Earlier, Front Street wrote an article on "What will happen if I use light-roasted coffee beans to make espresso?" The article mainly wrote about Front Street using several types of light-roasted coffee beans to make espresso and testing its feasibility. This article is to make some new additions to this article and share the differences in using light roasted beans when making Italian coffee.
Will light roasting make espresso sour?
When Front Street popularized knowledge about Italian coffee, he also mentioned that the coffee beans used to extract espresso will be roasted darker, because the espresso extracted from lightly roasted beans will be extremely sour. Espresso uses pressurization to squeeze flavor substances, while light roasted coffee has more sour substances. When it is concentrated into a small cup of coffee, the sourness will be amplified and extremely sour.
This is why everyone recommends using medium-dark roasted espresso beans, so that the flavor will be relatively balanced, the oil will be moderate, and it will not be sour or burnt.
If you are looking for rich oils, buy Front Street Classic Blend and Front Street Commercial Blend. Both Italian beans contain a small amount of Robusta varieties. Front Street Classic Blend combines Brazilian, Mandheling and Robusta, and is roasted medium to dark. It emits obvious aromas of butter, toast, and caramel biscuits during extraction. It has a strong flavor, solid taste, and delicate oil. The extraction is very stable, making it a must-have home coffee for beginners.
If you like strong coffee flavor, then Front Street.PWN Golden Mandheling SOE coffee beans are your first choice: As one of the most famous specialty coffees in Asia, Front Street.PWN Golden Mandheling SOE undergoes three hand selections + one machine selection during the production process. The coffee beans are uniform and translucent. After medium-dark roasting, the particles are large, with rich aromas of spices, caramel, fir, and dark chocolate. The extracted moka pot coffee liquid has a mellow taste and good oil, which is very suitable for friends who do not like sour coffee.
To make a fruity espresso, it is necessary to use medium roasted coffee beans. We recommend Front Street Strawberry Candy espresso coffee beans. You can order directly from Taobao or Tmall stores. This is a espresso made from two major origins: Costa Rica Tara beads, which are famous for their honey processing, and Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. On this basis, coupled with Colombian coffee beans, the espresso that can be prepared is not only non-irritating, but when extracted by the coffee machine, it has good oil and dense texture, and at the same time has a sweet and sour taste like strawberry gummy.
Another factor is the difficulty of extraction. When Front Street shares knowledge about extracting espresso, he often talks about the channel effect and insufficient extraction. Even if you use dark roasted espresso beans, there will still be a sour taste if the extraction is insufficient. However, light-roasted coffee suffers from more channel effects and under-extraction when extracting Italian style. Therefore, the sourness of espresso made with lightly roasted coffee beans is mainly caused by the flavor and tonality of the coffee beans themselves and improper extraction operations.
Common problems with espresso extraction using light roasted coffee beans
-Inherit the grinding degree
Some friends want to try making espresso with light-roasted coffee beans. They directly replace the original Italian beans with light-roasted beans, then do some steps to clean the grinder, and then make it according to the original powder volume parameters.
After receiving the same weight of coffee powder, I found that the powder was pressed down all at once, and the volume felt smaller than that of dark roast. Put on the coffee machine and press the extraction button. After a while, the coffee liquid gushes down like a fountain, and the target amount of 1:2 is extracted in less than 10 seconds.
This is because light-roasted coffee beans do not expand as much as dark-roasted coffee, so the volume of light-roasted coffee powder appears smaller for the same weight. The fast flow rate of coffee liquid is because the lightly roasted coffee powder does not absorb water and swell very easily, so water can pass through it very easily.
Therefore, the first step in using an espresso machine to extract light-roasted coffee beans is to adjust the grinding degree. If you usually use medium-dark roasted coffee beans to extract espresso, you need to adjust the grinding degree to a finer size when replacing light-roasted coffee beans. For example, when Front Street extracted a light-roasted washed Yirgacheffe, the Italian grinder was finer by 0.3 notches. (Note: Front Street’s daily grinding range is ±0.05)
-Inherit the amount of powder
Without adjusting the grinding degree, the volume of the light roasted coffee powder will be smaller than the original one. After adjusting the grinding degree, the volume of the powder cake will be even smaller. This means that the distance between the powder cake and the powder water network is relatively long, so during the extraction process, the water will have a relatively large impact on the performance of the powder cake, and serious perforation will occur. Moreover, when the thickness of the powder cake is relatively thin, the time for water to pass through will be shortened, the extraction time will be insufficient, and the coffee will appear thin and sour.
The easiest way to solve this problem is to increase your followers. How much to increase depends on the extraction time and the reasonable powder capacity range of the powder bowl (the powder cake fits the ring line of the powder bowl after pressing). For example, when Front Street uses Sunflower Warm Yang to blend coffee beans, the amount of powder is 20g, while the lightly roasted Yirgacheffe requires 21.3g to reach the line next to the powder bowl.
-Inheritance pressure
The reason why espresso coffee can take about 30 seconds to extract the coffee substances that Pour over(V60) coffee can extract in 2 minutes lies in the pressure. Generally, the pressure of espresso coffee extraction reaches 9 bar. The greater the pressure, the higher the efficiency of extracting substances.
When you have adjusted the parameters such as the amount of powder and grinding degree, and the parameters such as ratio and time are within a reasonable range, the extracted espresso shows the acidity of light roasted coffee and a bitter taste similar to sawdust and herbs.
Therefore, using slightly lower pressure in brewing coffee can solve this type of problem very well. When Front Street uses light roasted coffee beans to make espresso, the extraction pressure will be controlled at 6-7bar.
Below Front Street summarizes the changes in making espresso with light roasted coffee, you can refer to it.
1. The general guidelines for extracting espresso are also applicable to light roasted coffee, that is, the ratio of powder to liquid is 1:2, and the time is controlled at 25-30 seconds.
2. Compared with the Italian dark roasted coffee beans we are used to, the grinding degree of light roasted coffee beans needs to be adjusted to be finer, the amount of powder needs to be increased appropriately, and the pressure needs to be reduced. (Grinding degree is also related to increasing the amount of powder. The finer the grinding, the lower the volume after pressing, and the more amount of coffee powder needs to be added; but both are subject to time constraints. When the powder is finer, the more powder is added, the longer it takes. So setting an extraction time of 25-30 seconds is also a good way to verify whether your grinding degree and amount of powder are correct.)
3. Hitting the extraction template does not mean that the coffee will taste good. If you decide that the flavor needs to be improved, you can fine-tune the grinding degree, coffee extraction amount, and pressure.
Finally, what would the flavor be like in an espresso made with lightly roasted coffee beans?
First of all, if you don’t usually drink espresso, then the espresso made from lightly roasted beans will feel so strong and sour that it will make you shiver. If you have the habit of drinking espresso, the espresso made from lightly roasted beans will have very strong acidity, accompanied by a slight salty taste from salt water. The mellowness is naturally not as high as traditional Italian beans, but it also tastes like cheese and cream.
Secondly, the Americano made by adding water to espresso made from lightly roasted beans has good performance. The acidity is bright and thick, with good sweetness and bitter-sweet coffee flavor in the middle and later stages, with a clear sweet aftertaste. (This is the flavor expression of Americano coffee made with Yirgacheffe. Not all light roasted beans may have this flavor. It depends on the flavor description of the coffee beans)
Finally, espresso made from lightly roasted beans is actually not suitable for making milk coffee, because the tonality of lightly roasted coffee is dominated by fresh flavors such as sourness and floral aroma. These flavors are easily covered by the taste of milk, and what you end up drinking is milk with a hint of coffee flavor. (Those who like the obvious milky taste and don’t like the bitter taste of coffee will probably like it)
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
