alt Hacker NewsAll coffee tastes like cigarette ash to me. Similarly, I have been to places that people rave about. My buddy used to run a coffee shop. "Your beans were overcooked"; no, not it. There is something innate to espresso or something. Smells amazing. Tastes like ash.
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epihelix • today at 3:18 PM
Interestingly, that's many people's experience (including my own) of drinking good coffee with covid. I'm so sorry, is all I can say :(
Good espresso is really difficult to make, with the lighter the roast, the harder it is to get right. Most coffee shops can get good quality beans that smell amazing but without a well-practiced barista the shots will be excessively sour or bitter.
Dialling in espresso isn’t simply a matter of finding the right grind setting on the grinder and locking it in. One coffee may pour a perfect 9 bar espresso and then a different coffee might gush like a shower head and spray sour, weak coffee all over the place, while a third coffee could jam up like squeezing water out of a stone, with barely a drop of extremely bitter liquid falling in the cup, all on the same grind setting!
In other words, every batch of coffee beans needs to be dialled in separately, and there can also be a lot more adjustments needed than simply the grind (water temperature and brew ratio are big factors as well). An expert will know how to adjust at least those 3 variables (grind, temperature, ratio) all in concert to get the most out of a particular coffee. On top of all that, the true master can make use of grinder type (burr design) pressure, flow, and even temperature profiling to fully customize a shot, but that’s going far into the weeds.