I've been posting over at HB, trying to pay back a little bit for the institutional knowledge that exists over there in the lever camp.
http://www.home-barista.com/levers/shot-technique-question-for-spring-lever-owners-t14676-60.html I just replied to a fella who said:
"tekomino wrote: Nice, but you need to post tasting notes as well for videos to be truly useful."
So I obliged, but as you will see it probably isn't worth anything to anyone because of the multiple variables you can use to drive the shot any which way you want. I'm starting to feel a whole lot more up to speed on the lever process and am finally dialing in to the 'intuitive pulls' that have me modifying my technique in real time as the shot is flowing. So his question of 'post tasting notes' have very little relevance to anything other than I Start and I Finish and I Get the resulting Cup. Anyway... here's my response, I post it here because some of you have been asking about 'how's it taste'.
"tekomino wrote:Nice, but you need to post tasting notes as well for videos to be truly useful.
I can do that but my main goal was/is to try and capture (via video) a bunch of different ways to pull shots with the PVL.
Before I get into tasting notes, I want to do the mandatory preamble that my palate/espresso experience/expectations might be different than yours, which might be different than the guy next door. My tasting notes from this morning make more sense to me than my neighbor.
On to the shots...
The shots I pulled this morning were from two roasts; one batch is an 8 day old Gethumbwini Peaberry taken to the outliers of 2nd and the other batch is a 3.5 day old Wiladah Mabrur generally using the same roast profile. I was post-roast blending straight into the grinder throat at an approx 50/50 split. The several shots I did this morning ranged from .75oz to 1.5oz in volume, they ranged in dose and in pull time. As you will see shortly they also ranged between single basket and double basket.
Depending on how I extracted/setup techniqued I got combination's of blackcurrant cassis, merlot and earthiness/warm wood, a blackcurrant tea and brown sugar, a Rich red grape and a bit of cinnamon and warm brown sugar, etc, etc. On the nose it was a lot of blackcurrant and rich grape along with some earthy wood, some of the shots had a tiny bit of anise thrown in there and some had a tiny bit of nutmeg. Body ranged from heavy to medium depending on the pull/technique. Nothing sharp or citrusy, all shots were low acidity.
I know those tasting notes aren't worth the electronic paper they are written on because they reflect at least 10 shots that were a mix of half pulls and full pulls depending on what I saw in the espresso flow or how I wanted to drive the shot. Hence my reluctance to post up tasting notes with the videos, preferring to stick to things like "that was a pretty good shot". Maybe not the answer you are looking for... sorry about that."
Here's a 7gm shot, at tight grind and light tamp...