You may be surprised to learn that we don't allow ourselves the luxury of just drinking what we would choose at home.  Instead we maintain the discipline of rotating around our coffees to ensure we are evaluating them on different days, with or without food, different times of day, and so on.

Over the last couple of weeks I've just stuck with our monsooned Malabar as it is a unique coffee and I really wondered if we were getting the best out of it.  I was drinking it at a friend's place sunday evening before last and he made the comment that it produces such a lot of crema, much like a robusta.  This got me thinking; that was the problem, there was too much crema, to the point where the taste of the crema was over-whelming the taste of the underlying coffee.

So I've spent some time at home playing with it.  My conclusion is to recommend a dose per shot of 6.5g to 7.0g (max), and obviously adjust your grind slightly finer to compensate and keep your extraction time in the 22 to 25 second range (excluding any pre-infusion time).  We are also going to roast it fractionally darker (plus 2 degrees fahrenheit).  By reducing the amount of coffee we can bring the depth of the crema down to more acceptable levels, which brings the taste back into balance.

Having noted the exceptional crema produced for an arabican coffee the thought has occurred to me that maybe if we blend this monsooned malabar that will assist in preserving the crema of our single origin 100% arabica roasts as they age, without the need to introduce any robusta!  If you are a roaster who has already tried this I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.  So that's something else we need to try when time permits.

http://londiniumespresso.com/products/indian-malabar-monsooned-fresh-roasted-coffee