PICNIC

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.

Emily Scroggs, an anthropology student at Lewis and Clark, interviewed me about my food cart this evening. She’s already talked to the owners of Savor. In Oakland, which is where she’s from, she says that food carts do not really exist.

At Pastaworks today, Dave the butcher was telling me about a dish he had at 3 Doors Down, called ‘the crouton.’ It’s a thick slice of ciabatta sauteed in olive oil, covered with a mushroom/sherry/cream sauce.

After doing some analysis with my espresso machine, measuring out exact amounts of espresso, taking temperature readings of the water, weighing the espresso as it flowed out, I was able to answer, hesitantly, a question Joel put to me. Does the espresso come out quicker or slower at a higher temperature? It comes out slower at a higher temperature, I have observed. His Ethiopian is also very tasty.

I picked up a Japanese on demand water heater today. Installation will be difficult.

Kate picked up a glass tea strainer, which I immediantly latched upon for brewing coffee. On the bottom you can see cuts made in the glass with a very thin saw blade. Unfortunately it didn’t work so well. The water outside the glass was not infused with the coffee, so it ended up a bit weak.

I’ve been experimenting with time, weight, and water volume in my french press. For instance, I just made some cowboy coffee using 1.5oz Papa New Guinea, 20 oz water, steeped for 8 minutes. This might be a little too long, but it’s a very light coffee and I had made the coffee/water ratio very high. Medium acid. Roasted barley and malt flavors. Very delicate and light. Low fruit levels.

Today Alex, down at Joels, told me that this current espresso, the Ethiopian, is not the same as an older Ethiopian they used to use. This previous bean had an incredible blueberry aroma. I thought the current Ehiopian bean was the same bean, because I haven’t gotten espresso from Joel in months, and I thought it was perhaps aged and had lost a temporary fruitiness. But Alex tells me it’s a different bean. So there you go. In any case, I’m brewing french press with it now.