Espresso is not a simple drink. Specialty espresso certainly isn't. 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 get a sweet and balanced espresso that we would even drink a second cup of?
Traditional Espresso and Specialty Espresso
First, we need to clarify what exactly we mean when we talk about traditional espresso and specialty espresso.
Traditional Espresso: darker roast, limited aromatics Specialty Espresso: medium to lighter roast, complex aromatics
We find followers for both categories. If you prefer it a bit more "Italian", traditional espresso is definitely a good choice. Often, roast notes are at the forefront, the coffees have a lot of body, are heavy, and have less acidity.
In our understanding, specialty espressos are coffees that
- consist of higher-quality, often more complex green coffees
- are usually roasted medium-dark to light, and thus
- do without intense roast notes
Also interesting: what exactly is specialty coffee?
What does this mean for extraction?
In our experiment, we tasted two coffees from our roastery together. The more traditional coffee is the Dreispitz, a 3-bean blend of 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 roast level
Right: the Leica – the lighter crema indicates a lighter roast
Grinder setting and dosage
The recipe for extraction is:
19g coffee grounds, 54g extraction volume in the cup (or 27g per cup)
For the first extraction, we chose the same fine grind.
Extraction time
Interestingly, the Leica specialty espresso shot through the portafilter in just over 20 seconds,
However, the more traditional Dreispitz espresso took more than 40 seconds until we reached 27g per espresso cup. The darker espresso therefore had twice as long an extraction time at the same grind size.
Why?
Darker roast = more brittle = more fines = faster water absorption = more resistance to water = longer extraction
Lighter roast = harder beans = fewer fines = less quickly soluble = less resistance to water = faster extraction
And what does that mean for the taste?
Dreispitz in 41sec: flat, little acidity, dense, not very rounded, dull
Leica in 20sec: high acidity, little sweetness, slightly watery, bitter
We always recommend working with a gram scale. Especially when setting up your grinders, scales will make you fast and efficient.
What do we need to change now?
Specialty Espresso Leica:
To unlock the potential of a lightly roasted specialty espresso, which consists of dense beans, you should really grind very fine.
We set our Anfim Practica espresso grinder to almost the finest grind and thereby increased the extraction time to 26 seconds.
The coffee was now rounded, sweet, the acidity integrated very well into the soft texture. We could now detect 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 a little shorter. At just under 30 seconds, we are in a zone with the Dreispitz where the coffee is really 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 gram scales
On the left, we see 19g of Dreispitz in the sieve, 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 work with scales and not rely on the naked eye.
So, experiment, push the limits of the grinder and the coffee, and only then evaluate the coffee. But in any case, we take away: one size fits all does not apply to espresso settings.
