Espresso, Explained · Part 11 Coffee oil does not dissolve in water. Flushing water through will not remove what has built up, and cleaning means a detergent made for the job and a basket with no holes. 01 Flushing water through is rinsing, not cleaning Every shot leaves oil behind. It coats the water path and the screen the water comes through, and over time it builds into a layer. Water passing over that layer carries the taste of it into the cup. Oil does not dissolve in water. It is the same reason you use detergent on a greasy pan. A few flushes take off the loose grounds you can see and leave the oil exactly where it was. You taste it before you see it. If the first shot of the day smells stale or the finish is muddy, look at the machine before you blame the coffee. 02 You need a blind basket and a proper detergent A basket with no holes gives the water nowhere to go. It is pushed back into the machine instead, washing the path on the way. A normal p...

그라인더, 무엇을 보고 고릅니까 · 4편 집에서 쓸 그라인더는 무엇을 마시는지에 따라 갈립니다. 에스프레소를 뽑는다면 눈금이 촘촘한 기계가, 드립만 내린다면 그보다 단순한 기계로 충분합니다. 01 먼저 정할 것은 마시는 방식입니다 에스프레소는 요구 조건이 가장 까다롭습니다. 아주 곱게 갈아야 하고, 눈금을 조금만 옮겨도 잔이 크게 달라집니다. 조절 단계가 촘촘하지 않으면 원하는 지점에 맞출 수 없습니다. 드립은 여유가 있습니다. 굵게 갈기 때문에 한 단계의 차이가 잔에 미치는 영향이 작습니다. 같은 값이라면 에스프레소용보다 단순한 기계를 골라도 됩니다. 둘 다 하려면 에스프레소 기준으로 고르십시오. 에스프레소가 되는 기계는 드립도 되지만, 드립용으로 만든 기계는 에스프레소 영역에서 세밀하게 맞추지 못하는 경우가 많습니다. 02 손으로 돌리는 기계와 전동 손으로 돌리는 기계는 같은 값에서 날이 더 좋습니다. 모터에 들어갈 비용이 날과 축에 쓰입니다. 하루 한두 잔이라면 이쪽이 유리하고, 발열도 거의 없습니다. 대신 시간과 힘이 듭니다. 에스프레소용으로 곱게 갈면 한 잔에 상당한 힘이 필요합니다. 아침마다 여러 잔을 내린다면 오래 쓰기 어렵습니다. 전동은 반복이 쉽습니다. 매일 여러 잔을 내리거나 손님이 잦다면 전동 쪽이 맞습니다. 대신 같은 값이면 날의 급이 한 단계 낮아지는 것을 감안해야 합니다. 03 사양에서 실제로 확인할 것 날의 지름을 보십시오. 지름이 크면 한 번에 지나가는 면적이 넓어 입자가 고르고 열이 덜 쌓입니다. 방식보다 지름이 결과를 더 크게 가릅니다. 조절 방식이 단계식인지 무단식인지 확인하십시오. 단계식은 한 단계씩 딸깍 넘어가고, 무단식은 원하는 만큼 미세하게 돌립니다. 에스프레소를 뽑는다면 단계 간격이 좁은지 먼저 봐야 합니다. 흔들림이 없는지도 봅니다. 축이 흔들리면 날 간격이 일정하지 않아 입자가 흩어집니다. 손으로 돌리는 기계는 위쪽에도 베어링이 있는 구조가 안...

Choosing a Grinder · Part 4 What you drink decides which grinder you need. Espresso demands fine adjustment steps; if you only brew filter, something simpler will do. 01 Start from how you brew Espresso is the demanding case. It needs a very fine grind, and a small move on the dial changes the cup a great deal. Without closely spaced adjustment steps you cannot land where you want. Filter brewing gives you room. At a coarse setting, one step matters far less in the cup. For the same money you can choose a simpler machine than an espresso grinder. Doing both means buying for espresso. A grinder that handles espresso will handle filter, but a filter-oriented grinder often cannot adjust finely enough in the espresso range. 02 Hand grinders and electric ones A hand grinder gives you better burrs for the money. What would have gone into a motor goes into the burrs and the shaft instead. For one or two cups a day this is the better buy, and there is almost no he...

Roasting, In Practice · Part 2 Rate of rise is a useful reading. The crash and the flick are not defects, and there is no mechanism by which they could be. Chasing a smooth curve is chasing the shape of a graph. 01 What the number actually is Rate of rise is a rate of change, not a measurement. The software takes bean temperature, subtracts the reading from a moment ago, and divides by the interval. It is a derivative of another curve, which means every error in the original is amplified in it. It depends heavily on your probe. Probe thickness, how deep it sits in the bean mass, and how much the software smooths the signal all change the shape of the line. Two machines roasting the same coffee identically will draw different rate of rise curves. What it is good for is comparison. On one machine, with one probe and one setting, it tells you whether today's batch is moving like yesterday's. That is a real and valuable use. 02 The crash is not a defect A cra...

Roasting, In Practice · Part 3 Development time ratio is not a weak metric. It is the wrong kind of number. Reaction rates depend on absolute temperature and duration, and a ratio of two durations carries neither. 01 What the number claims to describe The definition is simple. Take the time from first crack to the end of the roast, divide it by the total roast time, and express it as a percentage. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five percent gets quoted as the target range. The claim behind it is that this ratio tracks flavour development. Too low and the coffee is underdeveloped, too high and it is baked. The number is treated as a quality gauge that transfers between coffees, machines and batch sizes. It does not transfer, and the reason is not a lack of evidence. The problem is structural. A ratio of two durations cannot describe a process governed by temperature and time, because dividing one by the other throws both away. 02 The chemistry says some...

Roasting, In Practice The roaster who named the crash also advises using a thinner bean probe before forming strong opinions about how crashy your curves look. Both statements cannot be load-bearing at once. 01 State the claim fairly first The position is well known and clearly argued. Scott Rao observed across thousands of roasts that the best cups came from roasts whose rate of rise declined smoothly, and named the sharp drop at first crack the crash and the rebound after it the flick. The industry adopted both terms within a few years. The supporting evidence offered is sensory. He has written that most of his students can taste a roast blind and tell whether its curve crashed, and he presents that as validation of the idea. He also notes that crashed roasts tend to flick and tend to be underdeveloped, so the three often appear together. That last observation is the weak point, and it is his own. If crashing, flicking and underdevelopment usually arrive together, ...

Roasting, In Practice · Part 1 You do not control roast level. You control how much heat goes in, how much air moves through, and how long it lasts. Everything else is a consequence. 01 There are only three inputs Heat is the first. Gas pressure, burner output, element power, whatever the machine calls it. This is the energy going into the batch, and it is the only thing that raises bean temperature. Airflow is the second. How fast air moves through the drum. It carries heat to the beans, carries chaff and moisture away, and decides how much of the energy you applied actually arrives. Time is the third. How long the beans stay in there, and how that time is distributed between the stages. Time is not set directly; it is the result of the other two, and that distinction matters more than it sounds. Batch size belongs here too. Loading a 30 kg machine with 12 kg is a different machine from loading it with 28 kg. The relationship between drum mass, bean mass and...

Korean Coffee · Part 6 You can order coffee in Korea in English almost anywhere. Knowing five phrases and two conventions will still get you a better cup and a shorter queue. 01 What happens at the counter You order and pay first, then wait. There is no tab and no paying afterwards. You will be handed a buzzer, or your number will be called, and you collect the drink yourself. You will be asked two questions. Hot or iced, and whether you are drinking in or taking away. Answer both before they ask and the transaction takes ten seconds. Tipping does not exist. There is no tip line, no jar, and leaving money on the counter causes confusion rather than pleasure. The price on the board is the price. 02 Five phrases that cover most of it English works in cities, but these help everywhere. Pronunciation below is rough but close enough to be understood. What you want Korean Say it as One iced americano 아이스 아메리카노 하나요 Ice americano hana-yo Hot, please ...

Korean Coffee · Part 5 Korean specialty coffee grew from a small circle of competitors into an industry with hundreds of roasteries. What changed first was supply, and what changed slowest was taste. 01 Green coffee was the first bottleneck Around 2010 there were only a handful of importers to buy from. If you roasted in Korea then, your options were counted on two hands. You took what those companies had brought in that season, and a coffee you liked might simply not exist here the following year. Today there are more than twice as many. Small importers now bring in single lots, competition lots and microlots, and a roaster in a provincial city can order the same coffee as one in Seoul. Nothing else in the last fifteen years changed the work as much as that did. Equipment followed the same curve. Roasters, grinders and measuring tools that had to be imported at painful cost became ordinary purchases, and Korean manufacturers began building their own. 02 It ...

Korean Coffee · Part 4 Most Korean cafes sell one drink in enormous volume and make their margin somewhere else. Knowing which is which changes what you should order. 01 Americano carries the menu One drink dominates in a way it does not elsewhere. Americano, usually iced, is the default order across the whole market from the cheapest chain to the most careful roastery. It is the cheapest item on most boards and the one most people are drinking. Espresso on its own is rare. It is on the menu, but ordering one will occasionally get a second glance. A handful of espresso bars have opened in recent years and they are treated as a specialist format rather than the norm. Latte is the second pillar. Iced more often than hot, and frequently flavoured. Vanilla, hazelnut and condensed milk versions sell steadily, and seasonal editions arrive every few months. 02 The rest of the board Non-coffee drinks are a full category, not an afterthought. Grain lattes made from...

Korean Coffee · Part 3 Korea passed 100,000 coffee shops a few years ago and kept going. The reason is less about how much coffee people drink than about who ends up opening a business here. 01 The number is larger than it sounds Government figures put the count above 100,000. Korea had roughly 51,000 coffee shops in 2016. It crossed 100,000 in 2022 and reached about 107,000 by 2024. That is on a population of around 51 million, in a country smaller than England. The market grew alongside it. The domestic coffee industry was valued at roughly 3.7 trillion won in 2024, up about a third from 2018. Nearly 300,000 people work in the sector. Density is what visitors notice. In a Seoul neighbourhood you can stand on one corner and see four or five cafes without turning your head. That is the part no statistic conveys. 02 Why so many people open one Careers end earlier here than people expect. Many office workers leave their main career in their fifties, well bef...

Korean Coffee · Part 2 A Korean cafe is built to be occupied, not passed through. Once you know that, the tall ceilings, the outlets at every table and the four-hour customers all make sense. 01 The room is the product Cafes here are larger than visitors expect. Two floors is common, and so are high ceilings and a full glass front. Money that a European cafe might put into the machine goes into the room. Seating is designed for staying. Tables are spaced further apart than in most countries, chairs have backs, and power outlets sit at the tables rather than hidden behind a sofa. None of that is accidental. There is almost no standing bar. The Italian model, where you drink an espresso at the counter in ninety seconds, barely exists here. You order, you take a buzzer, you sit down. 02 What people actually do in them A cafe is a study room and an office. Students revise, freelancers work, job seekers prepare for exams. There is a word for people who study in...