tompoland I stopped by Penstock Coffee today, my local coffee shop/roaster, and had a chance to ask them the rationale for recommended starting dose by blend vs. single origin. They had two reasons for doing it that way.
First, they have different options for single roast and blends, and they said that overall they roast the blends darker than the single origin beans. So they are kind of using “single origin” and “blends” as surrogates for “medium roast” and “dark roast”.
This makes sense to me knowing how their packaging is. Their labels indicate the roast level/flavor profile of that type of bean on a spectrum, so if the bag is somewhere in the middle, this saves having to guess where to start.
The second reason is that from their perspective, their single origin beans have more flavor notes than the blends, and that translates into benefiting from a lower dose for espresso.
In any case, their recommendations are just starting points, and ultimately I’ll tweak the dose (and grind) to get the espresso I like. For these single origin beans I started at 16g and wound up at 18g for the last espresso that I made. I use 19g for their dark roast blend, so I’m still using a smaller dose with the single origin, which is still in line with their recommendations.
