Adventures of a Vagabond

(continued from “My Love of Espresso.”)

“Brewing espresso is actually a very harsh process,” explained Erik Perkunder, one of the trio behind Slayer. “You’re basically taking this finely ground coffee and slamming into it with 9 bars of pressure. Espresso roasts are special blends of different kinds of beans to handle this.

“We thought it was possible to build a machine that could brew Single Origin Espresso (SOE),” continued Erik, “so we started experimenting.”

This was when I had my ‘ah-ha!’ moment and really understood what these guys had done. Out in Beijing, I brew French Press using beans from Stumptown. I’ve probably tried more than a dozen varieties of single-origin beans, each bag coming with a neat little card noting what part of the world the beans are from and the unique flavors and characteristics therein. Just like wines, each one turns out to be very unique. But these beans and their flavors are fragile, which is why they work great in a gentle press pot but don’t stand up in an espresso machine.

What Slayer has done is build a machine that has variable brewing pressure. Using the beautiful wooden paddles on top of each group head, you can control the pressure on a sliding scale from 0 to 9 bar in a smooth infinite motion. This gives you the ability to ease a coffee through the brewing process, retaining the unique details.

Pulling a shot in the way Erik tutored me goes something like this.

1. Grind, dose, and tamp your portafilter. 
2. Activate the group head and bring the pressure to about half-way—maybe 4-5 bar.
3. Watch the shot develop out the bottom of your PF through the handy mirror integrated into the drip tray.
4. As thick rich coffee begins to ooze out all the pores of your bottomless PF, push the paddle all the way open to 9 bar.
5. Watch and enjoy syrupy rich brown espresso slide into the bottom of your cup.

Every coffee, even every shot, has tons of unique and different textures, flavors, and tastes. The body is incredible, like an elixir that rolls through your mouth. There’s nothing like it. And this amazingness isn’t just limited to single-origin coffee, but even purpose-blended espresso coffees gain new taste and depth too.

Slayer. An incredible piece of engineering that reveals a whole new landscape.

Living on Capitol Hill in Seattle, it’s no surprise that anything and everything I know about brewing espresso can be tied back to by Espresso Vivace, and in particular, its proprietor, David Schomer.

David Schomer is a bit of a legend in the coffee community. Countless forum threads ask how Schomer does this and that, if he uses the double baskets or the triple baskets, and how much he doses his coffee. It turns out, I have no idea how lucky I am to drink Vivace coffee on a regular basis and grew to be the envy of my coffee buddies when I say that Schomer once pulled a shot for me himself—and then told me to keep the cup it came in.

My love for coffee originates from a love of the atmosphere that cafes provide, a love of food and drink, and a love for engineering. Making great espresso shots pulls from all three of these, and becomes an art form in the process. I could do it all day.

Over the years I picked up a few things via osmosis from hanging out at Vivace and with Philip Richardson, as we played with an Andreja Premium in Microsoft’s building 99.

Lately, I’ve been hanging out with my buddy Daryl in Beijing, who’s as nuts about coffee as I am. He’s got equipment in the form of a Rancho Silvia with a PID mod and a Mazzer Mini grinder. It’s here I’ve really doing and understanding the roasting, grinding, dosing, tamping, and brew temperature that go into making a fine shot. I bought a copy of David Schomer’s book, Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques, which teaches not only the how but the why of espresso preparation. We’ve been doing this on Sunday afternoons and I think I’ve had insomnia on every Sunday night for more than a month after drinking the best coffee that Beijing has ever seen.

And then I was invited to go visit Slayer in Seattle on a recent business trip.

There’s a whole new twist in the world of coffee.

To be continued…

David and Michael, originally uploaded by SlayerSeattle.

Pulling amazing shots on an incredible machine. More on this very soon.

I look like such a barista!!

As many of you know, I’ve turned into a bit of a coffee snob in the last couple years, much thanks to the like of Philip Richardson and amazing cafes like Espresso Vivace and Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

Out here in China, the French Press is my weapon of choice. I bring back Stumptown beans (the Ethiopian Wondo is my favorite thus far)  from Seattle and grind them on my Capresso Infinity just before brewing.

Stumptown has a great guide on brewing French Press that I follow and inspires my own process. I’ve made a few modifications though—I brew for 5 minutes and not 4—stirring after 2 and brewing for 3 more. Additionally, I only stir to break up the bloom and not the whole pot as I’ve found the coffee tastes a little over-extracted that way.

And up until today, I was using water that was just under a boil.

I’ve been reading about the Slayer Espresso machine—it looks like a Synesso killer—and had these gems to say about French Press.

If you brew French press coffee you know that the water temperature for extraction is much closer to boiling (212 F)  than it is to the roughly 200 degrees at which conventional espresso is typically brewed.  You also realize that in preparing French press, there is a violent eruption, as you pour the water over the coffee in the beaker and the coffee and water collide.

and also…

In French press brewing the coffee violently shakes to life. It doubles and triples in volume even with a relatively small amount of water and expands & blooms upward releasing huge amounts of coffee aromatics into the air.  To compensate for this explosion, water is applied gradually to the coffee. Water is never poured over the grounds all at once.  You apply the water gradually to super-saturate the grounds, watching as the coffee expands and retreats, adding more water until you complete the pour.

Gems. Just made a fresh pot and it’s woonnnderful.