Espresso guidelines

At Drop Coffee Roasters we choose to highlight each individual coffee and its characteristics as good as we can, be it for espresso or filter; for us espresso is simply another way of extracting flavour from coffee. The first step in brewing any cup of coffee is to decide on the brew ratio, coffee in relation to water. For espresso, we usually dose based on basket size, for us this is generally 18g VST filter baskets, altering only slightly in order to optimize head space above the coffee grounds, and aim in most cases for a 1/2 ratio, altering the weight of brewed espresso to change the strength of the beverage. The next step is to find the optimal extraction yield for your grinder, aiming to extract as much sweetness as possible. 

Of course the recipe will correlate with how porous and soluble the coffee is, we're always trying to make each coffee taste as tasty as we can, through roasting and brewing, even if the solubility may therefor be different from origin to origin. However, here is our current ethos for our coffee:

Dose: 18,5 g
Brew weight: 36 g
Extraction time: 29 - 32 seconds
TDS: about 9,5
Extraction:  about 19,5

This is how we like to present our current coffees, but this ideology should be used as guidelines. We encourage you to experiment and use this as a baseline only and find how our coffee works best for you and your set up. Let us know what works best for you and how you enjoy it!