The Home Barista's Guide to Espresso - Coffee Prince in Surat

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Having been negotiated by large industry players, these standards do not specify freshly roasted, freshly groundcoffee, and thereby get the details right while missing the main point: fresh coffee. Coffee freshly roasted, ground,and prepared is the one thing that cannot be canned and mass marketed. It should be the first linein every espresso specification.If you are reading this, it's likely you are an actual or budding espresso enthusiast. The latestinnovations have been driven and even developed by amateur and professional enthusiasts. It is alsoenthusiasts who can put a brake to the bastardization of coffee and espresso into ever more inane softdrinks. My fervent hope is that this introduction to the art of home espresso will help.Introduction toEspresso BlendsFirst, if you can't tell the difference between a Panamanian and Papua New Guinean coffee, put off theespresso and get to know good coffee first. Buy a freshly roasted half pound each from Central America,Africa, South America, and Indonesia, and learn to appreciate their differences. Those who buy thegreen coffees for espresso, those who roast and blend them, and those who pull the best shots have onething in common: they know their coffee well. In any case, espresso is coffee intensified; if there arecoffees you dislike brewed, you really want to avoid them in espresso.Second, go into a coffee store and look for "espresso roast." What you'll almost always find is darkbrown to black beans shining in oil. Starbucks' success has reinforced the impression that espresso isany coffee roasted very dark. This is wrong on almost all counts. Coffee blends destined for espressocome in a variety of roasts, ranging from a milk chocolate colored dry bean, to a dark chocolate coloredslightly oil-sheened bean, to a black and very oily bean. The very lightest roasts for regular brewing(cinnamon or tan colored) cannot be used for espresso, but otherwise any roast level will work.Instead, espresso is almost always a blend of beans, and the Italian word for this section, miscela,means blend. There is fairly wide latitude in blending, but there are also some general rules. The mostbasic rule of espresso blending is that espresso must have subdued acidity, be heavy bodied, and besweet enough to balance the bitter and acidic flavors in the blend.At the Coffee PlantationA large proportion of the blend will consist of "natural" or "pulpednatural"processed beans from Brasil, Indonesia, Ethiopia, orYemen. Natural or "dry processed" means the coffee cherry is airdried on the tree or on terraces prior to removing the skin andfruit from the pit (the actual coffee bean). Pulped-natural or"semi-wet processed" means the skin is removed, but the fruitremains on the bean while it is drying. These techniques createthe more heavy bodied, sweet, and subdued acidity coffeesrequired by espresso brewing. Such coffees also develop more crema. Single origin, unblended espressois almost always derived from a bean of this type. The drawback of these techniques, even whencarefully done, is they create a few fermented beans with off-flavors that slightly muddy the aroma andtaste.
The alternative, known as wet processing, washes the skin and fruit off the bean prior to drying. Thisprocess produces less sweet, more acidic coffees, which generally would be unsuitable for espresso ifused pure. However, since these beans often have beautifully clean and powerful floral and fruityaromas and tastes, they are used in smaller proportions in more expensive blends to enhance the moresubdued taste of dry processed beans. When these beans are used, the coffee is usually roasted at thelighter end of the espresso spectrum, since dark roasting destroys their aromatics.Finally, some espresso blends use Robusta coffees, which derive from a different species of coffee treefound at lower altitudes and having higher yields. These coffees are generally less expensive than theArabicas discussed above. Low grade Robustas can add body, sweetness, and above all, very strongcrema to an espresso. But they do so at the expense of having an unpleasant, burnt rubber smell. Highgrade Robustas do not have this offensive odor, but will usually muffle the other aromatics. Their use iscontroversial. Many very gifted espresso professionals use Robustas, while many others would nevertouch them.At the RoasterDifferent roasters have different blending strategies. Some use only two to four different coffees; theseblends can have very distinct tastes and will vary a lot year to year. Other roasters will try to keep theblend's taste the same year in, year out. They will do this by using seven to twelve different coffees,many from different plantations in the same country and region, so as to average out the annualvariations of coffees from any one plantation.As with all coffee, espresso blends are always best when used within two weeks of roasting. Unlikeregular brewing, the carbon dioxide in the beans in the first day or two after roasting can sometimesinterfere with the espresso extraction, so many cafés allow the coffee to rest 48 hours prior to use.My main advice is to first find several good local roasters. Try many different espresso blends, varying inroast levels, use of Robusta (or not), level of acidity, or use of wet processed coffees, and then decidefor yourself which styles you like most. Ask the roasters about what's in the blend; the exact recipes areusually proprietary, but they will be happy to give you general information so you can develop aninformed preference. If you home roast, try various dry or semi-wet processed Brasils, Indonesians,Ethiopian and Yemen coffees, and create a blending base from your favorites among these. Then addsmall amounts of your favorite wet processed, high grown Arabica to give it some distinctiveness. If thislater coffee is exceptionally sweet and low acid, more than the usual 10% to 20% can be used.Single Origin EspressoAs mentioned earlier, most washed, high grown coffees are unsuitable for espresso either straight or inhigh proportions in a blend. In my opinion, this shows that espresso technology requires furtherdevelopment. It would be absurd if you tried to buy a coffee and were told it was too strong to beprepared in a presspot.However, espresso technology has advanced far enough so that some high-grown, washed coffees canmake interesting and sometimes spectacular shots. These usually don't have the balance of conventional
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The Home Barista's Guide to Espresso - Coffee Prince in Surat

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