Pulling some espressos on the Linea PB today and couldn’t help but notice that keeping the same yield but reducing my dose (increasing my espresso brew ratio/formula) the espresso tasted “stronger”.
I measured the TDS, but the results were inconsistent. Sometimes reducing the dose (same yield) increased my TDS, sometimes not.
I’m wondering if it is possible to make more solubles available, per gram of yield, by reducing your dose (assuming your yield is constant). This would seem to be counter-intuitive as generally we assume a higher TDS the higher our dose is (relative to a constant yield).
Are we making the workload less for the water (by reducing our dose) therefore allowing it to take more solubles into our cups? Does this only happen in certain parts of the brew ratio curve? Perhaps sometimes we are making the extraction more efficient (from a physics perspective) by reducing the dose at particular points of the brew ratio curve, relative to basket size, grind size and other such variables?