So, after making gadwaful coffee and realizing it was most likely due to preground coffee losing its freshness, DH and I tried to work around not having a grinder at home (yet - we've just ordered the Gaggia MDF grinder).
We went to Trader Joes and picked out one of their darker roasts with 100% arabica beans (the best for espresso). Then we started grinding them... knowing that we didn't know what grind would work best with our espresso machine. We set the dial to "espresso," ground some beans, then moved the dial to halfway between "espresso" and "turkish," ground some more beans - but this time into a plastic baggie to keep it separate, then finally moved the dial to just about "turkish" and ground the remaining amount.
Then the experimenting began. We tried the regular "espresso" grind, too coarse and the espresso was bitter. We tried one of the baggies, and WOW - we got an espresso that didn't need any sugar or anything. There wasn't any bitterness, no sourness. Just good coffee. There wasn't very much crema - but we knew that we were almost there. We tried the other baggie, but without the same quality results.
Problem is, we don't know what setting we used for the successful espresso. We didn't mark the bags, thinking that we would remember what was what.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting the grinder so that we can experiment at home, and in the meantime I'll work on my frothing skills.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think maybe you guys are just a teensy bit obsessed with this coffee thing.
Post a Comment