Oh and a big shout out to the Coffee Collective!

I can’t say that I’ve always agreed with you Mr. Hoffmann, but I have been waiting for something like this for a long time.

I should add that in my case, it’s not because I prefer espresso sans-crema, or because I have some kind of dislike for it, but rather I tend to question things that average folk obsess over. Let me illustrate my point:

I have a very good friend. He’s a fantastic chef (and I do mean chef, as in has worked in some of Montreal’s top restaurants.) He loves coffee.

Any discussion with him about espresso though, and he invariably concentrates solely on crema. I’ve heard other coffee-likers do the same. However this particular friend uses pre-ground, roasted in italy, shipped over in a boat coffee (often illy), and presses a shot (I won’t criticize the machine even if it’s cheap) in about 7 seconds. For all intents and purposes, the crema looks beautiful on his coffees. But they taste well… let’s just say there’s a lot to be desired. (I did use the pepper mill question on him last time. I also chose not flog the horse, but the point was taken – sadly the next step seems to be to use an available blade grinder. Oh well.)

Some other thoughts:

In a closed system like an espresso machine where the only way for liquid and gas to come out during the extraction is uni-directional (ie. into your cup), is not crema the same phenomenon as bloom; bloom being the gas in the beans escaping and combining with coffee bean particulate such that it looks like creamy foam. Again, in the espresso system, bloom has nowhere to go but out the same way as the coffee and ends up as crema.

I don’t really yet care what happens to it, but I do think that there remains an overly obsessive focus, especially with those who really don’t know about coffee, on crema. As usual however, I believe there’s probably some kind of middle ground. We just need to bounce off extremes to find it.

I do like Americanos and I’ve never noticed one way or the other what my coffee shop is doing to the shots before hot water is added; however, there’s no reason why we can’t experiment is there?

aw….yes. But why? Or is that saved for tomorrow’s video? ;)

This technique, as others have pointed out, is quite specific to certain coffees. I tried it with two blends at work today, one a blend with 20% robusta, and that one certainly benefited from the skimming. The second blend I tried, however, which is an all-arabica and low on finale by design, was thrown completely out of whack by the crema-skim.

This whole technique, then, would need to be tested with lots of coffees to get real results. African coffees, especially, seem to my eyes to need the crema to be mixed in to be complete as an espresso.

Great post and I agree about the taste if you only try the crema alone! The only common taste of all coffee is bitterness and most of it is known to be in the crema. So far so good… But, you never drink only the crema! I mean how good does bitter Schweppes taste if you drink it alone without the spirits and a sweetener? It´s the combination that makes it good, not the substance alone…

However, if you are looking for a clean cup of course you should take the crema away. But then you should use another brewing technique. Aeropress, filter, frensh press or why not Brazil cupping?

Conclusion: Crema is bitter and not so good – we´ve known this for ages. But with a great brewed espresso, the combination – crema and coffee- can taste like heaven.
At this time I prefer Aeropress as the no.1 brewing method. Clean cup, nice strength and sweet as honey if you do it right. Sounds like you are looking for something like that.

Getting rid of the crema from espresso? It´s like saying “hey I would like to order a regular filtercoffee, but please make it with crema – because I like the espresso taste”.
You should not use a Formula 1 car as a taxi. It´s two completely different things.

James,

This reminds me of the first time I met Heather Perry. At the USBC 2008 in Minneapolis a few of us were having a discussion about the rules of the competition. Heather stated that she knew her espresso did not have good crema but she would gladly sacrifice the visual points in order to get the flavor points that were more important. hmm. I don’t think at the time she was necessarily saying “crema is bad, ew” but she knew her espresso and she knew what factors made it taste good or bad regardless of what some rules said an espresso must be in order to taste good. This blew my mind at the time. In a competition setting the winners are the ones who understand the rules enough to know which ones to follow and which ones need to be broken. In real life, understanding the rules is about being able to communicate with our customers and being able to give them something they each can enjoy. This is why I love coffee, it makes us think too much.

Hmmm…so i tried to skim the crema off in a latte as well as stir thoroughly.

Oddly enough, i didn’t like either option.

My shots are pulled straight into a heated cup timed at 25-30 seconds for subsequent latte.

To me the taste was much better then skimming. I tried 5 different beans and roast variations.

All of which tasted better without skimming.

:\

Perhaps, crema was only ever a surrogate marker for a good espresso?

(Please excuse the digression / talking down, if this is familiar territory).

In biomedical research, quite often a ‘surrogate’ marker, or endpoint, is used/measured, rather than the thing we’re really interested in. This may be for several reasons – it may be easier to measure, cheaper to do so, or it may produce results faster than waiting for the real endpoint of interest. (Drug companies often like this type of study, as it shows up promising data sooner).

A good example would be much of the research into drug treatments for HIV/AIDS. In this case, the real endpoint, (the index we’re interested in), is usually mortality, deaths. But it can take a long time, decades, to collect that sort of data. So instead, we can measure another index, in this case the number of CD4 T cells, in the patient’s blood. We do this before and after the treatment, and look for an improvement. Then, we hope that an improvement in this index will correlate with an improvement in the real index, the one we care about. Often, only time will tell, though we can suggest mechanisms why there might be a correlation in advance.

Crema on espresso may be like this – it correlates with fresh beans, clean equipment, reasonable skills at the machine – but it doesn’t tell us what the cup will taste like. Confounding factors, like the extreme of ‘perfect crema’ devices, make it an imperfect index.

So when we have access to the real index (when we can taste the coffee), we shouldn’t care about the surrogate. Perhaps crema has its place, for instance in telediagnostics and internet forums where tasting the espresso is impossible – and I’m also quite attached to it – but perhaps its importance has been taken way out of proportion.

A researcher in the US found that CO2 tastes sour and has a specific taste receptor on the tongue. So, because of the dissolved CO2 in an espresso crema it tastes more bitter.

Interestingly, when cupping I remove the grounds and foam from the brews I’m testing somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes to prevent the cup becoming bitter as it cools.

HI James, Is stirring in the crema similar to swirling the crema in the cup before drinking. I seam to get similar results, though the stirring is more romantic and classy. Maybe my taste is not refined. Thoughts?

mind blowing if it’s true. I am going to try it very soon. I am with many of the other people who commented on this, I think it what it comes down to is preference. I don’t know yet for sure but I have a feeling there will be more depth in flavor with the crema and a “cleaner” cup without it. And if I want a “clean” cup I will brew a Chemex.