the long black

tom

A large amount of long blacks are now made fropm water with the addition of espresso (or doppios) rather than the longer extraction from the machine. It's clear to me why since you can follow the espresso shot and taste/smell some nasty flvours beghind it, but why are manufactures continuing this option as a preset? You're confusing a lot of coffee makers who are relatively new to the industry! Any manufactures out there? Same story with the production of those scary looking 2 litre jugs!

Unknown

i remember Paul Bassett on Living Coffee saying the perfect long black = a double ristretto into a cup of just below boiling hot water. surely leaving it to extract the entire cup worth would burn the coffee badly! very weird that machines keep that function.

Reschsmooth

Perhaps they are using a quadruple 36 gram basket?  ;D

FreshCoffee2

Hi fellas, this is a very / very good question, and one that comes up from time to time with participants during coffee classes. In my honest opinion espresso machine manufacturers are NOT giving you the option (on their touchpads) of doing a continuous pour long black in a cappuccino size cup at all.... The icons on the touchpad are NOT pictures of espresso cups and cappuccino cups, they are all icons of espresso (demitasse) cups! To understand, you first need to go back to basics. Where was the esp machine concept thought up...Italy. What do they drink in Italy....basically, only espresso, which to them, is just a "regular coffee". The espresso is served in a demitasse, not a cappuccino cup. If they only drink espresso in demitasse size cups in Italy where the machines are designed and built, then it would never occur to them that anyone would drink a black coffee in a cappuccino size cup. The cappuccino cup is for cappuccino, which is not a cup full of

tom

Thanks for the response. Agree about those pictures and it's great to see cafes that can program their machines to suit thier cup sizes/tastes and market. The issue lies with many coffee companies not understnading this issue and continuing to calibrate machines using a button as a long black (and in many cases calibrating too much water for an espresso preset). If a barista has a good understanding of grind, dose and tamp then calibrating is straight forward and should be a useful tool. It's more the poor cafes/restaurants that have less understanding and/or training that suffer and rely on the technicians that have set the machines for them (especially if they do not own the machine). Cheers