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Salami Shot Taster
One shot, five cups. Swap the cup every 6 seconds and you taste extraction in order — sour and salty first, sweet in the middle, thin and bitter at the end. It's the single fastest lesson in espresso, and it costs you one shot.
1Line up 5 cups
Use your normal dose and recipe — don't change anything. Line up 5 small cups in order. You'll slide the next cup under the spouts each time this timer says SWAP. Tasting order matters, so number them if you need to.
Target total yield: ~36g (1:2) — about ~7g per cup. If a cup swap is late by a second, don't stress it — the lesson survives.
2Pull the shot, swap on the beep
Hit start the same moment you start the pump.
?What you're actually learning
🍋 Acids extract first
Cup 1 is almost pure front-end: sour, salty, concentrated. A whole shot that tastes like Cup 1 was under-extracted — grind finer or run it longer.
🍯 Sweetness lives in the middle
Cups 2–3 carry the sugars. A balanced shot is mostly this middle, framed by a little of Cup 1's brightness.
🪵 Bitter compounds extract last
Cup 5 is thin and harsh on purpose — that's the tail you cut off by stopping the shot on time. A whole shot that tastes like Cup 5 ran too long or too fine.
?Salami shot FAQ
Do I need 5 espresso cups?
No — shot glasses, ramekins, even tablespoons lined up on a tray work. Small is better: each cup only gets about 7g.
My Cup 3 wasn't the sweetest — what does that mean?
If sweetness peaked in Cup 2, your shot extracted fast (try finer). If it only arrived in Cup 4, it extracted slow (try coarser, or check your dose isn't too high). The verdict above reads your exact pattern.
Can I stir the cups back together?
Yes — after tasting, mix them and you'll get your original shot back. Nothing wasted except a little temperature.
How often should I do this?
Once per new bag of beans is plenty. It's a calibration exercise, not a daily ritual.
What if every cup tastes the same?
That usually means a very fast, channeled shot — water found one path and everything extracted at once. Work on puck prep (WDT, level, straight tamp) and run it again.