Cuvee Coffee

Last week in the office Clancy, Mike and I conducted an experiment. We wanted to document the effects that "quakers" have in a shot of espresso. "Quakers" are under ripe coffee cherry seeds that make it through processing and end up in roasted coffee. In green coffee "quakers" are almost impossible to detect, but once the coffee is roasted they reveal themselves as significantly lighter beans. See the picture below, there are quakers on the left and normal roasted coffee on the right.

We started the experiment by weighing out 21g samples to prepare espresso. We ensured there were no quakers in any of the samples. Clancy then prepared a shot of espresso for Mike, and I with no quakers to establish a baseline. Mike and I went into another room, and Clancy brought us shots of espresso with undisclosed amounts of samples, ranging from none to 6. Mike and I wrote down what we thought about each of the shots, and rated them. After we had tasted a pile of espresso we reconciled with Clancy which shots had how many quakers. The most powerful observation we made was that even 1 quaker will have a negative impact on the flavor of the espresso.

Lastly, we prepared a shot of espresso that was made from all quakers.... you can see a photo of the difference between the all quaker spent puck and the normal puck below.