from good_hunter@lemmy.world to espresso@infosec.pub on 09 Jun 2025 11:33
https://lemmy.world/post/31075585
HI y’all. I am getting increasingly frustrated with my espresso journey, now peaking with a serious attempt on getting an acceptable shot.
My SO gifted me DAK beans, so i am trying to make the best out of it. I didn’t want to tell her the roast date has been a little longer than i normally aim for, but 6 weeks beans we still do okay right.
The shots run extremely fast 10 sec prefinsue, and another 10-14 seconds and its done to 1:2 or 1:2.5 ratio. The pressure only builds up to 5 bar. My first shot at 18.1 gr in and the initial grind setting was smooth to some extent, watery, and sweetness didn’t stick for long. Bitter at the end lingered. Hence i figured for the second attempt to extract more ‘mid’-shot by grinder finer and cut output shorter to prevent bitterness.
To my surprise, the second shot ran faster. Immediately hit with acidity, followed by harshness. Is this an underextraction? I couldn’t recognise defects from the bottomless pf as it run so fast. Didn’t see channelling perse. All the variables I changed for the second shot should have promoted an increase in extraction but it didn’t. I don’t think going coarser is the route, as the pressure build up is at 5 bar low already.
My setup:
- Lelit Mara X, descaler, relativly good quality dutch tap water, temp mode I 92C-94Cish. OPV set for 8 bar boiler pressure.
- Pullman Filtration876 precision basket 17-19 gr
- wdt
- level tamping, either with normal tamper or normcor
- DF64 gen 1, SSP HU burs, aligned myself with a couple of shims.
Since I got the Pullman basket, extraction time has drastically decreased, which I understand is expected with precision baskets. Results have been… varying. Also with a simple medium roast blend coffee, i moreover don’t even dare to serve it to my family, who just expect a classic. Shots turn out overly harsh.
I am 5 years into my espresso journey, thought i learned a lot. But realise tasting coffee becomes increasingly difficult and frustrating. I start doubting myself, do I taste floral or sourness, is this over or under extracted? One thing is certain, I have flashy gear, expensive beans, but distasteful coffee.
Hope to tap in the knowledge of some of the espresso gods in this lemmy.
threaded - newest
6 weeks seems pretty old. Not for drinking; all things being equal I’m not sure I could tell the difference between 1 and 6 weeks beans made into cold brew. But it seems a vast gulf for pulling shots.
I can definitely, visually tell the age . difference in espresso shots. Can I taste it? Maybe not. But the crema is absolutely affected by every additional week.
I roast my beans, and keep them in a vacuum container, the first week, I get the best crema, but after that it starts to drop off. After two weeks, it’s pretty pathetic. Again, my palette isn’t so sophisticated I’d say I can notice a flavor difference, but the shots start getting harder to get clean pulls after 2 weeks. 6 week old beans, I would not expect, nor try for, beautiful shots.
I don’t think any amount of tweaking your technique will coax crema out of old beans; you’re fighting chemistry and oxidization. Unless you get a cheater portafilter, it seems like an exercise in frustration to me. Maybe just enjoy the beans however you can and forget trying for perfect shots with them.
I mostly drink cold brew, and only make espresso a couple of times a week. Every week or so, I roast 12oz of beans and produce 10oz roasted. I take whatever’s left of last week’s roast and top it off with new beans and make a batch of cold brew from 10oz. The remainder of the new roast goes into the vacuum bean canister, for use in espresso. I’m clearly using more than 10oz a week, so every few weeks things line up such that I have to roast two batches in a row (my old Behmor barely manages to bring 12oz green beans through the first crack; it’s always been weak, and I do not recommend that roaster).
Anyway, my suggestion is to use and enjoy the beans but give up trying to get picture-perfect shots from them. Do you use any other process for brewing? Use those beans with that: cold brew, pour-over, French press, whatever. Focus on your espresso technique with fresher beans.
the crema is indeed non-existent on these beans, I have seen the same on other beans I used that are on the older side. I am not a crema hunter, sure looks nice, but when there is plenty I dilute it with the rest of the cup usually. Of course in this case, might be an indicator that the beans are a bit stale.
You give a good suggestion, I might indeed give the beans a shot in my Clever dripper instead, even though there are ‘espresso roast’. They are definitely very lightly roasted for espresso. I might be chasing a brew method that doesnt yield the best result anymore.
These DAK beans aside, all my other frustrations are still there. I had luck this morning, grinder a bit finer brewing a blend for my cappuccino. And I have a ton 3x1 kg of brazilian roasts, from classic medium roast to anaerobic fermented, to try out the spectrum.
I am getting a puck screen in the mail soon, in order to eliminate some of the headspace with lower doses. In the 17-19 grams pullman basket, i consistently seem to get better results with 19-21 gram doses, but i don’t want to drink and waste so much coffee.
I don’t know that there’s anything to the “espresso roast” label. It’s just how long it’s been roasted; I use the same roast for all my brewing, which spans cold to espresso, because I like a bright cup.
I would put a couple of your bags in the freezer. That’s the best way for long-term storage. Keep the bag you’re using out at room temp. This is according to James Hoffman, and he’s probably right about it.
Puck screens are so nice. I use one because it keeps the group head cleaner.
Have you tried weighing your beans and cups, to make sure you’re getting the right ratio? I don’t know your machine, but you can look up water ratios, and bean weights for your portafilter size. Doing it a few times can help you dial in your technique. As beans age, they start to not compact as well, and you have to grind finer which uses more coffee.
For example, I use a double-size naked portafilter and double-pull. I can always get a nice first pull without channeling, but if there beans are more than a couple weeks old I get 1) no crema, but 2) the second pull is fast and foamy. I have to adjust my grind finer to get the right extraction times and water ratios.
Dial in your grind size if its running fast. Get it to the time you want and then adjust by taste and don’t worry too much about the time. Under 15 seconds is pretty quick for a standard shot. Adjust one variable at a time until you are in the ballpark then play around.
If you think your grind size is ok then maybe it’s puck prep and you are getting channeling.
with these precision baskets, targeting a shot time first seems to go out the window. Like you also say, go off taste is what i try. But then changing variables don’t always result in my intended effect.
I like to believe i have my puck prep pretty much dailed in, at the very least consistent.
An obvious variable many like to point out are good quality fresh beans. I always buy from reputable local roasters. Buy in batch, rest for 1-2 weeks, freeze, and take out a week’s worth of beans as i go. There might be a bad batch occasionally, but i seem to screw up on the simple blend roasts too.
You could be my twin, because your story sound familiar ;) I even have a similar set up. You could check the temperature setting of your Mara x behind the drip tray. The lowest setting is too low for a medium roast (at least on my machine). You could also try to pull a turbo shot, Lance Hedrick has tutorials on that issue on YouTube. Something that helped my results with “difficult beans” was to try other brew ratios, like , 1:2.25, 1:2.75 or even 1:3! Good luck!
I put a temperature probe in the E61 grouphead to check the temp on the Mara X, and now i can coffidanlty say it does have stable temperature control. It reads a 1-2 Celsius higher in the E61 injection point, right about the shower, than what the manual says the temp ought to be in the various modes, so there might be some heat lose when the water hits the coffee. Several times I tried Mode 0 to potentially offset the high reading temperature, it doesn’t seem to be a good match for the medium roasts.
That sounds reasonable.
As of brother Lance has been hearing my prayers. He just put a video out, really tripping my understanding of dialling in. Honestly, I have to admit I have been fixated about achieving high pressure, and it’s true the window of balance seems to be really small, resulting more often in mudy bitter harshness.
Going to give turbo a shot.