Espresso is not a simple drink. Especially not specialty espresso. What ends up in the cup is a concentrate—intense and aromatic. For espresso to taste good, many small details must be just right. We have explained the basics of espresso preparation in detail here.
Especially with more complex specialty coffees, we need to adjust the espresso grinder significantly to get a balanced coffee. So, how can we proceed to achieve a sweet and balanced espresso that we would actually want to drink a second cup of?
Traditional espresso vs. specialty espresso
First, we need to clarify what we mean when we talk about a traditional espresso and a specialty espresso.
Traditional Espresso: darker roast, limited aromatics Specialty Espresso: medium to lighter roast, complex aromatics
Both categories have their fans. If you like it a bit more "Italian-style," you are certainly in good hands with traditional espresso. Often, roasted notes take center stage; these coffees have a lot of body, are heavy, and have less acidity.
Specialty espressos, as we understand them, are coffees that
- consist of higher-quality, often more complex green coffees
- are generally roasted medium-dark to light, and thus
- avoid intense roasted notes
Also interesting: what actually is specialty coffee?
What does this mean for extraction?
In our experiment, we tasted two coffees from our roastery against each other. The more traditional coffee is Dreispitz, a 3-bean blend with equal parts Brazil, Nicaragua, and India, roasted medium-dark.
The specialty espresso was the Leica, a honey-processed coffee from our Finca Santa Rita in Nicaragua. We roast this coffee significantly lighter than the Dreispitz.
Left: the Dreispitz – the darker crema indicates the degree of roast
Right: the Leica – the lighter crema indicates a lighter roast
Grinder setting and dosage
The recipe for the extraction is:
19g dry dose, 54g extraction yield in the cup (resp. 27g per cup)
For the first extraction, we chose the same fine grind setting.
Extraction time
Interestingly, the Leica specialty espresso shot through the portafilter in just over 20 seconds.
The more traditional Dreispitz espresso, however, took more than 40 seconds to reach the 27g per espresso cup. The darker espresso therefore had twice the extraction time at the same grind setting.
Why?
Darker roast = more brittle = more fines = faster water absorption = more resistance to water = longer extraction
Lighter roast = harder beans = fewer fines = less soluble = less resistance to water = faster extraction
And what does this mean in terms of taste?
Dreispitz in 41sec: flat, little acidity, dense, not very round, dull
Leica in 20sec: lots of acidity, little sweetness, somewhat watery, tart
We always recommend working with a gram scale. Especially when you are adjusting your grinders, scales help you be quick and efficient.
What do we need to change now?
Specialty Espresso Leica:
To unlock the potential of a light-roasted specialty espresso made of dense beans, you should really grind very fine.
We set our Anfim Practica espresso grinder to almost the finest setting and thus increased the extraction time to 26 seconds.
The coffee was now round, sweet, and the acidity integrated very well into the soft texture. We could now identify significantly more flavor notes, and the aftertaste was long and sweet.
Traditional Espresso Dreispitz:
Darker roasted coffees are usually more enjoyable when they are extracted for a shorter time. At just under 30 seconds, we are in a zone with the Dreispitz where the coffee is truly enjoyable.
We ground significantly coarser, extracted for 30 seconds, and the coffee tasted completely different.
The coffee was much more balanced, had a bright acidity—an acidity that positively brightened the coffee—supported by a lot of heavy sweetness. The texture was syrupy/creamy.
Working with a gram scale
On the left, we see 19g of Dreispitz in the basket; on the right, we see 19g of Leica. The darker-roasted coffee (left) takes up significantly more volume in the portafilter. This makes it all the more important to use a scale and not rely on the naked eye.
So, try it out, push the limits of the grinder and the coffee, and only then evaluate the coffee. But in any case, we've learned: one size fits all does not apply to espresso adjustment.
