At our cafes we always have a single origin, and we usually suggest our customers to have their black coffees on the single o.
However, heaps of people want consistency, and they don’t like it when their long blacks or espressos taste too different depending on the single o, so they always want to have the house blend, which we changed a few weeks ago and it is tasting pretty damn good both black and white.
My question:
How do you guys extract your espresso shots for both blacks and whites when using the same blend?
Say, if you use 22 grams in and a yield of 44 grams in 32 seconds for your white coffees. Do you use the same recipe for your black coffees? at the moment we have been doing so, simply because we had way to many people making coffees across 8 stores and it was very hard to explain why and how… but we are now training the “real baristas” which will be the only people allow on the machines, so we will have more control. Happy times.
A friend of mine suggested to simply decreasing the dose to 19 grams for the black coffees and keeping the yield of 44 grams which will be brewed in about 26-27 seconds. That would give me a more “diluted” shot but more delicate and sweeter without having to change grind size.
I’d love to read some of your experiences and suggestions!
Note: for the single origin, we do have a totally different recipe depending on the beans
Personally I am in the mindset that you should dial in espresso to taste and serve the most delicious shot weather it be straight up or served with milk. Obviously some espressos may not taste as good with milk (i.e. a bright African coffee), but a solid “house espresso” blend should be able to stand up to any situation. That is just my personal opinion, I’d love to hear what other people are doing.
I usually prefer to manipulate the dose so that the milk beverage is an appropriate strength. The espresso drinkers will never notice or care if there’s a bit more or less espresso in a demitasse. That said, most of our espressos are around 8-9%tds so they’re not weak by any means. If the usual espresso recipe was 6-8%TDS I’d probably want to adjust for milk.
@germansalamanca we increase our EBF for milk drinks, as your friend has suggested.
Initially we thought that by reducing EBF and increasing ext% we would get a greater presence of flavour in the cup for our milky coffees. With tasting we found the opposite. More ext% meant higher espresso:milk ratio in our drinks but the flavour profile of the espresso component was not carrying through the milk.
For our milky coffees we now intentionally under extract and pull shots with a lower ext% and higher EBF as the flavour profile of the espresso works for our milk coffees, even if the extraction isn’t optimum to serve as a straight espresso. 65% of our coffees are served with milk, so we try and ensure that we don’t choose our recipe based on what tastes best as an espresso.
@aaronswood Amazing mate, that’s super helpful and pretty much on the same line of what I’ve been doing in the lab. We use Linea PB across all our stores and are now programming the long shot (press and hold) buttons so we can have different yields.
I will try some of those adjustments and see how we go with our blend.
It’s all well and good until you try to put an extra shot in the cup. Anyone have thoughts on how to make an extra shot milk drink that doesn’t taste terrible?
Bi carb will even out the flavour but then you end up where you began.
A little sugar does the best job of taking the unpleasant edge off the coffee while still retaining a strong flavour presence.
EDIT:
This is for split shots into a 180mL d’acncap for standard milk drinks.
180ml d’Ancap cup gets:
23g shot
130g milk
A Strong coffee would get the full double shot. @davidpogson I would not suggest putting a third shot into a drink if you want it to taste nice. Even a full double is too much for me.
At one of the brands, which is the one I’m trying to improve, we use for WHITE coffees: a double ristretto for all small (8oz) coffees; 22grams dose, 24-25grams yield. Then for 12oz coffees we use a double espresso, 22 grams in - 42-44 grams out.
Long black: Double espresso in an 8oz cup (3/4+ full) and 3 shots of espresso in a 12oz. Espressos and Piccolos are split shot.
I’ve been doing some testing with our milky coffees and man it’s been overwhelming as numbers don’t quite match taste buds. At least not the numbers I had in mind to potentially be the best.
After making over 20 milky coffees of both 8oz (double ris) and 12oz (double espro) the best tasting 12oz coffees are those with brew ratios btw 1:1.8 and 1:1.7 anything higher than that (e.g. 1:2) taste a bit too light and weak. I’ve been getting really nice spices (ginger, pepper, cinnamon) out of the shorter shots (when mixed with milk) and good sweetness of dark chocolate with caramel tones as it cools down.
BUT! when it comes to numbers, my Extraction % readings for those double espressos are under 18%, sitting at an average 17.9% (TDS of around 9.7%). Longer shots would give me lower TDS and 18.7+% extraction… but taste wise not as good. For some reason I thought I would be getting the best tasting coffees out of the higher ext %.
All that when making milky coffees of 12oz.
Black coffees I do prefer longer shots with lower TDS and higher ext %, will do some testing with our blend this week.
