Jon's POV: Making coffee daily until I am good at it. DAY 28. (Dial in)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 พ.ย. 2024
- Follow us as my wife (Zee) and I (Jon) embark on our coffee-making journey, training to be home baristas.
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Our coffee corner setup ☕
Espresso Machine: Rancilio Silvia
Coffee Grinder: Varia VS3
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I wouldn’t worry about the water on the puck screen. Happens every single time for me. The fact that your puck knocks out cleanly without leaving any clumps in the basket is a great sign of a healthy puck in my opinion. The soupy pucks I’ve had leave a mess behind.
You guys should be really proud of your progress. You’re now able to diagnose and quickly find solutions based on taste. So key!
Hey Noah, thanks for encouragement🥹 yeah, we've come to understand that a wet puck may not necessarily be a bad thing. Altho we did have heaps of comments in the beginning that it shouldn't be the case. Puck integrity and taste comes first! ☕
Yesss, problem-solving and experimenting is what we enjoy doing really. Gaining experience from all the shots (good and bad) that we've tasted🤭 - zee
Hey Noah, good thing our puck doesn't leave a mess! Not sure if we want to experience that hahah, but thanks for the assurance! At least we know it could be worse. And yes, it's great to know how to troubleshoot and which direction to go to get a better tasting shot, although we did rack our brains to come up with something. Hopefully, it gets easier hahah. Thanks for the encouragement as always! - Jon
I like how you're talking about "pleasant kind of sour" because acidity in coffee is necessary to bring out the other flavors. Nice!
Interesting that the acidity is the one that is bringing out the flavour. We were trying to avoid the 'acidity' but I guess we can accept the 'pleasant kind of sour' hahah - Jon
No matter the opinions, please keep going. I love that you have a lot of sincere comments. Nice community you are building with this kind of content. ❤
yes we definitely do! I mean there are some outliers but mostly helpful and sincere🥹 - zee
1000% agree, lovely people, lovely videos, lovely coffee
A soupy puck doesn't necessarily mean the extraction was bad and needs redialed, it mostly just has to do with the mechanics of the machine and space above the puck. To test how much space you have above the puck, you can prepare a puck like normal, then put a coin (preferably a quarter) on the puck without a puck screen and lock the portafilter in fully and then remove the portafilter to see if the coin left and imprint on the puck. There are also some good videos online explaining this test you can lookup as well.
One thing to note, the puck does expand during extraction which may press the puck screen against the showerscreen. So using 2 coins or 1 coin with the puck screen on top might be beneficial for people who use puck screens.
For ease of lookup, one of those videos is "Dose Espresso by Volume, Not Weight" by The Wired Gourmet
@@NeverMind353 He's fantastic......😀
Hey, thanks for that! I did look it up but we just weren't sure if that applies to our machine. I noticed that our machine has a protruding screw in the middle of the shower screen while the videos about the 'coin test' normally show machines that don't have that screw. The protruding screw is easily the thickness of a quarter or could even be thicker. So, we have been kinda judging it using our puck screen. If the basket is too full, the puck screen will be pressing against the screw, and we won't be able to insert the portafilter at all. Before this dial in, we did notice that it was getting harder to insert the portafilter, hence we decided to lower the dose. I'm not sure if all these make sense but we are kinda trialling everything out hahah. Good to know that soupy puck is not a big problem although we just find it slightly annoying hahah. Thanks for the explanation about the coin test, we will continue looking more into it! - Jon
you can also get a puck screen with a hole in the middle! if the grouphead screw is causing collision
We did hear about that and we were thinking if we should get it.. Still haven't made the decision yet hahah - Jon
Dry usually means astringent. It can be caused by an underdeveloped roast or underripe cherry, but also over extraction so I'd try grinding a bit coarser and see how that goes first. Sour is usually on the other side of this equation, so too coarse will end up too sour. Something to play with, I could be totally wrong. Maybe read up on astringency when brewing for better info. But it's nice to see that was pretty close to your thinking, so you did try coarser and sounds like you got a better shot (and a better shot timing, imo) so nice work!
hahah glad that we were going in the right direction! Thanks for those insights, appreciate it! - Jon
That's so cool type of content!:D
I consider about receipe exatcly the same way. Nice to see how others deal with struggles
hahah thank you! Always good to know that others go through the same process as us. Comments like yours also make us feel better because we know it's normal! :) - Jon
It's interesting how Zee doesn't like the bitterness as much, but Jon can tolerate more.
My brother hates the bitterness, I always have to try to pull more acidic shots for him!
Zee might want to stop the extraction a second earlier as compared to Jon.
hahah I guess everyone has different taste perception. That sounds like a feasible solution instead of changing grind sizes, thanks for the suggestion! - Jon
Nice job experimenting to see how changing stuff affects the taste! If you are happy with the flow rate and consistency of the shots (and the taste is at least in the ballpark), then you can fine-adjust the taste by shortening or lengthening the amount of grams of coffee you output. The more grams in the final cup, the less sour it will be. The fewer the grams, the less bitter it will be.
To save time, split the shot into multiple cups (swap out cups quickly as the shot is running). Put the majority in the first cup (say 5-10 g under 1:2 ratio). Then have several 5g cups after that. Taste the main cup and add the subsequent cups one at a time (and stir) until you like the taste.
@samweiss3248 Great idea, AKA the "Salami" shot.
Love the classic salami shot for testing/learning, 100%
hmmm interesting.. We've heard of it in the past but it was too complicated. But now, I kinda understand how that works, so we might give it a go next time! - Jon
At the end y'all both like "Is this good? I think it is?" That's so relatable. When you're new to the hobby, even if you know the process of hitting certain numbers, it's hard to know what you actually like in the cup. It's something that can only be found by trying a lot of different things and seeing what sticks. Making bold changes (one at a time), not being afraid to experiment, and following your intuition.
I remember making my first pour over, changing the dial by one click only, and not being satisfied; the real revelation came when I went really coarse by 3 steps. Doesn't have to be grind size tho.
Sometimes it's the origin. Sometimes you need to find a roaster that "speaks your language". One man's light roast is another man's charcoal roast.
What I'm trying to say is, remind yourselves that this takes time. You cannot see a pattern in a 3 dot chart. You need lots of dots.
I'm excited to be along for the ride!
I'm glad we're not the only ones going through this! Nice to know that this is normal. Yeah, now that we are more familiar with the puck prep, we might start exploring other areas and like you said find a roaster or bean profile that suits us. And I'm sure that revelation you had must have felt so good! Thanks for the encouragement, this really makes us feel better! :) - Jon
Your current setup is abit tricky to find the sweet spot because your Varia VS3 grinder is a low rpm grinder at 170rpm and your Rancilio Silva doesn't have a pressure gauge (neither a boiler pressure gauge nor a grouphead pressure gauge) so you need to do alot of dialing in everytime you have new beans. And beans oxidize with time, so you have to tweak your granularity of your beans over time if you're drinking from the same bag of beans over a few weeks perhaps due to buying in bigger quantity bags.
Generally, grinding at low rpm creates less fines (which is more ideal for pour overs than espresso) and that produce more uniform particle size which in turn brings out more complex flavor and less body and 170rpm is very low, almost pour over coffee grinding level of rpm. Espresso grinding preferably grind from 500rpm to over 1000rpm.
Also, you have to take into consideration:
- What roast level beans are you using? Light roast beans have more volume than medium roasted beans and even more volume than dark roast beans, so 18g light roast beans will fill up more in your basket than 18g of medium roasted beans or dark roasted beans. So its not always a fixed amount of grams that you should focus on. There should still be some room between your coffee puck + puck screen and the group head.
- Light roasted beans are more difficult to extract, so you cannot use the 1:2 ratio. Light roasted beans at least need 1:3 ratio. Some people will argue 1:3 is no longer espresso then, as its more a lungo but all these theoretical nuances are from the history where its probably based off dark roasted standards instead of the modern day's roasting methods, so take the ratio as a guideline instead of being fixated on it. Its the cup of coffee that matters.
- Density of coffee is not the same as water. Plain water in ml has almost the same density in grams. But coffee in ml does not have the same density in grams. So if you are pulling an 18g double shot and you use 1:2 ratio in grams, you are getting only about maybe 25ml (estimated) of liquid coffee instead of 36ml of liquid coffee. This is not ideal because you extracted 25ml of liquid coffee in 30sec. Instead, you should be aiming for 45ml to 50ml of liquid coffee (hence around 54grams to 60grams, which ties with the 1:3 ratio assuming you are using light roast beans) to extracted within 30sec. In order to help you visualize the liquid coffee extracted in ml, buy a measuring beak and extract your coffee into the beak instead and you will see that your scale shows 36g but your beak shows 25ml of liquid coffee only.
- Don't keep increasing your dosage of beans in order to increase the output of your liquid coffee. If you are using the 14/18g basket then no way you should be putting in 20g of grinded beans into that basket in an attempt to increase pressure in order to increase the extraction time. You should be putting in between 14g to 18g of grinded beans in there and most likely the basket will be half filled when you put in 14g of light roasted beans in there and 18g of dark roasted beans in there. Add on your puck screen, it should be ideal already as this still leaves some room between the puck screen and group head. Pressure at the group head is formed not when the coffee puck is cramped to the brim of the group head, pressure is formed when there is room in between the puck and the group head and the water fills that space and creates the pressure as it saturates the puck. So adjust the granularity of grind size and tamp lighter or harder instead.
Happy dialing and extracting!
@Cth-c3z Light roast are denser than dark roast, meaning, at the same weight and grind setting, the light roast takes up less volume.
Also, and this is very annoying, the terms “light, medium and dark” roast can be very subjective from person to person.
@@RajNotTelling In the industry there are roast meters which use color sampling or moisture or density readings to grade the roast level (Agtron, DiFluid, Lighttells, Tonino, RoastRite, DIY stuff...), but... it's not exactly standardized and plenty of places don't use these tools so ultimately you're still 100% right. It's subjective, to an extent.
Your comment about the grinder's RPM doesn't consider the fact that conical burrs need to be at a lower RPM, while flat burrs generally operate at a higher RPM. It's just different designs. Niche Zero operates at 600 RPM, and DF64 at 1400 RPM
Firstly, I appreciate all these info, thanks for taking the time to write this out! This is getting really technical.. While I appreciate everything, we are really still quite new to this and we are just getting into experimenting with different extraction ratios. In terms of grinder speed, we will keep them in mind but probably look further into that at a later time. However, we kinda get the other points and we will be taking those into account next time we are trying to troubleshoot certain issues. Thank you once again for all that! :) - Jon
hellooo, thanks a lot for your videos, watching them is very interesting. i use 18 grams in and 36 grams out... the time of optimum contraction depends on the sort of coffee bean... in average i do 25 seconds and using a medium dark roast bean. what kind of bean do u use?? keep trucking on! all the best! :)
Hey, we're glad you enjoyed the videos! We are using medium roast at the moment and we are still experimenting with different ratios and beans to find out what we like. Great that you've found a recipe that you enjoy! Thank you once again! :) - Jon
I just went for a brief barista experience with Dutch Colony in Singapore. Our trainer said she uses 22 g in, 44 g out in 26 s. I was a bit surprised by her recipe as I see so many YT baristas using 18g or 20 g. For your reference to try if you have the time! 😊
Oh cool, we've found that the flavour profile that we've enjoyed usually comes from 1:2 ratio with an extraction time of roughly 27-28s. One Aussie cafe that we follow uses a 22.5g to 45g recipe, sounds like a lot but Aussie coffees are much stronger imo. Which is why we love it! Hahaha - zee
Hi, if you are struggling with bitterness, why don't you try a restretto? My wife drinks that at home exclusively and all our guests love it. My recipe is 18 grams of beans, 21 gram shot in 25-30 seconds (Medium Dark roast). Good luck
Oh interesting.. Haven't thought of that because we don't really like it to be too sour either.. hahah but we may give that a go and see if we like it. Thanks! - Jon
@@thegroundedduo Always fun to try different methods, but I agree with your concern. Not so much that a ristretto is likely to be more sour, but that you do have to dial in your ristretto differently from your espresso. That can mean altering grind size, dose size (which is the more common option in a café setting, upping the dose), etc. to find the sweet spot. So, personally, I'd stick with dialing in your espresso and finding pleasure in that before moving to a ristretto. But do whatever makes you happy! Exploration is awesome.
@@thegroundedduo Don't know what your beans are but ristrettos and shorter ratios typically play well with darker roasts. So if your beans are roasted on the lighter side, you may not be able to extract the flavours you want with a ristretto.
May I ask what Camera u use?🤔
Hey, it's just the camera on iPhone, nothing fancy hahah - Jon
which scale do you use ?
Hey Vimal, we're using the Timemore Basic 2.0 scale :) - Jon
Thank you I watch your videos , I like them !!
Hot take: ditch the distributor
Which one?
@@vuduong173 The spinny-spinny one. I guess multiple people are suggesting this, so it's not that hot of a take :D. There's the argument that it's not only useless but could actually hurt the puck prep by causing more uneven density in the puck.
It does look and feel nice to tamp on a flat surface but for the reasons above, I just level it with the WDT and then tamp on that.
hmmm.... but like what Pavel said, it looks and feel nice to tamp on🤣 (ignoring all the other good points he said hahah) Just kidding.. we will consider it but it's so fun spinning it hahah! - Jon
@PavelPavlov1 yeah, generally, it is pretty useless, especially with a self-leveling tamper. But, from my own experience, it actually helps keep my tamper cleaner. I'm not sure why but if i don't use the distributor, the coffee grounds tend to stick to my tamper.
It would be helpful to help leveling the bed before tamping if you're using a traditional tamper though, but in this case, it doesn't matter lol
@@vuduong173 The point of benefitting the levelling of traditional tamper is a good one! I'm also using a self-levelling tamper, so this didn't come to mind