Espresso Bean Grind Consistency

Co-Oping BDS: Progressive Except Palestine - OpEd

By Kiera Feldman

Once, in the bulk goods aisle of the Park Slope Food Coop, a wild-haired woman stood next to me and scrutinized the coffee-grinder settings. ‘I’m using it for an enema,’ she explained. ‘It needs to be very fine.’ I suggested the espresso grind.

This is exactly the kind of shopping experience I hoped for when I joined the Park Slope Food Coop in the fall of 2009: a realization of the eternal promise of New York, home of the strange. (That and crazycheap organic food.) Founded in 1973, the Coop is a Brooklyn institution with enough character to have spawned its own genre of trend piece. Some examples: the Coop has Byzantine rules and work requirements (debatable); the Coop has nannies covering their employers’ shifts (dubious); and, most recently, the Coop is becoming a hotbed of anti-Semitism (downright wrong).

The New York Observer has contributed the latest addition to the genre, with a smug piece earlier this month devoted to Coop members’ efforts to initiate a boycott of Israeli products and divest from whatever Israeli holdings the Coop might have. At the historically progressive Coop, the Observer procured a chorus of sources declaring the campaign anti- Semitic and intolerable in “the heart of Chaimtown,” as one man put it, referring to Park Slope’s high Jewish population. For the full sensationalist effect, Alan Dershowitz—the de facto representative of the hawkish Israel-right-or-wrong Jewish establishment—denounced the campaign’s “bigotry” and threatened to shut the joint down, an ambitious goal for a Cambridge, Massachusetts, resident who is not a member of the democratically-governed Coop.

The Coop campaign is part of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a global movement launched with a 2005 call by 170 Palestinian civil-society groups. Shorthand demands: end the occupation of the Palestinian Territories; end the legal discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and allow the 700,000 Palestinians expelled in the 1948 creation of the state to return—along with their descendants—to what is now Israel. Until the country complies with international law, the movement vows economic and cultural boycotts, institutional divestments, and governmental sanctions of Israel. Perhaps the strongest indicator of BDS’s power is the Boycott Law passed in the Knesset in July, making it illegal for groups like Boycott from Within to advocate BDS in Israel, a state that bills itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East.

Articles 20VN | Perfect Espresso | perfect espresso | coffee ...

The perfect espresso can be easy to achieve if you know how. Many modern coffee houses have in-house training programs for all of their staff - these coffee servers are known as a Barista, which roughly translates as "bar person", or more specifically someone who is trained in the art of making great coffee.

The espresso forms an integral part of most drinks on a coffee house menu, and therefore it is imperative that the espresso be perfectly poured.

The perfect espresso starts with sourcing the best flavour beans. Italian beans are recognised as being the best, with a mix of Arabica and Robusta beans. Coffee is grown in many different regions of the world and various flavours can be achieved by different beans. Once the desired beans have been located the following factors are important in creating the best tasting espresso.

The grind
The coffee should be ground to a consistency that is neither too fine nor too coarse. Grinds that are too fine will cause the coffee to be over extracted when poured and result in a bitter/ burnt taste. Coffee beans that are grind too coarse will make the coffee weak tasting.

The coffee weight
The weight of the ground coffee for a single espresso should be 7 grams with a margin of usually 1 gram either way. A commercial grinder can be adjusted to ensure that the correct measure of coffee is dispensed with each pull. Even if the grinds are correct, an inaccurate measure of coffee will result in an incorrect pour.

The pour time
Having achieved correct coffee grind consistency and measure of 7 grams, the coffee should be extracted for 20 seconds from an espresso machine. This pour time in some coffee houses has a margin of between 20 seconds to 30 seconds, however 20 seconds is the ideal pour time for correct tasting espresso. Similarly to the grind consistency, a long pour can result in the coffee being burnt and bitter tasting. A quick pour is under extracting the coffee taste. The pour of the coffee to 20 seconds should achieve a 30ml pour of espresso.

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