Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Composition-Scan


Composition-Scan, originally uploaded by algoriddim.

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow,
Piet Mondrian, 1930
interpreted with pearls

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Before and After - Coffee Roasting


Before and After - Coffee Roasting, originally uploaded by cgfan.

Before and After - Coffee Roasting

Taken with an Epson Perfection 4990 scanner.

cgfan writes:

The particular beans that you see here are from a batch of Josuma Select Malabar Gold, a blend of coffee beans specially formulated for espresso.

In the center are the so called "green beans" before they were roasted, and on the outside are some beans after I roasted them in my home coffee roaster (a Fresh Roast Plus).

For espresso I manually grind them to a slightly gritty but still fine powder in a manual burr grinder (a Zassenhaus). This gets loaded and hand-tamped into a double basket portafilter, conventionally used to dose for a double shot, and inserted into either the La Cara or La Pavoni manual piston espresso machines. Both of these machines involve the user by having him push down on a lever to force the hot water through the tightly compacted espresso grounds.

The shot then gets pulled under great pressure into a pre-heated tazzina (a small espresso cup - I use a 68 cc feldspathic porcelain tazzina made by IPA Porcellane in Italy, pattern Bologna), for a total draw of around 1.25-1.5 ounces (2.5-3 tablespoons).

Such a very short shot is called a ristretto, which when made correctly has to be the purest form that one can enjoy an espresso - a wonderful concentration of coffee flavor with plenty of mouthfeel and a pleasant bitterness.

...and once in a blue moon when everything is right it produces the proverbial "god shot", which is actually creamy in taste. (And yes, this is all without using any milk! :-) )



This shows a workflow using a doserless Mazzer Super Jolly, Expobar Brewtus I, and a canning funnel to produce a Latte using 100% of the pre-dosed beans.




This shows a workflow using a doserless Mazzer Super Jolly, Expobar Brewtus I, and a (very handy) grain funnel to produce a 0.7 oz. ristretto and a 5 oz. Rosetta Latte.

More info:
Mazzer mod

Grain funnel usage



Brewtus

Gene Cafe roaster

One More Cup of Coffee