How we dial in a new single origin

The first morning with a new lot

Start with the bag, not the machine

A new lot lands on a Tuesday and sits for a week before it touches the grinder. Coffee needs time to settle after roasting, and pulling it too early gives you a thin, gassy shot that tells you nothing about the farm.

When we do open the bag, the first thing we do is smell it, break the crust in a cupping bowl and taste it as filter. Espresso exaggerates everything, so we want an honest baseline first.

Three numbers, changed one at a time

Dose, yield, time

We hold the dose steady, move the grind in small steps and watch where the shot lands. Chasing two variables at once is the fastest way to spend a morning learning nothing at all.

Once the shot tastes sweet on its own, we pull it again with milk. A coffee that sings black can disappear entirely under six ounces of steamed milk, and most of our guests order it that way.

Water is half the cup

Our filtration is checked every Friday. Hard water flattens the fruit in a lighter roast and makes a chocolatey one taste dusty, so it is the first thing we look at when a familiar coffee suddenly tastes wrong.

Writing it on the board

When the recipe holds for three days in a row, the lot goes up on the board with the farm, the altitude and two tasting notes. No poetry, no adjective salad: just enough for you to decide whether it sounds like your kind of morning.