dfk41 said:
Grumpy old git....LOL It was the very fact that you did post it that prompted me. I know that you know how to make coffee, fine tune etc......but, when advice given out to people is based on something being tasty, I scratch my head and wonder what the flip they are talking about. What I find tasty and you find tasty will differ. Can two coffees made with 30 second and 40 second pours both be tasty? Some people like roast beef cooked rare, some like it well done. No doubt it is tasty to both.
I just struggle when someone asks a question about a shot, to be told if it is tasty then don't worry......it is a mis use of the word, like the word fresh for coffee beans. How many people have the ability to really fine tune a shot by decreasing the grind a couple of thousand microns, keeping the same tamp and on their non pressure profiling machine change the ramp
"Tasty" might mean different things to different people, sure, if we are talking about specific characteristics, but there is little point in this, because even if we all used the same grinder, the same machine, we would still use different coffee which will taste different for well pulled shots.
The use of tasty isn't mysterious, it is simple...make something you like the taste of. It's not saying, 'there is only one right way', which would be limiting. We generally try a lot of different coffees, we expect them to taste different, but we don't really want any of them to be nasty. If you don't like a funky, tropical fruit natural, shot time isn't going to turn it into a caramel & nuts Brazil.
It's not quite the same as the steak analogy, a blue steak is a blue steak, a charred steak is very different, easily identifiable by sight, smell & taste (not possible to pull a shot like this, because the process is finished and you have your outcome, but you can stop the steak when you see it over-browning). They are at the ends of the spectrum, a lot of folks won't like either, some folks will tolerate one or the other, a very few will love one or the other. Think more like a medium steak? A bigger percentage of folk will find it acceptable, even if it sometimes comes out medium rare.
In the big picture, one person's 30s shot can easily be the same as another's 40s shot. For example, I made 6 shots at the same grind setting, all 18g dose. One was 54g out in 19s and a little tart, just a little (for me). So next shot pulled longer at 64g this took 24s, tasted more balanced, tartness is gone. Great, I now want the next one to be 64g too, except this only took 19s again, but still the tartness that I wasn't keen on was gone. These 6 shots all tasted at least OK to me, but the worst of them took 26s, the best of them also took 26s, but in total the range was 7 seconds and this was the difference between the best & 2nd best.
Your difference in shot time can be way over +/-10% and still produce good shots (if you like the coffee you have in the first place).
A couple of thousand microns is 2mm, this isn't fine tuning, it's more like going from Turkish to coarse drip, or back again. Everyone who has made a cup of coffee a couple of times would recognise this. Pressure/flow profiling isn't going to fix this, unless you can use it to make a 250ml mug from 18g in a single shot (not an Americano)