The Daily Double Shot – May 31, 2012

This weekend, I noticed that we were running out of Blue Bottle’s Roman Espresso. That small bag only yielded us ~15 double shots, which is close to the proper amount from an 8 ounce bag. (I’ll show you the math down below in the mini-Appendix.) So, while we were running our weekend errands, we picked up some Ritual beans from the Ritual Roasters stand over in Hayes Valley.  The barista’s description of their normal espresso sounded really delicious: sweet, caramal-y, peach-y.  And then, she started talking about the seasonal espresso, “Nine Darling Road” : sweet, light, caramal-y, apple, brown sugar.  S’s eyes lit up, and I knew which one we needed to get.

I went about my new morning ritual (see what I did there?).  Wake up at 7am, turn on the machine, grind the coffee, pour the milk in the stand-in glass pitcher, put the glass pitcher in the fridge, Navy shower.  At this point (~10 minutes from turning on the machine) the sight glass should be around the green zone, which I’ve read is a good time to start frothing milk.  So, this morning, I tried that.  The froth looked more or less the same as before, except with more foam.   I did notice that I was frothing for a longer period.  After I have the froth ready, pour the grinds into the filter, tamp, turn, tap out excess grinds, tamp, turn again.  Now we’re ready for the pull.

There’s the good stuff.

See?  More foam!

For the taste, I didn’t taste apples, but now that it’s in my head, I tasted the brown sugar.  Not sure if that was what I really tasted or if that’s what I wanted to taste.  Anyway, the way I would describe the taste of this one, it’s like you are sixteen, it’s a morning where you wake up from camping, and you can smell the fire from the night before, still having that taste of burnt marshmallows in your mind.  Hard to explain, but that’s what I’m experiencing right now.

Mini-Appendix

How many cups of lattes should I be able to make with my 8 ounce bag of espresso beans?

Let’s do some lazy man math.  One Double shot should hold from 14-16 grams of coffee.  So I’m going to say on average 15 grams.  One ounce is roughly 28 grams. So, 8 ounces should be about 228 grams.  Divide that by 15, and we get 14.93.  Eh, close enough.

 

 

 

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