Jeff wrote:I can't disagree that you enjoy those beans ... Your roaster seems to know how to produce great results with his greens and gear.

Jeff,

I see that you live in San Francisco. Do you go out for espresso? If so, may I ask where?

The last pleasing espresso I had in a cafe was on February 3 2020 at La Boulangerie on Union Street. It was a sunny afternoon under a bright blue sky. I was with my wife. The memory is still vivid in my mind. It started me again on the quest to find an espresso to my taste.

But I should explain. I had been drinking espressos for decades and thought I knew a little something about what an espresso should taste like. Then maybe 20 years ago in Rome on a late December afternoon after Christmas my wife and I stopped at a gelateria for an espresso and macchiato and of course a gelato. The young man behind the counter - he could not have been more than 20 years old - slid the espresso to me. The look in his eyes said, "What are you going to do about this?"

I looked down at the cup. It contained barely more than a teaspoon of dark black liquid. The young man was clearly challenging me to try something different. I took it back to the table where my wife was waiting. Seconds later I realized that for the first time in my life I was tasting an espresso I actually loved. The only words I could think of was that I had just tasted the very essence of coffee. Of course this is a description so abstract and unspecific and unscientific that it is basically meaningless. Nevertheless it has stayed in my mind for decades.

When I returned to San Francisco and did a little research I realized that the young man had given me a ristretto. When I look back on that afternoon in Rome I can only see it as having set a bar I may never be able to match. Since then I do not think that I have had more than five espressos that I would describe as truly fine. Whenever I hear the phrase cafe quality espresso I wince. I have taught myself to pull acceptable espressos - even good espressos - on my Europiccola. But the last good espresso I have had at a cafe was at the Boulangerie a year and a half ago. Nevertheless I am always willing to try if someone has a suggestion.

I don't think of myself as a connoisseur. I don't fool myself into thinking that I possess particularly discerning tastes, except as it comes to women, as anyone who knows my wife will attest.

But if you have a particular place that you go to in San Francisco for espresso, I would love to know of it.

/Charles

DamianWarS wrote:coffee is cupped between 8 to 24 hours upon roasting as per the SCA standards. of course cupping is immersion and about as simple as it gets for brewing coffee it is also used to determine green bean defects (as per the SCA use) and not really about optimising the flavour by letting it rest. We should expect completely different results with espresso.

Apples and oranges as cupping protocol dictates a pretty specific roast.

You're going to have a harder time finding the type of espresso described in your post in SF. I'm not as familiar with your roaster, but it seems to me that your source leans more towards the old school maybe Italian style espresso. What you are posting makes more sense through the lens of how the Italians do it. I've occasionally perused Italian coffee sites and it's not strange to see them recommend a de-gas of a few DAYS after opening the bag of coffee for "optimal" usage. The methods the Italians use are quite contrary to how the past 2 decades of coffee culture has moved towards. Modern coffee and espresso focuses preserving origin flavors via light/medium roasting and consumption while fresh (5-7 days to a month out from roast personally depending). This is so called third wave espresso. The Italians predominantly don't follow this trend. They roast medium/darker and package with consumption being farther out in mind compared to most boutique roasters. One can call the beans "stale", but the Italians produce coffee to perform months out from roast. There's nothing wrong with liking modern or traditional Italian espresso. I've ordered a bunch of "stale" Italian coffee to work through just recently. It's a different style with it's own ways to optimize.

San Francisco dedicated coffee bars lean more towards modern espresso. I'd actually recommend Blue Bottle Coffee as probably fitting more your taste. Four Barrel, Ritual Coffee, Sightglass Coffee are other great coffee places, but specialize more in higher acidity origin focused coffee.

I'd consider trying Linea Coffee Roasters in SF.

Also Pinhole coffee in bernal Heights and Andytown in the outer sunset. (great baked goods also)

yakster wrote:Apples and oranges as cupping protocol dictates a pretty specific roast.

yes that's true, there's some ambiguity when people start talking about cupping that people can get carried away with. perhaps I wasn't clear enough with my original point but essentially I'm saying is just because you cup something 12 hours after roast and it's good, doesn't mean it will work for espresso, regardless of what standard you use or the motivation of the cupping.

cupping itself isn't all that useful to the consumer especially for espresso. From the farm, green bean buyer, roaster, cafe and every step in between maybe cupping the coffee and each may have different goals in mind, for example, a cafe will be more focused on the consumer where at the farm they are focused on grading the coffee and from a production roaster it will probably be for internal QC. but what makes it to the label is anyone's guess and it could be a mash-up or the best take of any part of the process from farm to cafe and the words used may also be re-interpreted to make it more market-friendly.

if it's for espresso cupping notes should be from actual shots from production roasters and things like ratio, dose, time, etc... should be included on the label. but roasters are not all that clear on this often and many will just have their cupping notes from an immersion cupping style from a sample roaster when they received the green beans or pick whichever ones they seem to fancy most. We're in the specialty to even post-specialty age of coffee and these details should be a demand from the consumers. I make a habit to contact the roaster before I buy and asking them these kinds of questions and often I will get more refined answers about how the shots differ from the cupping notes. I'm not interested in the coffee if they seem to be uninformed with how the shots are and this includes degassing.

Thank you all for the recommendations. Home-Barista is the go to place. Now about carbon dioxide and coffee roasting.

Do coffee beans roasted in a Sivetz Roaster need to be degassed after roasting? Years ago Michael Sivetz built a coffee roaster for Luciano Repetto of Graffeo Coffee in San Francisco. Luciano maintains that beans roasted in his roaster do not need to be degassed. As I have already stated, while I do not claim to be a man of particularly refined taste, the espresso that I pull from Graffeo coffee beans to my taste clearly supports Luciano's argument.

So where does carbon dioxide come from? Is it innate, that is, is the carbon dioxide inside the coffee bean as it forms and matures? Or is it somehow acquired in the roasting process?

Luciano says it is the latter. He argues that carbon dioxide is a byproduct that is absorbed by the beans as they pass through a haze of smoke during the roasting process and that the Sivetz roaster has been engineered to roast beans smoke free. Ergo there is no gas in the beans to degas after roasting in a Sivetz Roaster.

The OP is is triggering my troll detection. I provided a clear explanation and he has simply repeated his original illogical claims. You cannot taste CO2 in your coffee so I have no clue why he keeps making that assertion.

Sivetz made a fluid bed roaster. Ok great. Many of us have roasted with fluid beds using popcorn poppers. Sivetz makes a big deal about using temp measurements. Ok big deal, most of us use thermocouples and electronic tracking. Sivetz claims no carbon buildup in the fluid bed... but he is referring to carbon on a drum, not carbon dioxide. He is referring to the fluid bed being easier to keep clean than a large drum roaster.

Here is Sivetz himself extolling the virtues of his own system in an article... no mention of CO2 because he doesn't rewrite the rules of chemistry. He just describes a fluid bed as clean and thermally monitored. Well guess what? So is my Quest drum roaster. The drum has remained clean over 7 years. It's got two thermocouples and is PID controlled through a laptop. And I don't have smoke unless I edge into second crack... it is mostly water vapour.

https://www.coffeechemistry.com/compar ... d-roasters

There may be an argument that fast hot roasting causes faster degassing, but the CO2 is still a byproduct of the roasting process in the bean. It is NOT absorbed by beans from smoke. This is easily determined with some basic research.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... in_Coffee

I just do not understand this 21st century misinformation problem where "X told me outlandish thing so it must be true" is in any way considered a valid or credible way of learning about something.

I'd suggest we all take a breather on this.

It seems as though things have come full circle and Guidelines for productive online discussion wisely suggests that

Dogmatic or repetitive replies are rarely welcome.

Like many things, coffee is littered with shattered myths, and, now, failed Kick-a-go-go projects promising unbelievably fantastic results.

One of the first things that I learned, as the self-evident truth, was that you smacked the tamped PF ear with the back of the tamper to, well, I don't really remember. This proved to be a negative.

Building belief solely on "Joe says" is how myths get started. Joe might have some great ideas, but until there is some non-anecdotal evidence that Joe has something of value, it is just an opinion.

Perhaps there is something there. Should the OP or others find some interesting supporting evidence, I know I'd be interested in hearing it.

Edit: Apologies, as I did misspell Sivetz. I still think a break to collect and digest some information is worthwhile.