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Decent DE1 Howto

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martyvona edited this page Jun 3, 2022 · 17 revisions

As I've been learning more about espresso and working with the Decent DE1, I have begun to realize that there isn't just one kind of thing I want to do. Really there are at least 4 different use cases for me:

I'm not saying these are the only possible use cases. For example, you might be interested in turbo shots, long shots, etc. But for me, at least right now, these seem to be the things I want my coffee setup to be able to do. (By the way, though I'm writing in the first-person here, I'm actually at least partly talking more broadly about both what I personally want to do with the DE1 as well as what I want other people in the house to be able to do with it.)

This is a key realization because coffee in general, and the DE1 in particular, is the kind of thing where there are so many things to explore and knobs to turn that it's easy to go down rabbit holes to the point of anxiety. At least for me. I suppose this is a particularly slippery slope for espresso—compared to say cocktails—because

  1. it's a stimulant so one only gets so many tastes before a significant break is required, and anxiety can rise with one's level of caffeination (but in a cocktail alcohol is of course a natural sedative)
  2. mistakes can result in wasted "sink" shots which raise anxiety because good coffee beans are expensive, sometimes difficult to procure, and are produced with significant effort and use of resources (but I have never made an un-drinkable cocktail)
  3. there is enough variability in coffee beans, grinding, puck prep, tamping, etc that even when you think you're doing everything the same the results can still sometimes be frustratingly inconsistent (but as long as I do basic volumetric measurement with cocktails I'm never unhappy with the results).

It took me some time to figure this out (I mean, like maybe a week). There is a lot of information on espresso and the DE1 out there now. But most of it seems to be lower level than this. A lot of it is in the form of forum posts and youtube videos, though there are a smattering of blog posts, news articles, and the wiki-like Decent "Manual". These all certainly have their value. But more often than not I find that I'm watching a video (or, less commonly, reading something) that kind of starts with an assumed premise that I'm there to learn about a specific technique or use-case.

Another major factor is that the DE1 is capable of all these different use-cases (and many more). This is quite different for someone like me that has been making espresso and lattes with a Rancilio Silvia for the last dozen or so years. Yes, with care, it's possible to get a traditional machine to do various things. But my experience was that it was simply challenging enough to get espresso (and steamed milk) that simply met the threshold of drinkable, that was really the only pertinent goal and workflow. Dial in the grind and otherwise hone a best-practice workflow and try to repeat that consistently every time. Now, I knew that the DE1 was very flexible (as John Buckman says, it was partly intended to be a coffee "Turing Machine", aka a universal machine that could be programmed to behave in a wide variety of ways), and that's part of why I ultimately chose it over other machines. I think I had a vague notion that there'd be perhaps two workflows I'd want to figure out—lattes and espressos. But I kind of forgot even that in the flurry of excitement as I started to use the machine. So here I am not only remembering that, but also noticing that the "espresso" case really needed to be further broken down.

A Nice Latte

Suitable level of pre-caffeination: none; Suitable for Normal People: yes, if grind is already reasonably dialed in.

Old School Thick Espresso

Suitable level of pre-caffeination: moderate to high; Suitable for normal people: no.

https://www.home-barista.com/espresso-machines/is-body-espresso-on-de1-thinner-t59159-40.html#p659832 https://www.home-barista.com/marketplace/decent-espresso-news-t66649-890.html#p839274 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYFb43tEylk

Modern Tasty Espresso

Suitable level of pre-caffeination: low to moderate; Suitable for normal people: no.

https://www.home-barista.com/espresso-machines/de1-extraction-recipes-t57755.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYFb43tEylk

Emulating Other Machines

Suitable level of pre-caffeination: high; Suitable for normal people: no. https://www.reddit.com/r/espresso/comments/s7vkr0/comment/htdndhk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

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