, but I can taste the sweet blueberry turning a little bitter/harsh for me. Instead of sweet berry its wanting to roll into a bitter dark fruit. I saw the same in the chocolates, sweet milk chocolate became a more bitter/dry dark chocolate. Still good, but just a little different.

I'm going to spend a few days here and see where I can take the coffee. I'm beginning to wonder what personal significance I place on "body" vs "flavor" for my espresso. Frankly I'm beginning to doubt that I prefer a heavy creamy body/crema, especially if it sacrifices sweetness/flavor clarity.

Curious what the flavor changes are between a slow low pressure flow rate and high fast flow rate shot? Nonetheless I'm still having a lot of fun and really learning a lot about not so much espresso, but what my strategy is in producing the beverage, or in other words how I want to interpret the bean.