CI, personal research assistant to rich westerfield
July 31, 2006 – 10:48 pm
sacrilege in progress. somewhere off camera, the blogbrother is neglecting his backsplash-cleaning duties.
note to rich: mesmeralda, in espresso form, loves you best at a spookily charbuckian 204 degrees fahrenheit, in this blog’s humble estimation.
in the face of a swelling onslaught of dissent as to the loveliness of ‘lady ez’ in the portafilter, CI charges to her defense with all the breathy dispatch of a, well … don quixote lugging a saddle bag full of gs3s. indeed, this blog has carefully avoided providing definitive ez-as-’spro specifics until the world’s supply had long been consumed!
still: the cooler brew temps — i do a lot of single-origin in the 198 range — indeed produced a sort of desiccating mouthwash of lemon lozenge. in the middle range, more of a muddle. zest. cane sugar. fescue. however, when we terminate our long-honed water-flush routine just as 208 swoops down to 204, i get a lemon chocolate lily — heavy on the lemon, but still smooth and velvety underneath and uber-floral up until, oh, the following weekend.
sweeping, contradiction-nullifying caveat: we roasted our own, with hot air, bringing the gesha to a safe finish at which this blog has achieved a very high rate of SO succcess on its primary machine. does this mean we were brewing optimally? why, no. it means that this method — bringing the esmeralda to within a hair’s breadth of second crack, then downdosing and brewing hot — is enough to make the cypriot burble like a hobo with a croissant aux noisettes.
6 Responses to “CI, personal research assistant to rich westerfield”
As always, sacrificing precious moments of your life to bring these brilliant run-downs. Great writing dude.
Thought you weren’t supposed to link coffeed though?
Guess it doesn’t really matter now it’s invite only, pity Alistair changed that before I could join
By Phil on Aug 1, 2006
>Thought you weren’t supposed to link coffeed though?
i haven’t been informed of this, though i’ve heard talk of it elsewhere. i’ve linked to coffeed on the right for months.
By bz on Aug 1, 2006
I’m honored to have a post on CI dedicated to me.
Never let it be said that you’re a man who does not keep his word.
So, it was the 204. Interesting you got the lozenge at 198. We were at ~201. But that may play into Jaime’s point that the roast was designed for press.
Nevertheless, happy it worked for you. Meantime, we’ll limit our CoE experiments to those beans cost us less than $20/lb!
Cheers.
By Rich Westerfield on Aug 2, 2006
phil: alistair tells me linking to coffeed is cool with him.
rich: the lozenge scrub was basically across a large spectrum of coooler temperatures (not that i tested that posit all THAT rigorously, since i had no inclination to waste shots. in fact, i think i drank every drop of ez we brewed — inlcuding the cupping liquid.).
actually, i’m not sure if i’ve ever found a coffee that brewed ideally at 204, which may somehow say to some people that the ez is not espresso-ideal. but i don’t think so.
By bz on Aug 2, 2006
Rich’s note of Astringency would likely lead to a need of much cooler temps to dull the intensity of the flavors out to a more palatable level.
I have never tasted an espresso that was pleasant at 204F measured at the group head, especially a coffee roasted for drip which would pull at a much lower temp than even 198F.
Most of the pundits decrying the SO is lacking are pulling either too high, incorrect dose, or just want something else but won’t admit it.
By Jaime on Sep 10, 2006
>Rich’s note of Astringency would likely lead to a need of much cooler temps to dull the intensity of the flavors out to a more palatable level.
you’d think so … but that only heightened the problem for me. this is most likely because the “astringency” was more a problem of sours, at least in my own experience.
>I have never tasted an espresso that was pleasant at 204F measured at the group head, especially a coffee roasted for drip which would pull at a much lower temp than even 198F.
nor have i. although this coffee was NOT roasted for drip. rich’s (intelly-roasted) batch may have been. i did my own roasting.
> Most of the pundits decrying the SO is lacking are pulling either too high, incorrect dose, or just want something else but won’t admit it.
i agree. although in this case the need for a very high brew temp was rather startling.
By bz on Sep 10, 2006