What is a coffee serving / beverage you are excited about?
Espresso.
Why do you think this serving is important to your shop and customers?
As a coffee shop in Frankfurt, I think we face the biggest misconceptions when it comes to our espresso serving. We serve 1:3 ratio espressos with light roasted coffees, which isn’t normal for a coffee shop here. People expect a very heavy and bitter drink, which gives us the opportunity to talk about our approach on espresso and why we serve it differently. At the end it comes down to communicating what we do, and what the customer can expect from the drink. It’s an important task to explain both the espresso serving and the coffee we’re using. Sometimes it’s something as simple as letting the customer know to let the coffee cool down for the full taste experience.
What recent coffees have performed well as espresso and why?
Recently we’ve been serving Raul Rivera’s honey Pacamara (Finca Santa Rosa) which worked very well on our current espresso setup. We were able to get a very sweet and fruit-forward cup which many of our customers enjoyed. It was fun showing them the difference in the cup between natural, honey and washed processing methods, as we had all of these coffees from Raul.
What brewing recipe do you use? What brewing equipment or water do you use?
We liked the honey Pacamara because we were able to push a lot of water through the puck without getting any unpleasant flavours. We use a Bentwood grinder and pull ‘turbo shots’. We grind into a Blind Shaker and distribute the coffee with an Auto-Comb. We add a puck screen on top to help with water distribution and puck integrity. This allows us to use 17g in to about 50g out. Depending on the day and water hardness we pull between 48g to 58g into the cup, in somewhere between 16 and 20 seconds.
Our water for espresso is currently controlled with a BWT water filter plus a pH-controlled filter, but we still need to test each day as parameters are constantly changing due to weather conditions and the local water supply.
Is there any other information you would like to share about this coffee serving?
For us the espresso serving is probably the most challenging but also the most rewarding for our customers. We have had many occasions were people who don’t enjoy acidity in coffee gave it a try after we explained why there’s acidity in the coffees we use, and were quite surprised by the flavour complexity. Sometimes people still don’t enjoy it, but are happy because you explained what they should and should not expect from this style of espresso. We feel that we need to talk more about the way we brew light roasted coffee, instead of just expecting people to like it or not like it. Communication is the biggest part of our espresso serving, from order to presentation. People sometimes get bored in line because we talk so much, but come to Frankfurt and see for yourself.
