Posts Tagged ‘blending’

A grand unified theory of espresso

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Not too long ago I posted on Home Barista about trying to find a good way to measure the density of coffee beans. 1

As always the paricipants there were way smarter than me and offered several interesting options. I dropped into the thread that this was part of my idea of a grand unified theory of espresso, and subsequently a few people mailed and pm’d me asking what on earth I was talking about and what density had to do with it.

Well, I should probably explain what I have been thinking. 2

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Footnotes:
  1. There really is no better place on the web for these kinds of questions! []
  2. Some of this is based on personal preference, some on what seems to be fairly well agreed upon within the community of people who worry a lot about their espresso. []

Unblended espresso

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

Forgive the ugliness of the title, but I think talking about SO (Single Origin) espresso does a great disservice1 to what people are beginning to achieve and push for.  I am aware that in a way every lot of coffee is a blend on some level but that isn’t what I want to talk about.

Nick Cho highlights the potential advantage of the simplicity of using a single estate or lot in competition over on Portafilter but what is most interesting about all this is that I think we can acknowledge how far we’ve come in coffee recently.

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Footnotes:
  1. as well as diverts away from the traceability we often want to highlight []