Decent Profiles and Dialing In

I’m still learning, so for what it’s worth, the beans look quite light, and as you mentioned taste sour. If that is not the fruity sour flavour often found in lighter beans, then the under extraction might be solved by increasing the temperature and/or increasing the pressure.

I have a question: If you grind coarser (as you suggest) would that also decrease the sourness by using flow to extract more? It’s always (for me) a challenge to determine when to grind finer or coarser to get more extraction. Coarser can extract more through greater flow. Finer can extract more though finer particle size. With the Decent you can also increase pressure or flow or temperature to extract more. Ofcourse longer brew ratios also extract more. How does one determine which route to go, especially on the grind size front?

PS I’ve been receiving fairly consistent advice to try to keep my flow in the 1 to 2 ml per second range. But then I haven’t tried turbo shots yet.

JHCCoffee If you grind coarser (as you suggest) would that also decrease the sourness by using flow to extract more?

Without disturbing the intent of the thread, I would distinguish between acidity and sourness. I would peg acidity to the nature of notes. Some examples are stone fruits, grapes, melon, which are typically low acidic fruits, IMO. They give a balanced taste / sensation on the tongue. Pineapples and oranges increase the acidity and sweetness, the sensation on the tongue is elevated to, say, medium level. Berries, red fruits, lemons and lime will take the acidity (higher) and sensation to another level higher, although they also bring sweetness to mute the acidity somewhat, but not enough to balance it completely.

When there is a brew malfunction - grind size, temperature, puck preparation, etc., you may get either a bitter taste (unpleasant or medicine like taste) or a sour taste. This must be rectified. The sourness is always mouth puckering for me, or see an elevated acidity if it shouldn’t be there (notes / descriptions on the bag).

I think it is important to keep this distinction. Just my simple humble opinion.

PS: It is about time we have a dedicated Decent thread. So, well done! 👏

tompoland A question, inquiry (interested to know the thought behind your question): are you after an increase in extraction or something that you can taste different in the cup e.g. more sweetness, better balance?

There are times when I want to extract more strength and also more flavour nuances, while retaining body. I want it all: body, strength and lingering flavour nuances. With decaf. In a shot and in a milk drink.

Increasing the brew ratio sometimes brings out flavour nuances by increasing extraction, but at the expense of strength and body. Conversely shorter brew ratios can get you more body but not always strength and generally not flavour nuances.

So extraction often needs to be increased to get those flavour nuances out. Through the usual refinements: increased temperature and longer contact time. Longer contact time also gets you more strength. Greater pressure can also extract more, but would result in faster flow and thereby shorter contact time, so I don’t think I should bump the pressure.

So how do I get more strength and lingering flavour into a shot? Increase the contact time, which means slower flow if you want to keep the same brew ratio? I think so.

Slower flow is achieved by reducing pressure or creating greater puck resistance (which gets you greater pressure unless you machine reduce it, which I can with the Decent).

So I am thinking that I can get closer to what I want with a brew ratio that is neither too short or long (say in the 1.5 to 2.0 range); I am guessing that 1.0 to 1.5 just won’t extract sufficient flavour nuances. Body will be great but not necessarily flavour.

And profile a slower flow (say 1.0 ml per second average ). So a 15g dose in my 14g EPHQ14 normal flow basket at a say 1.8 ratio would be 27 out, which would run 27 seconds. Maybe I even go for 0.8 ml/sec average, with the usual initial spike then tailing down to 1.2 ml/sec then down to 0.8 ml/sec. With a say 10 second bloom. Might run longer than 28 seconds as a result.

Does this slower flow make sense? Or do I go turbo shot (fast flow to extract)?

Interestingly I poured a decaf shot with using a modified adaptive profile that resulted in a jagged pressure and flow profile for about 10 seconds before settling, due to a low limiter setting (0.6 ml) and insufficient puck resistance. It tasted great; a friend named Luca on my pouring better decaf thread on Diaspora thinks it’s because I created “turbulence” in the bed, which actually had a positive effect.

https://visualizer.coffee/shots/b6c0c716-b566-419d-8ece-33661bc8d3fd

And here is a link to that thread. Its kind of like the v60 thread here. Alot of shot by shot information exchanged as we aim for decaf nirvana: https://3.basecamp.com/3671212/buckets/7351439/messages/7085655791#__recording_7130224856