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Permalink Reply by gera davidson on October 12, 2013 at 10:00pm

hi Rose

it's hard to know what exactly you mean by "free resource", the online community has a vast knowledge base and a simple search through website like this one or home-barista and coffeegeek could provide you with free information but you will have to sort through it.

I found the Scott Rao books to be a great source of information covering most parameters of espresso preparation in a simple way but of course you'll have to buy them. as you point out every coffee is different and every roaster or cafe have their own ideas about the coffee so it is almost impossible for someone on a website to go through all the possible parameters that might influence the espresso flavours and extraction and how they might be correlating to your particular coffee. but you can find the guide lines every where online or from your priviece experience and over time twick them to what works for your coffee.

having said that (and after re-reading your post) sound like consistency is what your fighting with there - goes without saying but a few things like green bean quality, level of roasting and age of beans have to be kept as consistent as possible for you to be able to find fault in the preparation method. a few other tools that would help (non of them are free) would be use of VST baskets, scale and timer, and a refractometer (with extract-mojo), those tools would help identify the parameters that make your espresso great and help you keep it that way, its also worth looking at grinder and coffee machine, as those can introduce a lot of inconsistencies to the mix that might through your coffee out of it's optimal range.

sorry but that is as much "free" advice I can think of without actually tasting the coffee.

hope this helps

Gera

ps if you add some more information about equipment used, dose used, espresso weight est. and what sort of "problems" you taste or see when it goes bad we might be able to offer more solutions :) 

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Demers on October 13, 2013 at 6:29am

I've found a number of Single Origin espressos to be more difficult to dial in and they tend to have a narrower window of ideal taste than say a blend. That might just be something you have to deal with for pulling espresso. Another thought would be to play with processing methods and/or varieties of coffee and figure out a combination that works better for espresso. For example 30% natural and 70% washed. I've known some people who used a Brazilian with 50% washed and 50% semi-washed as their standard espresso. Just food for thought.

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