"A skilled performer can thus be defined as a person with the ability to achieve an intended outcome repeatedly in a variety of conditions and usually with less physical or cognitive effort than a less skilled performer." (http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/spor ... oversight.)

Hi all--I've been thinking a lot lately about skill acquisition, non-linear learning, etc. and how those things relate to a novice or intermediate home barista's espresso journey.

It's so easy to give into the frustration of inconsistency, especially once you achieve certain milestones in your learning. We generally have an expectation that achievement (or acquisition) is a single moment, and once there, we can only continue to move upward (or plateau.) But any craft as detailed and multifaceted as coffee brewing is not made up of just a single learning curve. Sayings like "3 steps forward, two steps back" and "the more you know, the less you know" are clichéd, but absolutely relevant here.

Inspired by a recent experience, I've been focusing effort on trying to mitigate some of the frustration that comes with the growing pains of novice home-brewing. I'm curious if anyone has had a similar experience to this:

- I dialed in a familiar coffee, starting pulling repeatable shots (a relatively new victory for me).

- Made a few tweaks to the recipe for even better results. Still repeatable.

- With no changes (I thought) to my recipe or routine, I found myself suddenly "dialed-out", and not in the expected "coffee is aging, must grind finer" kind of way.

I currently use a Eureka Silenzio with a full hopper, so far with good success (emptying it every day to prolong the life of the coffee). As I write this I have some mods on the way to experiment with single-dosing.

The variable I suspect to be the problem was the incorporation of a newer bag of beans (same coffee, same roast date) to the hopper to keep it full, and to practice pulling consistent-tasting shots with the same coffee. As much as possible I kept track of how much was left of the old bag so I could predict which beans were making up which shots. I figured some adjustment of the grind would be necessary to keep everything dialed in, once the fresher bag took over. When emptying the hopper for the night, I even kept the lowest layer of beans separate, so they would go in first the next day. As usual, I purged stale grounds before each session.

I thought that I was entirely on to the new beans when I was still pulling predictable, repeatable, and very tasty shots. A few days later, however, my shot times were consistently up by 4-5 seconds. Still a good, even flow, just pulling a little too long, and taste-wise, missing the sweet spot I had been enjoying.

If the fresher bag of coffee did indeed need a slightly coarser grind, it is possible that there was more mixing of new and old beans than I suspected, and my "dialed-in" shot times were "false positives", more or less. Or maybe a few lucky pulls gave me a false picture of consistency and the issues originated elsewhere.

In any case, I wanted to share some things that I am slowly getting better at that helped me reflect a bit and avoid too much frustration in this situation:

1. Tracking trends rather than sudden changes.

2. Analyzing vs. reacting. Knowing when a grind change or "quick-fix" dose/yield adjustment is actually going to accomplish what you want. Can I confidently predict the result of that change or am I moving variables in the blind out of frustration?

3. Being willing to replicate a sub-par shot instead of making a hasty change, to see if that unexpectedly short/long shot time was actually the grind setting instead of an issue with machine temperature, puck integrity, or insufficient purging of stale grounds.

4. Routine: Dosing. Temp. Puck prep X 10^n...

5. Consistent shots are worth celebrating, but they might not always mean what you think they mean.

Thanks for reading--hope to hear your thoughts.