0.
330
gm/l
If sour
Extract moreThere’s less than a 10% chance this recipe will be ideal for your roast level. However, if you’ve measured the density, your chances of success soar to 68%. The espresso coffee recipe series is designed for this: taste your shot, then move up the series for more extraction or down for less. Don’t hesitate to experiment with another recipe based on your taste test results—finding what tastes best for you is worth it!
1.0
6
Dark/Italian Roast
Don’t get hung up on the details. If you can’t change your pressure, maybe you don’t have a complete set of baskets, you don’t know what that grind size even means. It doesn’t matter.
Providing you are changing the dose, the yield, the ratio, the bits you can, you will be changing the TASTE, and that is what matters. YOU are finding a RECIPE that tastes better than the last recipe you tried.
Pre-heat your espresso machine, portafilter, basket, and coffee cup.
Get your single dose out of the freezer. If you are not single-dosing and freezing your coffee, read How to Store Coffee Beans – 9 tips. While at it, read Best Coffee Beans – Six Purchasing Tips.
Shots of espresso these days are nearly always a double shot of espresso. Double shots are now the standard in America and many places worldwide. A single shot of espresso is scarce. Traditionally, a single shot (solo) of espresso uses about 7g of espresso-fine grounds. If you want to make a single, pull a double, but use a split portafilter to halve the shot.
Grind your frozen coffee; do not defrost it. Either grind into an espresso shaker funnel or using a dosing funnel, grind it into the right-sized basket in a naked portafilter.
Puck prep: I use a WDT tool to break up clumps and redistribute them. I use a levelling tool and a levelling palm tamper. Then, I cover it with a shower screen to help evenly distribute the water.
Place the scales under your cup, tare, and start the timer.
Increase the pressure to 0 bar and stop at the first drip. You’ll find this hard without a manual lever espresso machine such as a Flair58+.
Pre-infusion is critical; it is where most of the extraction occurs, and just like the bloom phase in filter coffee, it needs a good 30-60 seconds. If your coffee is fresh and you stored it frozen, it needs to degas and have plenty of time to extract all the good stuff. You are NOT in a hurry.
You can monitor the extraction, use a mirror to watch the bottom of the naked portafilter, but really you just need to see the first drip hit the cup, then stop and wait.
You are NOT looking for those old-fashioned things: convergence streams, avoiding spritzes, colour progression, blonding point, cut-off signals. That was all wrong.
After the preinfusion bloom phase, wash off the extraction with a steady flow rate.
It is your choice to push hard and intentionally get a bit of crema bitterness, good for latte art, or go slow and avoid pushing through fines.
Stop the shot once you have reached your target yield. The extraction time is meaningless.
Adjusting your grind size isn’t as important.
Using an Oxo Rapid Brewer? You can make an espresso-strength concentrate with this recipe’s dose and ratio. Add the Oxo brew water shown above (the yield plus an allowance for the water the grounds hold back). Push gently and stop at the first drip, wait 60 seconds to bloom and extract, then pump until bubbles start to appear. You should end up with the right yield for the dose and ratio.
Now, the most crucial step. Before adding milk, stir the espresso and crema, dip a teaspoon in and taste (you don’t need a spoonful; it just needs to be wet). Is the coffee sour? If so, next time you make this coffee, extract more using the recipe indicated by the button above.
If the coffee isn’t sour, ask yourself whether it is very bitter. Bitterness is harder to judge because all coffee is bitter to some extent. However, you can reduce bitterness by extracting less. Go too far, and it will turn sour. You are looking for the calm spot in between. Just above sour tastes best. If you need to reduce bitterness next time you make this coffee, extract less by using the recipe indicated by the button above.
Add the bypass hot water (optional). Adding hot water reduces the blanket of milk and increases the coffee’s apparent strength while keeping the volume up.
Add the steamed milk. Espresso con panna (whipped cream) may be a little OTT, but adding 5-10ml of cream to your milk before steaming can help the body and taste. Another great option is adding 15% coconut milk.
I only endorse equipment I have purchased myself, and I do not earn a commission or have any links to the companies I recommend.
This is an excellent coffee; Geisha is arguably the most famous variety in the world, Jamison Savage’s Finca Deborah is one of the most talked-about farms in specialty coffee, the extended anaerobic natural process is bold and wine-like, and it is roasted by Black & White Roasters in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you haven’t tried it, don’t miss out, grab some here: Finca Deborah – Symbiosis – Black & White Roasters
Jamison Savage left a career in U.S. finance more than a decade ago to build a specialty coffee farm in the cloud forest of western Panama. Black & White Roasters says Finca Deborah coffees have featured heavily in World Barista competitions since 2016, including all three podium places in the most recent year.
Finca Deborah sits at 1,900 metres above sea level in Volcán, one of the highest coffee-growing sites in the region, and blends into the surrounding cloud forest. Humidity is consistently high and night-time temperatures drop sharply, which slows cherry ripening and concentrates sugars. The farm avoids pesticides and chemicals, relies entirely on hand-picking and generates power from on-site solar.
Volcán is in Chiriquí province in western Panama, close to the Barú Volcano and the Boquete district, the heartland of Panamanian Geisha. Volcanic soils, altitude, cool nights and cloud cover are exactly the conditions that suit this slow-ripening variety.
ORIGIN: VOLCÁN, CHIRIQUÍ, PANAMA
PRODUCER: JAMISON SAVAGE
FARM: FINCA DEBORAH
ALTITUDE: 1,900 METRES ABOVE SEA LEVEL
VARIETY: GEISHA
PROCESS: EXTENDED ANAEROBIC NATURAL
Geisha (also spelled Gesha) was identified in the 1930s in the Gesha region of south-western Ethiopia. Seeds were collected by a British consul and grown at research stations in Tanzania and later Costa Rica, where plants reached the CATIE research centre in 1953. It reached Panama in the 1960s, but it was largely overlooked until Hacienda La Esmeralda entered it in the Best of Panama competition in 2004, where it sold for $21 per pound. Prices have since climbed dramatically: a natural Geisha from Elida Estate sold for $1,029 per pound in 2019.
Geisha plants are tall, with green or bronze-tipped young leaves, average-sized beans and medium yields. The cup is famous for jasmine and other florals, bergamot, stone fruit, honey and a tea-like finish, which is why it is so often used in competition.
Symbiosis is an extended anaerobic natural. Black & White describes the steps: cherries are hand-picked and sorted twice, then whole cherries go into hermetically sealed tanks for a 100-hour anaerobic fermentation with regular temperature and pH monitoring. They are then dried on a proprietary three-tier African-style bed for about 20 days until they reach around 11% moisture, rested in GrainPro bags in a cool warehouse, and only pulped and sorted for export at the end.
An anaerobic fermentation is oxygen-free, which changes which microbes thrive inside the cherry. The result here is a deliberately wine-like cup. The roaster notes it changes as it cools: hot it is big and intense with raspberry, mango, passion fruit and a cocoa finish, warm it shows more acidity and tropical fruit, and cool it turns juicy and floral like hibiscus lemonade.
Black & White Roasters is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was founded in 2017 by Kyle Ramage and Lem Butler, both former U.S. Barista Champions, and it is built around three values: service, community and excellence. Its aim is to connect people with the most interesting and approachable coffees.
Model Version:
20261009.06
I have a dream: that this might raise the standard of coffee-making globally, reduce dialling in waste, time, and frustration, and encourage people to explore more varieties and pay more attention to the producers. You might even be prepared to pay more for better coffee if it pleases you, returning more money to growers.
You can help. The best thing you can do is spread the word on other platforms, such as Reddit or Facebook coffee forums, and share with others how this method can solve everyday problems.
Using 0.1g accurate scales and the recommended 100ml measuring cylinder, and entering quality data into the form, helps improve the model. So does evidence-based feedback for parameter range adjustments.
You can also support the site financially via Buy me a coffee to help with ongoing running costs, site hosting fees, and plug-in subscriptions.
