• Beans

  • Espresso dosing — blend vs. single origin

Agree with Rob, like the ACS is 54mm so naturally a bigger bed. Some say the beds thicker because of the higher spring force 🤷

Decent De1pro v1.45 - Niche Duo - Niche Zero - Decent is the best machine ever made -

wilburpan But I was wondering if there was a reason why the recommended dosing should differ by 3.0 g just based on blend vs. single origin.

Still intrigued to know their reasoning. Did you get around to asking them?

      tompoland

      I’m still working through this bag of single roast beans, but I definitely will ask when I go back once I’m done with the bag. It will probably take a little more than a week. I’ll be sure to post their answer.

      FWIW, I pretty much have it dialed in now. This is the first medium roast beans that I have really liked, as opposed to the dark roasts I usually use. In my hands, I’m grinding finer (one click on my grinder) and using a lower dose (18.5g vs. 19.0g) than I do for dark roast. I’m not sure if this is a single origin vs. blend, or a medium roast vs. dark roast thing. That’s also more or less where I landed with other medium roast beans I’ve tried, but I never got results as good as I did just now.

          tompoland I liked it a lot. I tend to make espresso to be on the rich, creamy side. I’ve read descriptions of espresso with those characteristics but also with “clarity”. This was the first time I’ve had an espresso that seemed to match that description.

          The other interesting thing was that this batch of beans doesn’t seem to have as much crema as the dark roast beans I usually get from my local coffee shop, but it certainly felt like it did as I was drinking it.

          Here’s the link to their website for these beans. https://www.penstockcoffee.com/shop-coffee/indonesia-sulawesi-sisola-mill-anaerobic-red-honey

            DavecUK Sure, I can try to put one together.

            Quick question — can we upload videos directly to this forum, or do I need to upload it to YouTube (or some other service) and link to it?

                wilburpan YouTube (or equivalent) and then post the link - the forum software recognises some of the popular ones and displays them as videos, but not all…

                  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.

                      wilburpan So they are kind of using “single origin” and “blends” as surrogates for “medium roast” and “dark roast”.

                      I appreciate your follow up and posting the explanation. The above (and their second reason) makes sense and given that most of their customers probably think “dark roast” means “stronger flavor”, it may be the simplest way for them to explain things to most of their customers.

                      Again, thanks for clearing up my confusion.