Okay.

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking this is Clickbait.

It's not.

I will explain.

You might also be thinking.

Well, actually, I make beautiful espresso.

I'm sure you do.

The short version of this is that espresso now tastes better.

But we should go back back 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 waas with that question, David Sherman, 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 poor than the sort of stuff David show means to do it the way the espresso sort of fell from the spouts.

It was just it looked so good.

The way we made espresso was really were trying to use a lot of visual information.

And so it's not particularly surprising that look back at it, that we were optimizing what we were doing for the best looking espresso because it was how how it looked that informed the decisions we made about whether something was good or bad.

whether it was pouring well or badly thesis kind of three separate things only talk about one.

I want to talk about the way espresso falls from the spouts.

That's changed, too.

I want to talk about how it looks in the cup.

The Krimmer on Dhe.

We're gonna talk about Tiger striping, too.

So let's talk about the way that you know the coffee pause.

How good it looks, because these days, espresso as it pause, does not look as good as it used to.

Tastes better, but it doesn't look as good on there's a couple of reasons for this.

Ultimately, the recipe, the way that we've brood, 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 dozing, a consistent amount of coffee.

This was way more coffee than people had used in the past.

For, like that very traditional 14 graham double espresso for Italy, we were suddenly doing kind of 2022 gram dose is along with that.

Well, they didn't taste good if he if you didn't adapt what you roasted right like it was really hard to extract.

2020 grams in a normal about gets, so people started to roast darker.

Now let's talk about water for a second.

A little tiny bit of science here.

Water is a polar substance.

Each water molecule has a gun, a 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 on it has a property called cohesion, right?

It wants to.

It wants toe 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.

Another is something you can do that messes with adhesion and cohesion that messes with waters, relationship, its magnetism to itself.

And that's dissolved 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 brood.

So at the start, when the expressive bruise that first liquid coming through the park.

That is shock full of solid gold material, and as a result, it's not very sticky anymore.

And so that expressed her falls straight down from the spout.

As your expressive progresses, you'll notice that it starts toe to cling a little bit more to the spouse and starts to sort of arc in words.

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 on relatively short doses out, which meant that almost your entire poor was chock full of valuables.

It still might be under extracted 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 kinda belonged order.

But 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 spots at that point and typically would bring lower doses again, we could have shifted back from 2022 down to like 16 to 18 grams were also brewing Maur liquid in the espresso.

So it's getting bigger, therefore, pushing more water through and that water is gonna be week.

It's gonna have less dissolved stuff in it.

It's gonna 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 looks so pretty.

It looked so good brewing.

I think like in competitions, would be watching people's pause to see at what point they start to cling to the spouse along.

But Maur and sort of lose that straight, beautiful drop there.

And these days they don't drop straight down for long.

Pretty quickly they started pulling words, 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 he's one of the reasons that espresso is no longer quite as beautiful as it was before.

On one of the subject.

I do want to talk a little bit about Kramer now.

I am not the biggest fan off of the taste of karma like it doesn't you get a spoonful that's not good and taking it off an espresso and drinking that without screaming is an interesting and enjoyable little exercise.

So it's important to remember that Kramer is really just a foam off the liquid below it.

It's not different or separate.

It's not special.

It's just foam right, And the color of that firm is pretty much right into 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 flavor.

Cem, you might argue.

Not as textured and rich and decadent, but but delicious.

Now that liquid is weaker, and as a result, if you make a phone from a paler liquid, you'll get a pail of foam.

And don't forget the color of coffee itself comes from would've called Mel annoyance like brown byproducts of roasting on the darky.

You wrote 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 Kramer from pretty light roasts.

It can't be done.

You haven't generated enough of those men annoyance.

And those kind of compounds that give coffee its color very dark arrests will produce darker, richer looking Kramer on.

They'll also produce a bit more co two their age a bit quicker.

So they'll LD gas faster because they're they're more brittle on 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 CEO to.

In addition, if you really want to get into the old school, if you're still using, like a little tickle over Buster, which I believe for a long time, for example, David Schumer little tickle over buster 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 firm for reasons.

Well, maybe talk about another time.

But don't forget, Robusta will give you not only more Kraemer but longer lasting cram a more stable Kraemer.

It doesn't taste good.

I think most of it this better.

This worst.

This is not the time, and the last thing I want to touch upon is what we typically cool tiger stripes.

It's like a beautiful flicking across the top of the crab.

It looks very beautiful, right?

You feel like you've 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 on one of the shots I pulled of kind of local coffee.

They're just looked very pretty.

And it reminded me that espresso doesn't really look like this day today anymore.

I felt a little nostalgic, a little sad, but it was also was like, Well, maybe this happened 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 Cramer Ondas you brew typically your espresso poor hits once out of the cup drags the foam underneath that it kind of pulls the remaining criminal across the cup, causing these kind of flex to spread out a CZ.

You brew again to kind of brew.

This way you would need to be grinding quite a brutal coffee.

So you get a lot more of these time little finds that come out of the start.

You do sometimes see them with lighter roasts and that kind of stuff, but it is relatively rare compared to how it used to be.

On 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'd 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, too.

My tastes, I guess I'll hold my hands up.

They're all I'm trying to say, ISS, that it's kind of interesting the way that modern techniques have impacted the look of espresso on 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 breast of 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 I'm lost my mind.

Do you think I'm totally off the beaten track?

Have you been making express it for a long time?

Do you feel like there's been a really shift?

Do you sometimes get said that the best tasting expresses 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 Commons, down below.

As always.

Thank you for watching.