What Details Should You Pay Attention to When Extracting SOE with an Espresso Machine? How to Extract a Delicious Light-Medium Roast Espresso?

How to Extract SOE from Lightly Roasted Coffee Beans

After drinking too much traditional dark-roasted espresso, you'll inevitably want to change up your taste. Most people will then replace the dark roast blend in their bean hopper with Single Origin Espresso (SOE) coffee beans that highlight distinctive flavors, in order to produce acidic coffee with prominent flavor profiles. However, these beans are typically roasted to a lighter degree. If we use the same extraction parameters as for dark roast beans to extract SOE, it will be difficult to produce delicious coffee. Therefore, for these lightly roasted coffee beans, we need a different extraction approach.

Setting Up an Extraction Formula

How should you set up an extraction plan? Generally, FrontStreet Coffee recommends designing an extraction formula based on espresso extraction principles first. That means determining how much coffee grounds to use, how much time to take, and how much liquid weight to extract. Within the constraints of such a formula, we can prioritize finding the appropriate grind size, as the suitability of the grind has a significant impact on coffee extraction. Ultimately, though, the taste of the coffee must be confirmed through tasting. The formula merely narrows down the adjustment range and doesn't directly determine whether the flavor will be good or bad.

FrontStreet Coffee's commonly used SOE extraction formula follows a 1:2 coffee-to-liquid ratio, with extraction time controlled between 30-35 seconds. Compared to traditional espresso extraction formulas, this adds about 5 seconds, because lightly roasted SOE coffee beans require higher extraction efficiency. The specific amount of coffee grounds depends on the capacity of your portafilter basket! It's worth noting that with appropriate grinding and equal weight, lightly roasted coffee grounds will have slightly less volume than dark roasted grounds. So you'll need to judge this yourself – as long as the coffee grounds stay below the horizontal line of the portafilter basket, you're good to go! Even if it exceeds the recommended capacity of the basket, it's not a problem~

Adjusting the Grind

If your grinder was previously set for dark roasted coffee beans, then when you switch to lightly roasted beans, you'll typically need to adjust the grind 3-5 settings finer. This increases the surface area of the coffee grounds and improves extraction efficiency. Otherwise, relying on the previous grind setting will result in lower extraction efficiency and larger gaps between particles, causing hot water to gush through and easily leading to under-extraction. For example↓

Once your extraction time reaches the target range, you can then taste the coffee to experience its overall flavor. If there are problems with the taste, you'll need to make corresponding adjustments.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Coffee is Excessively Sour with No Aftertaste

The most common negative problem when extracting lightly roasted coffee with an espresso machine is: the acidity is too stimulating, with almost no aftertaste. This situation indicates under-extraction! The lack of sweet and bitter substances causes the acidity to be amplified, creating this unpleasant sour sensation. In this case, we can first observe the flow rate of the coffee!

Generally, normal espresso should start flowing after 7-8 seconds. If coffee begins being pressed out at 4-5 seconds, then this problem is caused by insufficient extraction efficiency due to overly coarse grinding! We can solve this by adjusting the grind finer! If the flow rate is normal, it's likely that too few substances are being extracted. In this case, we can appropriately extend the extraction by increasing the liquid output by about 5-10ml (even if this exceeds the formula, it's fine). This allows for full extraction of the coffee's flavor compounds, achieving a balance between acidity, sweetness, and bitterness, making the coffee more enjoyable.

Coffee Tastes Excessively Bitter and Burnt

Another common problem is over-extraction, where the coffee develops a noticeably burnt and bitter taste. The simplest solution is to reduce the extraction amount by decreasing the coffee liquid output by 2-4ml to avoid over-extraction. However, sometimes this method might not be very effective. Even though you've made adjustments, the coffee is still very bitter. This situation indicates over-extraction caused by grinding too fine.

We can check for this problem by dividing one shot of espresso into three parts! For example, if we've extracted 40ml of coffee, we can use three cups to catch about 13ml each during extraction to see if all three cups have an unpleasant bitterness. If they do, then the grind needs to be adjusted~ If not, simply reducing the extraction amount will solve the problem~

Thin or Absent Crema

Regardless of the roast degree of coffee beans, as long as they're fresh, they will produce some crema when "pressed" through the machine. However, if the crema is too thin, it's likely that the grind isn't fine enough, resulting in lower extraction efficiency that cannot release and press out the carbon dioxide in one smooth flow.

Conclusion

Above are the details of SOE preparation. Looking at the overall process, you'll find that it's not significantly different from extracting traditional dark roast espresso! As long as we understand the principles of extraction and the causes of undesirable flavors, we can easily solve problems and extract delicious SOE!

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