Why Modern Espresso Is So Ugly

Okay, okay. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is clickbait. It's not. I will explain. And you might also be thinking, well, actually, I make beautiful espresso. And I'm sure you do. The short version of this is that espresso now tastes better. But we should go back. Back to maybe 15 years ago, when espresso was very beautiful. Now, the gold standard of espresso, when I got into it, the gold standard of how espresso should look was, without question, David Shoma. Maybe it was just that I was, you know, young and impressionable at that time, but I don't think there's really ever been a more beautiful kind of pour than the sort of stuff David Shoma used to do. The way the espresso sort of fell from the spouts, it was just, it looked so good. The way we made espresso was really, we were trying to use a lot of visual information. And so it's not particularly surprising as I look back at it, that we were optimizing what we were doing for the best looking espresso, because it was how it looked that informed the decisions we made about whether something was good or bad, whether it was pouring well or badly. There's kind of three separate things I want to talk about. One, I want to talk about the way espresso falls from the spouts, that's changed. Two, I want to talk about how it kind of looks in the cup, the crema, and we're going to talk about tiger striping too. We'll get there. So let's talk about the way that, you know, the coffee pours, how good it looks, because these days, espresso, as it pours, does not look as good as it used to. It tastes better, but it doesn't look as good. And there's a couple of reasons for this. Ultimately, the recipe, the way that we've brewed has fundamentally changed. Back in the day, grinding fresh was kind of new, and the way that coffee was dosed was to use the basket, to fill the basket as a way of dosing a consistent amount of coffee. This was way more coffee than people had used in the past. For like that very traditional 14 gram double espresso from Italy, we were suddenly doing kind of 20, 22 gram doses. Along with that, well, those didn't taste very good if you didn't adapt the way you roasted, right? Like it was really hard to extract 20, 22 grams in a normal basket, so people started to roast darker. Now let's talk about water for a second. Little tiny bit of science here. Water is a polar substance. Each water molecule has a kind of positively charged end and a negatively charged end. So if you let water hang out, it kind of wants to stick to itself. That's what creates surface tension and it has a property called cohesion, right? It wants to be attracted to itself. It also has a property called adhesion, where it wants to stick to other things because of this kind of magnetic charge. Now there is something you can do that messes with adhesion and cohesion, that messes with water's relationship, its magnetism to itself, and that's dissolve stuff in it. So the more stuff that you dissolve, the more stuff gets between the water molecules and the harder it is for them to stick together. Why is this relevant? A good question. Let's go back to looking at how an espresso brews. So at the start, when the espresso brews, that first liquid coming through the puck, that is chock full of soluble material. And as a result, it's not very sticky anymore. And so that espresso falls straight down from the spout. As your espresso progresses, you'll notice that it starts to cling a little bit more to the spouts and it starts to sort of arc inwards. And that's really just saying how strong is the liquid flowing through? Now the way that we've changed brewing has gone from massive doses in and relatively short doses out, which meant that almost your entire pour was chock full of solubles. It still might be underextracted at the end of it because you've just got so much coffee to extract, but it looked beautiful. And we would often stop sort of brewing the moment that it seems to be a little thinner, that it went kind of blonde or whatever we said back then. That was the end point. It was purely visual. Now that we know that actually there's still good stuff coming out of the spouts at that point. And typically we're brewing lower doses again. We've kind of shifted back from like 2022 down to like 16 to 18 grams. We're also brewing more liquid in the espresso. So it's getting bigger, therefore pushing more water through. And that water is going to be weaker. It's going to have less dissolved stuff in it. It's going to cling to the spouts more. And I kind of miss how good old espresso used to look, right? Like that old school massive dose. It just looked so pretty. It looked so good brewing. I think like in competitions, you'd be watching people's pours to see at what point they started to cling to the spouts a little bit more and sort of lose that straight, beautiful drop there. And these days they don't drop straight down for long. Pretty quickly, they start to pull inwards. And that's just the way that we're brewing has changed. It's changed the nature and the strength of the liquid coming out. So that's why it's one of the reasons that espresso is no longer quite as beautiful as it was before. And while on the subject, I do want to talk a little bit about crema. Now, I am not the biggest fan of the taste of crema. Like it doesn't, you know, you get a spoonful, that's not good. And taking it off an espresso and drinking that without its crema is an interesting and enjoyable little exercise. So it's important to remember that crema is really just a foam of the liquid below it. It's not different or separate. It's not special. It's just foam, right? And the color of that foam is pretty much related to the color of the beverage down below. Now, as I said before, we're pulling ultimately weaker shots of espresso. Better tasting, better extracted, more balanced, more flavorsome, you might argue. Not as textured and rich and decadent, but delicious. Now that liquid is weaker. And as a result, if you make a foam from a paler liquid, you'll get a paler foam. And don't forget the color of coffee itself comes from what are called melanoidins, like brown byproducts of roasting. And the darker you roast something, the more of these there'll be, the deeper, the richer, the red-brown you'll have. You can't get stunningly deep red-brown crema from pretty light roasts. It can't be done. You haven't generated enough of those melanoidins and those kind of compounds that give coffee its color. Very dark roasts will produce darker, richer looking crema, and they'll also produce a bit more CO2. They'll age a bit quicker, so they'll degas faster because they're more brittle and that roasting process kind of makes the whole coffee bean more porous and so it does age a little quicker. But if fresh, it will have more CO2. In addition, if you really want to get into the old school, if you are still using like a little tickle of Robusta, which I believe for a long time, for example, David Shomer, a little tickle of Robusta in there. Robusta has less oil in the bean naturally than Arabica does, about half the amount. And oil is the enemy of foam. If you've made meringues, you will know this to be true, right? Like fat destroys foam for reasons we'll maybe talk about another time. But don't forget, Robusta will give you not only more crema but longer lasting crema, more stable crema. Doesn't taste good, I think, most of it. This is better, this is worse, this is not the time. And the last thing I want to touch upon is what we typically call tiger stripes. It's like a beautiful flecking across the top of the crema. It looks very beautiful, right? You feel like you've made something very beautiful when you make an espresso like this. Now, this whole rant actually came from a trip I took recently to Italy and I pulled some shots and one of the shots I pulled of kind of local coffee there just looked very pretty and it reminded me that espresso doesn't really look like this day-to-day anymore. And I felt a little nostalgic, I felt a little sad, but it was also, I was like, well, maybe there's something to talk about here in terms of the science of coffee and why things are the way that they are. Now, tiger striping, that's essentially just lots of tiny pieces of ground coffee trapped in the crema and as you brew, typically your espresso pour hits one side of the cup, drags the foam underneath and it kind of pulls the remaining crema across the cup, causing these kind of flecks to spread out as you brew. Again, to kind of brew this way, you would need to be grinding quite a brittle coffee so you get a lot more of these tiny little fines that come out at the start. You do sometimes see them with lighter roasts and that kind of stuff, but it's relatively rare compared to how it used to be. And those are a few thoughts on why modern espresso doesn't look as good as it used to. I'm not out here trying to trash talk what you make, what you enjoy, that's not the point, and if you like the old-school style of stuff, that's okay too. I'm not trying to say that it's worse, I know I said that it tastes better now, but it's maybe more to my tastes, I guess, I'll hold my hands up there. All I'm trying to say is that it's kind of interesting the way that modern techniques have impacted the look of espresso and that maybe, you know, it's okay to be a little nostalgic for how things used to look. It was a very satisfying part of being a barista, producing gorgeous looking shots. You don't taste most of what you make in a day, so if it looks fantastic, that does feel kind of good. Anyway, I welcome your thoughts. I don't really know what you're gonna say, I'm kind of interested. Do you think I've lost my mind? Do you think I'm totally off the beaten track? Have you been making espresso for a long time? Do you feel like there's been a real shift? Do you sometimes get sad that the best tasting espressos don't look as good as they used to? Let me know your thoughts, I'll be interested to talk to you about it in the comments down below. As always, thank you for watching. I hope you have a great day.