Originally posted by DuaneDibbley
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Yes, the smallest pieces of shattered bean. Traditionally it was thought that some fines add resistance to the puck* and that was "a very good thing". It is becoming a debatable issue nowadays (refer to the latest Nordic Challenge last month if curious). The "fines issue" is a simple surface area / volume equation: the smaller pieces extract faster and go bitter first. Given no grinder can produce a fully uniform size (yet!) there are also a few coarser bits which take longer to extract. Their sourness tends to even out the "fines bitterness". If there are only a few "outliers" on both sides of the size spectrum it seems to make very little discernible difference to taste (possibly it broadens the whole experience out). Hopefully the huge majority of particles are in the middle range, which provides the main extraction.
That is why I have posted elsewhere on CS that I can overcome most hurdles in machines etc, but a poor grinder is (way) beyond my expertise to sort.
It is also fair to mention that different people have differing tastes and tolerances (thank goodness, it would be boring if everyone would only accept one item of every food which must be done in only one way... shudder), and some coffee fiends run deliberately unbalanced shots (i.e. ristretto, lungo etc) to match their preferences (and fair enough). You seem to dislike bitterness and notice its presence, so in your case it is significant. I do not know your grinder at all so I do not know if it is the culprit. I only know that if the grinder generates too many fines it is very difficult to correct without making a whole batch of other tradeoffs: most of which I find unacceptable in terms of the resulting flavour in the cup and there will still be a hint of underlying bitterness anyway. There is an interesting post by Jim Shulman on this point: How filter baskets affect espresso taste and barista technique - Reviews • Home-Barista.com. Just read the first two or three paragraphs if you do not want to get buried in tech talk. OTOH, feel free to read all the comments as well if you are a masochist / geek.
*BTW, the other hint in my view: your puck looks a little too coarse if anything which would actually reduce bitterness at the expense of sourness. That is also why some CS'rs commented it may be underdosed as the bigger particles show less clarity in the "good old Silvia hex imprint" compared to what they are used to. My take: dosing OK, grinding not, basket worse.
FWIW, if I was asked to sort it out I would start with the grinder.
Hope this helps.
TampIt


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