A shot dissected

So I'm just starting on my bag of AJ Coffee Co's Fazenda Rodomunho Natural  Brasil and was really in the mood to do some experimenting in the espresso realm tonight. At three days post roast it is still a little new but I was anxious to try it out. I greatly enjoy natural processed coffees so I have high expectations for this coffee. I pulled my shot using fairly conservative parameters as this was my first experience with this coffee. The shot was pulled at 200 degrees with 14g in and 21g of espresso out. This gave me a very nice bodied shot with substantial mouth feel. It tasted slightly chocolatey with a tad of citrus. Nice, but will probably taste a little better after some rest.


That was a good start but I was curious to see what would happen when I separated out the extraction flavors a bit in order to see which direction I should go in terms of grind setting to pull out more of the flavors that I like. Yes, I could just pull multiple shots at varying grinds but this method is pretty informative. If you read over at HB they have a great article on the different flavor progressions of an espresso shot over the course of a pull. Basically, the shot progresses: acidity > chocolates > bitters with variations in grind affecting the durations of each phase. So I pulled the same shot again and separated it into roughly thirds and tried out the shots. The first was fantastically sour but pleasantly thick and crisp. The second was a mild bakers chocolate and the last tasted of weak coffee.


So I think I'll let this coffee rest a few more days before I try this again but I do enjoy this coffee as an espresso. I think if I were to pull another shot to drink right now I'd just let the first few seconds go into the drip tray and then also stop it a little shorter. If only because I don't want to waste any coffee purging the grinder.


You should definitely give this a try if you've never done it. Very interesting experiment especially with different espresso blends.