Home Espresso Tips #4 - Dialing In
“Why does my grind setting not work with this coffee anymore?”
“The last bag I bought was better than this one because I had to change my grinder yet again!”
“The coffee is flowing through too fast all of a sudden. What’s going on?”
There are many variables that can affect how coffee extracts and how it behaves over time. Once you have adjusted your dose, grind setting and recipe on your machine, that doesn’t mean it’s a set and forget scenario. There is a lot of fine tuning that goes into creating good coffee consistently and that is true for the home as well; not just cafe’s. The term barista’s use is called “dialling in” which just means checking all the parameters that go into a good espresso base and adjusting variables where necessary. Basically taking all the protocols described in the previous Home Espresso Tips and assessing each one to ensure each is within range thus giving you the best chance at achieving espresso nirvana. That being said, here are a few examples on why your coffee might be behaving the way it is and what you can do about it.
Coffee Freshness / Age
If you have just finished your last dose of coffee from your last bag and are pouring in some fresh beans, this will no doubt affect how your coffee will extract, pour and taste. As coffee ages, water and Co2 is gradually expelled from the beans. This means you may possibly need to grind finer as the coffee ages. When you finish a bag and add a new bag of coffee, this coffee will most likely have a slightly higher water content and may need to be ground coarser. Just bear this in mind when putting fresher coffee into the hopper and pay attention to the extraction time and taste and adjust the grind accordingly.
Change of blend
Not all beans are created equally. If you’re trying a new blend from your favourite roaster we need to take into account that different coffee’s have differing density and water content that will change flavour and extractions. Denser coffee’s may need to be ground finer to unlock their potential and vice versa with less dense coffee’s or blends. Neither are better or worse, they just need to be brewed according to their nature.
Light Roast vs Dark Roast
The lighter the roast degree of a coffee, the less energy that has been applied to the beans. This means that to unlock flavour and deliciousness, more energy needs to be applied in the grinder. A finer grind setting is a way to apply more energy into the beans to release the coffee’s potential be increasing surface area for the water to dissolve available solubles. A dark roast will be more soluble resulting in less energy required to extract flavour, thus grinding coarser. Again, just bear this in mind if you are buying coffee that is lighter or darker than the coffee you previously ran through your machine and grinder. It will just help you ascertain which direction you need to go with grind setting.
Hopefully this helps to dispel some mysteries around coffee and why it behaves the way it does. You may waste a little coffee during the dialing in process but the subsequent delicious coffee’s it will yield will be worth it. If you ever have any questions, feel free to contact us.
