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Originally Posted by buonaboy  Keeping your beans fresh, ordering in small quantities, not pre-grinding, and always storing your beans in an air tight container will have more effect over your coffee outcome than changes in your brewer. You dont know how many places I've worked where the waitstaff fills the espresso hopper to the top once a week, and wonder why they cant get a "crema" on top of the shot, or better yet, pre-grind drip beans into coffee filters stacked 20 high in a cambro -then dont rotate. Then you have a busy day and you finally get down to the bottom, -Gee, I wonder why the coffee sucks? Not the brewer.
Fresh beans first, then address the brewer. |
I agree on the importance of good beans used at peak.
In Italian there's a hierarchy of what it takes to make good coffee, called "the four 'Ms':
Miscela, mano, macchina de dosatore, e macchina. That translates to: The beans (including their blend, roast, freshness, etc.), the skill of the maker, the quality of the grinder (and its doser), and the espresso machine itself.
So beans are most important, followed by the "hand" of the barista.
For espresso, "fresh" beans have about a two-week window. That's two weeks stored relatively open -- as in a grinder's hopper. So really, that waitstaff wasn't doing much wrong unless the beans were too fresh or too stale when they went in.
Depending on the bean and its roast profile, most beans are at their best during the six to eight day period beginning four or five days after roasting. Most beans won't make good espresso until they've rested three or four days after roasting.
It used to be a matter of controversy, but not so much anymore. Extensive blind testing shows you can store roasted beans in the freezer for as long as several months without doing them much, if any, harm. As long as you store them properly.
Bad crema is a sign that something's going on somewhere in the chain. But it's not definitive as to what or where. It is certainly possible to screw it up with either too fresh or too stale beans. But more often, the mistake lies in bad grind, bad tamp, bad temp.
Many people fail to understand that the grind which is best for six-day beans is not the same as the best one for ten-day beans. As time passes, you usually have to go a little finer for a good extraction. But sometimes, depending on humidity and other factors, it could go the other way. Basically, you're looking for a ~ 30 second extraction for a double.
And then there's the tamp. 30# is by no means a magic number. Personally, I grind and tamp in the "Italian" style which means I grind a little finer and "up tamp" against the tamper on the doser using a lighter pressure than most Americans barista. No crema on the first shot means I'll tighten the grind, use more pressure on the tamp or both.
However, as you probably inferred, I don't view crema as important a diagnostic as a good extraction time. That said, proper grind + proper tamp + proper temp (brew and cup) = good crema with even barely adequate beans.
Temperature, temperature, temperature. We haven't mentioned "water-dancing" to get the machine to the right temp, or even prewarming the cups by drawing blanks or just leaving them on top of a properly warmed machine -- single stacked. Many places don't even properly pre-warm the machine for brewing. Most should be on at least forty-five minutes to make coffee, but it takes longer than that to get the cups warm enough so the crema doesn't collapse.
Alas, it's almost impossible to communicate and teach this sort of layered nuance to FOH except in a specialty operation,
which is why it's almost impossible to get a decent shot anywhere but a specialty operation. And even most of them suck.
I can show you how to do it, including problem solving, in ten minutes. Add another ten and I'll teach you to do "latte art." But, it takes paying attention to hundreds of cups (at least) before the sequence which includes all the steps to oulling a good shot becomes reflexive. Heck, I've been doing it for decades and still make mistakes.
When I order espresso in a restaurant, I figure I'm ahead of the curve if it comes hot.
BDL