PICNIC

The stout is done and I just dropped off some bottles with Joel and Elle.

From the barrel of the 2009 pinot I drew off 4 bottles to taste and see how it’s going. Kate thought the fermenting yeasty aroma was still quite strong. It’s aging on the lees, so this is to some extent the point. It’s quite dangerous experimenting with destabilizing winemaking techniques when I have yet to make a ‘clean’ wine, but I think it’s working well. It’s light, as you can see, but nonetheless moderately tannic. The cherry fruit flavors are very fresh, the wood is rather unintegrated at the moment. It’s very drinkable and Chris, Kate and I polished off the whole bottle before dinner was over.

I’ve been meeting Elle at Lovejoy Bakers every once in a while since they opened several months ago. They have decent bread and good sandwiches. Elle has buttery grilled cheese. I had a cilantro, cabbage, mayonaise, tender stewed beef sandwich on a chibatta bun.

For lunch: rice with basil; arugula; boiled beets with salt and olive oil; tomato sauce with butter.

One of the cats killed this bird in the morning. I think it’s a baby chicken, which would mean it’s probably from one of the neighbors down the street.

The horizontal is seconds, the vertical is ounces. The steep slope is a shot with the brew water at 190˚. You can see it’s flowing much faster. The two on the right are shots with water at about 202˚. The graph is useful, I think, but is very tedious to produce. For instance, it’s interesting that the flow rates don’t curve gently upward, but rather have distinct moments of increased flow. On the 202˚ shots, at about 18-20 seconds you can see that the flow rate suddenly doubles. Why is this? (The bumps in the lines are from the fact that the espresso is flowing in big, goopy drops.)

I’m trying to find all the variables that go into producing a consistent shot. The big ones are temperature of the brew water and the amount of grounds in the puck. All 3 shots used 0.75 ounces of grounds. The only other variable, I believe, is the pressure used to tamp the puck. There is a device for this. It utilizes a mechanism similar to a torque wrench.