theReviewGuys

A few months back Miss Silvia suffered a broken part called the dispersion thread or water jet breaker. This stainless steel part goes between the dispersion screen and the big heavy brass disk. It cracked and since I had no replacement I soldered it up with silver solder. It held up for a week or so until I ordered a new one. Rancilio must have had complaints about this because the new part is machined very differently.

Old is on top, and new is on bottom. The difference is the post has much more material where it meets the larger flat area.

Here’s an image from a posting I made on Home-Barista a while back:

One of the big changes to my espresso habit was purchasing a Naked Portafilter. This is also known as a bottomless portafilter. Miss Silvia took to it right away, and I swear that espresso tastes better coming out of a naked portafilter than a normal portafilter. Fabrice and I messed around one day and swapped out a normal and naked portfilter on his Classic two group Conte Espresso Machine. And we pulled a bunch of shots with his super fresh Mistral Espresso and we both agreed the shots coming from the naked portafilter tasted better.

We’d pulled shots from the Naked Portafilter so we could dial in the shots, due to the enormous feed back you get by seeing how even the extraction is. Then once we were dialed in we swapped out the bottomless portafilter for a normal two spout portafilter, and the results, in my mind were amazing. Mind you both Portafilters were clean as a whistle and we pulled multiple shots.

I think that the feed back from a Naked Portafilter can really help you with extraction problems such as channeling, and uneven tamping etc, and I also think that have less contact between the espresso and all that metal is a good thing also.

Anywho… having problems with getting good espresso shots? Pick up a naked portafilter and watch all the goodness come out of that filter and adjust accordingly.

As I had my fourth fantastic shot of espresso of the week from my favorite Cafe, I was reminded of all the variables there are when it comes to getting the perfect espresso.

1. The Coffee Beans – where and how they are grown and how they’ve been processed, and how they’ve been stored.
2. The Coffee Roast – who did the roast, and how well they did the roast. Is it under or over roasted? Or did they start too high and pull the beans before the inner portion was cooked?
3. Freshness of the Coffee – Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ,10 can make a most huge difference in flavor and crema. Too early, and the coffee may be too “green” and hard to control. Too late, or old and you lose flavor and crema with each and every day.
4. Grinding of the Coffee Bean – Such an important consideration. Is the grind as uniform as it can be? Is it the proper grind, not too coarse, not too fine, but just perfect?
5. Espresso Machine – Does it make a difference? Why drop $15k on a super duper 3 group machine vs $3500?
6. Cleanliness of the Machine. Dirty Espresso machines give you dirty coffee.
7. Temperature – too hot, too cool, too bad your espresso is inferior.
8. Length of time to pull a shot. The Golden Rule is 25-35 seconds for a 1/2 to 1 ounce shot. But we’ve all had shots that took longer or shorter that were pretty damned tasty.
9. Tamp – have you tamped too hard or not hard enough? Do you end up with a puck that is not soggy? Or does this matter?
10. Amount of coffee in the portafilter – Too much and the shot will take too long. Not enough and the show time will be too short.
11. Pre-infusion – Some machines do, and some don’t. Some Barista’s do and some don’t. Why?
12. The Barista – Give a good Barista decent coffee and you can get a great shot of espresso. Give a crummy Barista the very best coffee and you may end up with something undrinkable, or something incredible.

I think that in the beginning it’s the coffee and the care in it’s roasting, and in the end it is the Barista who understands the coffee, the machines and the process to get to the ultimate shot of espresso.

With that, I think I’ll go get a shot.

I very seldom come across a fresh bag of coffee that I don’t appreciate. Well, today I started pulling shots from a bag of Blue Bottle Kintamani Coffee, and I must say that it has a most peculiar and chemical flavor that I just don’t like. I imagine the flavor to be something along the line of blue toilet bowl cleaner. This suggests to me that some single origin coffees just don’t do well by themselves. Perhaps this Kintamani combined with something more earthy would bring down that tinge of nasty.

I pulled the shots short, I pulled them long, and adjusted and re-adjusted my grinder but I was never able to shift the flavor from nasty to good. I was able to dial out all suggestion of bitter and sour, but that funk just would not go.

This is a first for me. No more Blue Bottle Kintamani Coffee.

Update: Talked to a Barista at BlueBottle today and he said they’d been struggling with this particular batch of Kintamani Coffee. They are recommending that you just let it age for a week to mellow it out. I smelled some day 6 Kintamani and it most definitely had mellowed out. I tasted a roasted Kintamani Bean and it had toned down enough that perhaps a cup of joe, or an espresso made with it would now be drinkable.

This past Saturday I visited my friend Fabrice at his place of business: Moschetti Espresso. He had roasted a bunch of coffee that day and he had some new, super fresh espresso to share with me. I don’t think you can get any fresher than just roasted coffee, and I was giddy with anticipation.

And so I went home with a pound of my favorite Moschetti Espresso Dolce, New Guinea Peaberry, and something he said would blow me away. That was his Ethiopia Yirgacheffe.

I took a whiff of it before I took off to fire up Miss Silvia, and I detected an interesting fruitiness that intrigued me. Now mind you this is today’s roast and it won’t be at it’s peak until two, three or four days later. But it already had a powerful hook that was pulling me in. Tasting a fresh roasted bean also made it very clear that THIS was a special coffee.

So I spent the next half hour grinding beans and pulling shots and tweaking my procedure until…. I got a BlueBerry Bomb. I couldn’t believe it and I think I actually shouted out, “BlueBerry!!!!”. I have heard about Blue Berry Bomb shots before, but I’d never experienced it. And I stop by Blue Bottle daily and though they almost always pull flawless shots, they’ve never, ever given me a BlueBerry Bomb.

This Shot was amazing. It blew me away. There was the initial Big Burst of Blue Berry and it was followed by a no less intense and earthy dark chocolate flavor with hints of cherry, and toffee.

The shots I pull tend to start out very syrupy and drip, drip, drip out the naked portafilter. And then the drips become a steady stream. And if I’ve done it right, the shot is done somewhere between 25 and 35 seconds. The espresso should be a rich brown with tiger stripes of lighter and darker patches. The aroma should be powerful and yet delightful, and there should be no more than one ounce of espresso that is topped with a dense layer of crema. Sometimes Moschetti espresso is so fresh that I have one ounce of one hundred percent crema. It’s amazing to have access to such amazing and fresh coffee.

This one ounce or less of coffee is called a Ristretto, or Restricted. It is super concentrated, and if done right is not bitter, rather it is dense, creamy / buttery in texture, and is sweet. I love to pour the whole shot in my mouth and swish it around so my tongue is coated from front to back and side to side and each and every tooth gets to taste the espresso ambrosia.

I can’t wait for tomorrow morning so I can have another shot or three before going to work. Sometimes I wish I had an Cafe or Espresso Cart set up for pulling shots like this all day long for folks. Of course I’d need a professional Super Jolly burr grinder, a three group espresso machine like a Conti and the best espresso beans I can find.

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