I first showcased my method of dosing to the world at the inaugural World Barista Championship (WBC) in Monte Carlo back in 2000. Colloquially dubbed “The Sabados Method of Overdosing,” it was, as it is now, greatly misunderstood.

Although met with derision by my industry peers at the time, a number of those same folks have admitted to adopting this method of dosing after having tasted a definitively better flavor out of their very own coffee. And when Australian Paul Bassett won the 2003 WBC using this method, I knew it was here to stay. Contrary to popular opinion, my method of dosing does not require deeper filter baskets to the conventional ones used in most cafés, nor does it require more grams of coffee. It is a processing style, where the conditions set up assist in the better extraction of the coffee.

In keeping with the saying “many roads lead to Rome,” this dosing procedure is a viable method for extracting coffee consistently in a “pressure” environment, where many human inconsistencies are leveled out by the process itself.

Like anything to do with coffee, there is a proviso. This method is better suited to enhancing the aroma, taste and complexity of what I call “threedimensional” coffee blends rather than “two-dimensional” ones. A 3D blend has a number of degrees of roast color from bean skin to core, whereas 2D blends have very little color spread. The latter are invariably hypersensitive to water pressure and temperature, and are not suited to this method of extraction.

Early Dosing Considerations

Back in the early ’90s, there were virtually no specialty coffee roasters of any note, and the only suppliers to cafés happened to be the big companies selling commodity coffees which were compromised by the grade and by the style of roast.

During those years in Australia, the café market was experiencing an explosive growth of espresso, and today the country’s café market is 100-percent espresso based. In that great influx, so many people were rushing to open up cafés that very few took the time to fully understand the product. Further, espresso training was hardly considered an important element in getting a jump on competitors.

Only when a market reaches its maturation, or saturation, stage do the purveyors of any product seek ways, such as training, to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This progression is a common model used by market projectionists. I reasoned that if I was to be noticed with my café, I would have to behave as if the market was already in its mature phase.

But in order to differentiate myself, I had to take an ordinary, massproduced coffee product and turn it into something special for the customer. I realized that this required thinking outside of the box since it was obvious the teachings of the coffee company representatives at the time were inadequate. That is to say, they were not difficult to understand since they were salespeople, but they were not experts in teaching cafés how to be highly profitable. Every time they came to see me, they claimed that espresso had to measure out eight grams per shot or 16 grams per double dose. What I could never reconcile was that when they demonstrated how espresso had to be made, it tasted average at best. Often it was downright bloody awful!

I reasoned that if this was the level of “quality” that coffee company representatives could achieve, I could not hold out much hope that I would outperform the average operator. Rather, if I followed their advice, I, too, would simply become average and nothing more, and that would not work for either my business or myself.

Back then, there were no places a person could go to for cutting-edge espresso knowledge, and it was clear that I had to rely on my own research and development, and power of deduction. Usually any change is immediately answered by the market in terms of either increased or decreased sales. It was nothing different with me, and with what I discovered, thankfully, resulted in a clear and rapid growth in sales.

Starting From Scratch

My first step was simple: what I had to do was abolish any preconceivednotions of how espresso coffee should be extracted. The one thing I kept hearing from the coffee company representatives was that the first step to making an espresso shot was to measure seven to eight grams of coffee into a single portafilter. Since this was presented to me as the first rule, it was also the first rule I had to reevaluate. I reasoned that there was no practical way of measuring out seven to eight grams in a working environment such as one where 50–60 kilos (110–132 pounds) of espresso coffee was processed in a five-day week, and by several operators.

Furthermore, I noticed that the extraction through a double portafilter was thicker, fuller and tastier than that which passed through a single portafilter. Apart from the elements of physics and design which assisted in the better extraction, I observed that the density of the coffee cake acted as a better friction device to the water passing through it under pressure. I asked myself whether this could be key to better extraction.

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