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SCOTTIE CALLAGHAN DOSING TOOLS
An explanation by Scottie
If you are reading this you may be interested in purchasing, or seen someone using some plastic dosing tools when making coffee that have my name on it. Originally I developed them for myself just to solve a problem or more importantly to help me find a solution to that problem, the problem being control and consistency when dosing when grinding to order. But I have found increasing interest in them and people are always asking me what are they for? Or how do they work? And more and more people are buying them of me and more importantly I have noticed some forums with photos of them and people giving inaccurate explanations of them. So here I sit to punch out an explanation of my dosing tools, I do hope you find this helpful.
Quite simply my dosing tools are designed to help you put the right amount of ground coffee into your filter basket, in your group handle when grinding on demand when making espresso.
A complete set of my tools comprises of forty pieces of plastic numbered 1 through 40, number 1 is flat, number 2 has a very slight curve, number 3 has more of a curve than 2 but still slight, each piece has an increase in the curve from the previous up to number 40 which has quite an exaggerated curve. Most people buy this standard set but some baristas have ordered different things like 1 through 40 with .5 increments so 80 pieces in all.
They are also now available in one of double sided pieces (different sizes for different machines) designed for the different machines on the market and a 15 piece set and a 3 piece set.
How to use Scottie Callaghan Dosing Tools
Putting the right amount of ground coffee into your filter basket makes a big difference to your espresso this is called DOSING, my tools are designed to make dosing easier. To understand how they work you need to understand Grinding on demand and collapsing.
Grinding on Demand (grinding fresh or grinding to order) is self explanatory it simply means that when making espresso coffee you do just that: - Grind to order, so practically speaking when you are Grinding on Demand there is no ground coffee in your grinder unless you are in the middle of making a coffee. And the best cafes around town will throw away any ground coffee that has been ground 3 minutes or longer ago, the reason for Grinding to Order or on Demand is that once you grind coffee it will go stale within 3 minutes – 20 minutes, your coffee will no doubt be stale if it was ground 20 minutes ago.
Collapsing is the term baristas have come up with for knocking the group handle on something, some baristas knock the group handle on the bench some baristas knock the group handle on the grinder falks etc. The reason baristas collapse is that doing so when dosing sinks the ground coffee into the filter basket and if you collapse enough the filter basket will be as full as you can get it (4 – 6 collapses is usually enough), if you then sweep off the same amount of coffee (back into the dosing chamber) every time you will have a consistent dose.
This is where my dosing tools come into the equation, they are curved because you usually need to sweep coffee out of the basket or with a curved object or a bent finger, my dosing tools are designed to be consistent (the same curve takes out the same amount every time) and the different numbers are designed because you need to sweep out a different amount depending on the size of the filter basket and the height of the shower screen.
The most practical application of my dosing tools is for people who want to grind on demand and they only want one piece of plastic i.e. the one that is right for their machine. On a Wega for instance dosing tools number 15 – 20 would be appropriate, on a La Marzocco number 25 would be appropriate a different number will be appropriate for every machine. Lets say you have a café and you have a Wega, and you train your staff to leave the grinder dosing chamber empty and when there is a coffee to make you, turn the grinder on and keep clicking/filling the filter basket until there is a mound of ground coffee on top of the basket, then collapse the group handle on the bench 4 times, and then sweep the coffee off the top of the filter basket with your dosing tool (back into the dosing chamber) which in this case is number 15. This way you can grind on demand with consistency.
At this point you will encounter 2 problems mess/waste and speed, smaller cheaper flat blade grinders quite simply just don’t cut it if you want to Grind on Demand they are slow and messy. If you want to Grind on Demand in your café you need to invest in a grinder like the BNZ Connical, this grinder is in my opinion to date the best grinder to use for speed and low to no waste, another good grinder is the Mazzer Robur, there is most likely a few other useful grinders to achieve consistent correct dosing with speed and low waste when grinding on demand but most grinders on the market are not designed for this nor are they practical if you want to Grind on Demand.
A Definition
In a nutshell I developed them to give the user flexibility, control and/or a reference point when dosing with fresh coffee and grinding fresh or to order, for baristas who have found the need to adjust their dose depending on the variables they want to control.
How I Use My Tools
When I was learning how to pour espresso I was taught to learn how to dose consistently and the importance of grind particle distribution at the same time. Doing this then gives you the control to be able to adjust the grind to achieve what has been perceived as a good pour (espresso/espresso extraction). This learning experience took place about five years ago and since then I have experimented a lot and come up with interesting results.
I have discovered through much trial and error that it is impossible to say espresso should look and taste any particular way. In other words some people say the parameters of espresso are: - a single espresso should be poured from 7 grams of coffee plus or minus a gram and when the grind setting (grind particle size, courser or finer) is right combined with the 7 grams you should get 30mls of liquid (espresso) including crema in 30 seconds plus or minus 5 seconds, and the brewing temperature should be in between 92°C and 96°C at a pump pressure of 9 bars. I do not agree with this because of the drastic nature of coffees varying substances and its volatility. On a practical level if you were to take a Sumatran single origin Arabica Pacama and roast it light and then take an Ethiopian Arabica Bourbon grown with different soil and different climate and roast it darker than the Sumatran and say both coffees should be brewed under the same strict parameters you will not get the best out of both coffees. Some people will say that this only applies to single origins and not to a true espresso blend, but in fact this explanation could not be more relevant to all and every espresso blend because if you take this same explanation and apply it to the cornucopia of different blends (percentage of single origins in the blend and the thousands of different single origins used in blends), roast profiles, roasters, roast colours, espresso machines, grinders etc etc and still say that espresso should sit in these same parameters you will not get the best out of the coffee you are working with. The question I ask you is, what if great French chefs never experimented and broke the rules, or what if wine which coffee is so often compared to was never taken outside of the boundaries in which people thought it should stay in thousands of years ago?
My point can be made quite simply if you will undertake a simple experiment, make four espresso with the same coffee, with different dose but the same extraction speed/time and volume. So make the first with say 22gms in a double, the second with 18, and the third with 14 and the last with 12. Adjust the grind for each so you achieve the same amount of liquid in the same time frame and taste the results trying to be as objective as you can in the tasting process, if you can do it blind with tasters in a separate room to the barista. It is hard to measure between each with speed and adjust the grind as you go this is why I came up with my dosing tools. What you will find is that somewhere in this experiment there is a dose and grind setting that is best for that coffee on that machine, but use a different coffee on the same machine and you will need to start again to find a dose and grind setting that is best for that coffee. Likewise if you where to take the same coffee and pour an espresso on a different machine you will find that the dose and grind setting will be different on a different machine.
I have discovered that the same experiments can be done with pour speed and volume, lets say you have coffee A and coffee B, coffee A might taste best dosing 14 grams in a double achieving 20 mls in 20 seconds. While coffee B might taste best dosing 22 grams achieving 15 mls in 45 seconds.
I could document substantially more info on this maybe I will one day, these are observations that I have made over the last few years, I have been fortunate enough to have people around who have educated palates to taste what I bring them to taste, they have not seen how I poured the espresso and I do not tell them until after they taste and they have often been surprised at what I tell them they are tasting after they have tasted.
An Observation
What I have noticed is a lot of barista’s out their using different devises to sweep with, rulers, barman’s blade, butter knife, but usually when I see this they don’t seem to understand the importance of consistent dosing.
A Brief Description
Below I will go into more depth with my explanation of my tools, but first up I will give an explanation of their most practical application in the broader market. And that is the control they give you when grinding fresh (that is assuming you already understand the importance of grinding fresh relating to the coffee’s accelerated degassing once ground, if you need to understand the importance of this just dial in your grinder, pre grind 50 grams of coffee sit it aside for 20 mins then taste the two side by side, one espresso from coffee ground 20 mins ago and one espresso from coffee ground to order)
In a nutshell you need to be able to dose consistently in order to asses the grind, to dose consistently when grinding to order create a consistent method for each step as you will see below and then sweep with a designated number, say SCDT (Scottie Callaghan Dosing Tool) #10. So long as each step in your process is consistent and you don’t have a technically challenged machine you should be seeing consistency from shot to shot, the main purpose of this is to give you control when adjusting the grind. That is if you are trying to adjust the grind while dosing inconsistently you will have no more luck than a blind man in a dark room because you have no benchmark. Begin with achieving a consistent dose before adjusting the grind.
For dummies and objective consistency in cafes that have a number of untrained people on the machine on any given day, find the best number that suits your machine and achieves a reasonably dry cake. Keep this one next to the grinder and teach/create a consistent dosing method that everyone has to use.
On Tamping
It seems a lot of people confuse how hard they tamp with dosing (how much coffee they put into the filter basket) inconsistencies, I do not think how hard you tamp plays as much a part in the extraction as how much coffee is in the basket. I do think you need to tamp firmly but I will say that I think in most cases when people think the extraction is different than the previous because of how hard you have tamped would in 90 percent of the cases have confused this with the dose and in actual fact the extraction is different because they are not in control of their dosing.
A More In-Depth Discussion
So what goes on in my head to come up with such a thing? I guess the best way to answer this is to explain a bit about my experiments over the last six years, they are many and varied but come from a pursuit to understand this strange roasted seed we call coffee. My experiments started six years ago with trying to achieve consistency by using the dosing chambers on a grinder, measured on a volumetric machine with a stopwatch only to endless frustration. So this followed with training myself to grind fresh and sweep with my finger, from here I have experimented with and without a stopwatch, with different tampers, the old up dosing technique, under dosing, with coffee just out of the cooling tray so it hasn’t had a chance to begin degassing, with nitrogen, with just vacuum sealing and no nitrogen. Now I could and hopefully will one day go into more depth on all the experiments I have conducted since then, involving such things as varying roast profiles with the same single origin, different packaging with these same roasts and tasting on varying date ranges, experimenting with different dosing techniques on different machines with different grinders etc and all this while on my own in a room and my equipment at least one day a week every week for the last six years, on top of working as a barista/barista trainer.
So the point of this article is not to go into all that, but to explain that I have come to appreciate how incredibly different every coffee needs to be ground and dosed to get the best out of it. The more you learn about coffee the more you come to understand how varying and inconsistent the path from farm to cup is. And as a result the barista needs to be in control of the most minute details if she/he is to get the most out of the coffee they are working with, so this is why I developed my tools - to give me and now you control when trying to find the sweet spot with any given coffee on any machine.
My method when I am using the Scottie Callaghan Dosing Tool is to make every move consistent so that when you come to sweeping with your choice of number it will be consistent, i.e. if you were to dose two separate porter filters and on the first collapse once and the second collapse four times and sweep with SCDT #5 both times. Even though you are using the same number both times the latter would have more coffee than the former because of the inconsistent collapsing.
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