Hi all
As a Melbourne resident I'm currently stuck in lock down and struggling to find good beans to satisfy my caffeine addiction. I traditionally shopped with a private interstate roaster with a friend of mine making postage cost and order quantity worth while but because of this little pandemic this is no longer an option and since losing my job I am also no longer able to visit The Beanery at 14km away from me. So I've resorted to supermarket beans desperately trying to decipher their cryptic batch dates into roasted dates, most are yymmdd. I had some success at Aldi with a 1 week old batch of Lazzio dark roast, ok and drinkable but not exactly my palate and once it hit 4 weeks like clockwork the quality dropped almost over night. Now I usually use 500g in 4 weeks so a 1kg bag left me with just under 500g of undrinkable coffee, disappointing. To rub salt in the wound the now just going on 7 week old bags of Lazzio are still the same batch sitting on the shelf at my local Aldis (I'm between 2 stores).
So my search continued and I found Campos Superior at woolies, no hard to decipher batch date just a plain old roasted on date and an expiry date worth ignoring. I also found that the 250g bags were only roasted 13 days ago so I figured maybe worth a shot, there was even a little medal on the pack claiming it won some award, looked promising, but at $14 I choked a little, $6 more would have fetched me a 500g bag of my favourite and after wiping away my tears (and drool) at missing my usual beans I grabbed the sucker.
I must say I am very disappointed in this roast, it is worse than the Lazzio. After dialling in the grind and tasting failed shots in between the 7th espresso was on the mark (it had a tendency to channel so I played around with pre-infusion upping it a few seconds). The extraction was 29 seconds including pre-infusion and with 17g of beans I pulled a nice 32.4g shot. The crema was thin but there, the shot didn't channel starting out with a pre-infusion, quickly rising to 10 bar and then dropping back to 9.5 bar where it remained for the rest of the shot. I gave it a good slurp to see how it was but honestly the mouth feel had improved from my failed shots but not the flavour, it was, well, missing. There was little aroma as well, it honestly tasted a bit like nescafe blend 43 ( I even did an experiment with my house mate and while he could tell a small difference he couldn't pick the shot from the instant). You know when you make cordial a bit to weak and you just get a tiny taste of the flavour, that's what this coffee reminded me of.
I will fiddle with the extractions later to see if I can improve on it but I don't hold much hope. Has anyone else had similar experience with this coffee? Am I missing something in my technique or does anyone have some suggestions on improving the shot? Perhaps these are just poor beans for espresso. In any case I welcome feed back (especially suggestions on getting some fresh beans, my next resort is to hit up the local cafes and see if they'll sell me a bag.
Out of interest I'm in the Glen Waverley-Burwood East area if that helps with suggestions.
As a Melbourne resident I'm currently stuck in lock down and struggling to find good beans to satisfy my caffeine addiction. I traditionally shopped with a private interstate roaster with a friend of mine making postage cost and order quantity worth while but because of this little pandemic this is no longer an option and since losing my job I am also no longer able to visit The Beanery at 14km away from me. So I've resorted to supermarket beans desperately trying to decipher their cryptic batch dates into roasted dates, most are yymmdd. I had some success at Aldi with a 1 week old batch of Lazzio dark roast, ok and drinkable but not exactly my palate and once it hit 4 weeks like clockwork the quality dropped almost over night. Now I usually use 500g in 4 weeks so a 1kg bag left me with just under 500g of undrinkable coffee, disappointing. To rub salt in the wound the now just going on 7 week old bags of Lazzio are still the same batch sitting on the shelf at my local Aldis (I'm between 2 stores).
So my search continued and I found Campos Superior at woolies, no hard to decipher batch date just a plain old roasted on date and an expiry date worth ignoring. I also found that the 250g bags were only roasted 13 days ago so I figured maybe worth a shot, there was even a little medal on the pack claiming it won some award, looked promising, but at $14 I choked a little, $6 more would have fetched me a 500g bag of my favourite and after wiping away my tears (and drool) at missing my usual beans I grabbed the sucker.
I must say I am very disappointed in this roast, it is worse than the Lazzio. After dialling in the grind and tasting failed shots in between the 7th espresso was on the mark (it had a tendency to channel so I played around with pre-infusion upping it a few seconds). The extraction was 29 seconds including pre-infusion and with 17g of beans I pulled a nice 32.4g shot. The crema was thin but there, the shot didn't channel starting out with a pre-infusion, quickly rising to 10 bar and then dropping back to 9.5 bar where it remained for the rest of the shot. I gave it a good slurp to see how it was but honestly the mouth feel had improved from my failed shots but not the flavour, it was, well, missing. There was little aroma as well, it honestly tasted a bit like nescafe blend 43 ( I even did an experiment with my house mate and while he could tell a small difference he couldn't pick the shot from the instant). You know when you make cordial a bit to weak and you just get a tiny taste of the flavour, that's what this coffee reminded me of.
I will fiddle with the extractions later to see if I can improve on it but I don't hold much hope. Has anyone else had similar experience with this coffee? Am I missing something in my technique or does anyone have some suggestions on improving the shot? Perhaps these are just poor beans for espresso. In any case I welcome feed back (especially suggestions on getting some fresh beans, my next resort is to hit up the local cafes and see if they'll sell me a bag.
Out of interest I'm in the Glen Waverley-Burwood East area if that helps with suggestions.

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