Updosing Again

For the last year or two the UPDOSING technique has been pretty controversial. In case you're not familiar with the term, one common updosing theory states that espresso tastes better when you dose so that your coffee fills the portafilter basket right up to the shower screen.

A lot of the controversy is justified: this is a complex subject. On the other hand, the controversy drags on because people mean different things when they talk about updosing. And that holds back the progress of our quality coffee culture.

George Sabados wrote a seminal updosing article in the Oct/Nov 2005 Barista Magazine. I doubt he "invented" updosing, or whatever, but at least he put some interesting thoughts on paper. His updosing technique does NOT mean jamming extra coffee into the portafilter. Instead, if I get what he's saying, the technique involves putting just enough coffee in the portafilter so that its expansion is restricted by the shower screen. And no more.

In my opinion, if they haven't already, all serious baristas should read it and try to test out this stuff for themselves, with their coffees, on their machine. George says, rather mysteriously, that this technique may not work well with all coffees and all machines.

A lot of people have already experimented and come up with wildly varying opinions. So what I'm suggesting is that we all test at least one thing in common. It's pretty much what Nick (a guy who seems to get the principle behind running a meaningful experiment) proposed on home-barista.com. You want to taste the difference between:

(1)a 2 oz, 28 sec espresso obtained from 20 grams of coffee in a double basket, and
(2)a similar 2 oz, 28 sec, 20 gram espresso made in a triple basket.

That 20 gram figure may have to be adjusted, but it must be the same for both samples. The point is, in sample (1), you want to use just enough coffee to lightly touch the shower screen when it's fitted into the group. Then you've got to use THE SAME WEIGHT of coffee (perhaps with a different grind) for sample (2) in a triple basket. The requirement to use the same weight of coffee for each shot will require the use of a gram scale.

Your grinder may have to be adjusted to get the timing and extracted volumes to be the same.

It's just a start, it's just a single test, but I believe THAT test is really meaningful: comparing an "expansion-restricted" extraction to an otherwise identical "expansion-unrestricted" extraction. Very significantly, you're getting the same volume of espresso from the same amount of ground coffee. The only variables that (ideally) change are the clearance to the shower screen and (if necessary) the fineness of grind.