Kens Espresso Fueled Ramblings

A page about how to make good espresso is a pretty tall order, this page will teach you the basics, but please know that pulling amazing shots consistantly is a long journey, some say a neverending journey.

First of all, and I don’t mean to say this to scare anyone of because I’d love to see more people making awesome espresso at home and not buy overly expensive chain shop swill from push button teenagers that doesn’t give a crap. But if you are not willing to learn some bacis skills and just want something easy and fast, push a button and go type of thing, then espresso is NOT for you, don’t even try. Get yourself a good presspot or stovetop coffee maker instead, much easier and still makes wonderful coffee. Espresso can’t be automated, no way. There’s just to many variables to automate and almost all of them requires human reasoning, not something that can be automated.

Stil here? Ready? Good let’s get started.

• The gear needed for making espresso

Repeat this until it sinks in: The espresso machine is an excessory to the grinder.

The first thing you need to look into getting is the absolute best grinder you can afford. The words most expensive espresso machine in combination with a bad grinder will make worse espresso than the best grinder in combination with a cheap espresso machine, The grinder is THE most important piece of equipment in your setup. Don’t try to skimp on the grinder to get a better machine, if you’r short on cash, buy the grinder first and make french press coffee while you save up for your espresso machine. If you buy a cheap grinder it WILL be upgraded later, trust me on this. I didn’t listen when I started and got a cheapo grinder. It sucked, choked on oily beans, couldn’t grind fine enough, sprayed coffee grinds all over the place because of static (Cheap grinders do this) and the grind was inconsistant so good shots was just not possible not matter what I tried. Waste of money.

Another problem with cheaper grinders is that they have slop in the adjustment mechanism. Let’s  say you have your current beans dialed in at 7 on the grinder scale. Now you switch to another bean, waste a couple shots getting the new bean dialed in at 9 because it was a little oilier and needed a courser grind. You switch back to the old beans again and put the grinder at 7. Because of the slop in the adjustment mechanism 7 no longer works and you have to waste a couple shots again to get it dialed in. This becomes highly annoying if you like me, switch between different blends depending on the time of day or just want to expiriment with different coffee beans.

The more expensive grinders will also have stepless grind adjustments. Most of the cheaper grinders have steps. Problem is that each step adds something like 5-8 seconds to the pour time, so what if the coffee you are using needs to be at 7.3 to be perfect? As beans age, even in as little as a week you need to add a couple of seconds to the pour time, but with steps you can’t. Depending on air humidity you also need to adjust your grind a couple seconds, with steps you can’t… se where this is going?

So what are the options for a good grinder for espresso?

Rancilio Rocky

This is the entry level grinder for many new home baristas. It is a great grinder, but not without its share of problems. It is a stepped grinder, you adjust in little increments. The problem is that these steps are not fine enough they add 5-8 seconds to the brew time for each step. That means if you realy want to fine tune the flow of espresso you need to adjust the dose of coffee or adjust how hard you tamp, and that is very hard to do consistantly. It clumps so you need to stirr the ground beans with a needle to get the clumps out. Still, this is an ok grinder if you can deal with these problems. If you are the type that wants perfection a grinder upgrade is on the horizon later on the line.

Mazzer Mini E

This is the bad boy on the block. It has stepless grind adjustment so you can adjust the grind to get a second less or more to your extraction time easily. It has large burrs so it’s fast, and a very consistant grind. It has 2 timers built in that you can tweak, you simply press the portafilter on a small button and it grinds for the time set. Press once and it uses timer #1, press twice and it uses timer #2, press and hold and it grinds until you let go, very nice feature. The burrs and motor is insulated in a floating setup to avoid static buildup. For home use get the dozerless version. To get an idea of just how good this grinder is I had a problem with donut extractions that no amount of strange distribution techniques, nutating tamps or offerings of small furry animals to the coffee gods could help. I get my Mazzer mini e and like magic the problem was gone, I couldn’t believe it.. all that time struggling and it was the damn grinder setting me back.

Mazzer Super Jolly

If you can find a used Super Jolly you are in business, slap on a set of new burrs and you have a grinder that will produce the most fluffy and clumpless grind you can get. It wil also last a lifetime for home use as it’s made for all day long heavy coffee shop use.  It’s xbox huge, so better get it approved by the wife before hauling it into the kitchen

Doser or Doserless Grinder?

There’s lots of debate about this topic. The advantage of a doser is that you can contain the mess a bit and you can twack the doser handle to fluff up the grind and prevent clumping. The disadvantage is that most if not all dosers will retain a bit of coffee which will go stale and the doser will not sweep the bottom clean enough. You can modify most dosers to get them to sweep cleanly. Since most home baristas will make one of two shots a doserless grinder is probably the better choice. Please note that doserless grinders tends to clump more so do your research before buying a grinder, try it out if at all possible.

Espresso Machines

There are so many great machines to chose from, a good beginner machine is said to be the Rancilo Silvia, I don’t know if I agree because it’s very fussy about temperature and needs lots of experimentation to get good shots and on top of being totally new you have a lot of other variables you need to get just right before you make something drinkable. If you can afford it, I’d suggest getting any machine with a HX (Heat Exchanger) and E61 grouphead. The E61 grouphead is a standard and they are huge copper monstrosities that are very temperature stable. The E61 design also has what’s called presinfusion, the water will gently flow into the grouphead, saturate the coffee and the pressure will be ramped up to brew pressure slowly. An E61 grouphead will get you a temperature stable machine that will not require much messing around with. The next step up is a dual boiler machine instead of HX, but still with the E61 grouphead. Dual boilers are even easier to use as you don’t have to control the correct brew temperature with cooling flushes. The HX machines allows you to steam and pull a shot a the same time. They do this by having a boiler where there’s a long copper tube inside where the brew water flows. The boiler is under high pressure and that allows the water inside to reach very high temperatures like a pressure cooker so you get high steaming pressure. When the water hits the coffee in the brewhead, the water is the correct temperature because of the time it took to flow through the copper tube inside the much hotter steaming water. The downside to this design is that when left for a while without brewing, the water in the copper tube will be overheated because it’s not flowing but just sitting there, and you need to flush some water to get the temperature down or you will get a bitter shot. The dual boilers don’t have this problem as they have one boiler for steaming and another for brewing.

Other nice features are steaming and brew pressure gauges. These will allow you to see if the pressure is right. The boiler pressure gauge shows you roughly the temperature of the water, and the brew pressure gauge allows you to see if your grind is in the ballpark. Brew pressure should be around 9 and not lower than 8.5. If the brew pressure is low it means your grind is to course and the water can’t build enough pressure flowing though the puck. If the  brew pressure is to high it means you’r grind is to fine. Be aware that most brew pressure gauges does not measure the pressure in the brewhead but somewhere inside the machine so they will show a little higher pressure than in the brewhead. You can rent a scace termofilter device if you wan’t to know the exact brewpressure in the brewhead.

Better machines will also allow you to adjust the Over pressure valve and boiler pressure. The over pressure walve is a safeguard, so the pressure can’t go higher than whatever it is set for. When the pressure gets higher than allowed the over pressure valve will open and the water will flow back into the water tank.

Lastly, look for machines with what’s called a 3 way solenoid valve. Without getting to technical, the 3 way solenoid valve allows you to do what is called a backflush to clean the internals of the machine with a cleaning solution without saturating the whole machine in cleaning solution.

Stay far away from brands such as Krups, Nespresso  and its ilk. They are horribly bad machines, most are not even real espresso machines even though they claim to be. Many use steam instead of a pump and can’t make espresso, only real bad black sludge that will taste horrible. They have anemic steaming pressure and many try to make up for it by having an auto-frother that will just spit out the disgusting sludge of stiff sea foam that’s useless for anything. Also make sure you never get a machine with a pressurised filter, these machines have been invented by marketing types because most people will buy stale old supermarket coffee that can’t produce crema, so in order yo make the machine look better, it blows air into the coffee to make fake crema, yuck.

Superauto machines can’t make good espresso you will just pay redicoulous prices for a sub-par built in grinder and a sup-par espresso machine that overheats the water and makes consistantly bad extractions that you can’t fix because you know.. it’s automatic, more like craptomatic. Pod machines can’t make good espresso either, coffee needs to be fresh, pods are not fresh, ever. Basically anything you can buy in a department store, big chain store, supermarket etc.. is crap which you should stay far away from if you want to enjoy good espresso and not waste your money. Remember, you get what you pay for, espresso machines under 250-300$ won’t be any good.

To be sure you won’t get taken for a ride by some sleazebag salesperson, never buy from shops that doesn’t specialize in espresso equipment, if you see any superauto or nesspresso machines in there, leave, that store doesnt have the best interest in thier customers, otherwize they wouldn’t sell machines that made garbage.

What else to you need?

A good tamper. Most machines for some reason come with a plastic tamper that doesn’t even fit in the filter basket, the first thing you do is throw it away, grab the portafilter and the basket (The handle thingy) and go to your nearest espresso shop and have them find you a good tamper that fits the basket perfectly. While you are there, get a measuring shotglass and a 0.6 liter milk pitcher so you can steam milk for lattes and cappas. If you have some cash to spare get a clicking tamping mat. Click mats are designed to click once you have pressed down on the tamper with 30 pounds of pressure, a great learning tool.

Are we ready to start brewing yet?

Not quite. The last and very important thing is getting our hands on some freshly roasted coffee. Coffee must be roasted less than 14 days ago or it will produce little or no crema, that delicuous foam you see on a good shot. Notice I wrote roasted less than 14 days ago, not packaged, BIG difference. You will not be able to get freshly roasted coffee at the local supermarkets, sorry.  Find a good local roaster and make sure there is a roasting date on the coffee. If you get a packet of coffee and you don’t see a little valve on it it’s not freshly roasted. The reason for this is that freshly roasted coffee gives of CO2, lot’s of CO2. A kilo of coffee can give off as much as 12 liters of CO2, imagine what would happen if you packed this coffee with no way for the CO2 to escape… POFFF! What does this tell you? It tells you that the coffee you buy in supermarket has been pre-staled in order to be packed, then it probably sits a month of so before being shipped, then probably a couple weeks before someone buys it, talk about a rip-off. And you can’t buy pre-ground coffee either. Every machine and coffee needs different levels of grind, and what’s worse is that when coffee has been grinded, the surface area is huge and it will be stale in less than 1 day tops, with the lid of it will be stale in about an hour, but you have a great grinder so you will grind your own, so that’s no problem right? Right?

All supermarket coffee are months old, useless waste of money. Seriously.. 90% of posts on messageboards where people are having trouble with getting crema and the water just gushing though the beans no matter how fine they gind them, is because of stale old beans. If you have fresh roasted coffee beans you’d have to TRY not to get crema or be doing something realy bad…

Remember this: no crema? Your coffee is not freshly roasted.

Ok, let’s get brewing…

Lock the portafilter in and fire up your machine. The portafilter needs to be heated sitting in the grouphead or your temperature will drop when you pull the shot causing it to be sour. I wonder sometimes when I see people doing all kinds of weird distribution with the portafilter in thier hands, it should be burning hot, how do they not burn themselves? hmmm, anyway…

Grind, Dose, Distribution, Tamp

Before you read on.. When you are expirimenting with what I explain below, remember this:

ONLY CHANGE ONE THING AT A TIME

This is very important. When you change one variable, all the others change also. If you change 2 things, then you will have no idea what is going on as the 2 things you changed will affect eachother and everything else, and you will waste much more time and have lots of frustration.

Write everything down

I’m not kidding, you will try lots of things and you WILL forget half of it if you don’t keep a record. Design a paper with the things you want to keep track of and print out a bunch of em’, write everything you do down everytime you pull a shot. It’s amazing how looking at such records will show you trends that you would have never throught of.

Grind

What we are looking for with the grind is getting a consistancy that when coupled with 30 pound tamp + 9 bars pressure will give us 30ML (Single shot) or 60ML (Double shot) in 25-30 seconds. This is our starting point, it is not a rule, it is a guide to get us into the ballpark. It is quite simple, if the water flows so that you get more than 30ML or 60ML in about 25-30 seconds, then the grind is to course. If you get less than 30ML or 60ML in 25-30 seconds, then you’r grind is to fine. Adjust the grinder up or down, pull another shot and see if you have nailed it. That’s all.. you will need to do this whenever you change the beans you are using to something else. After you have done this for a few times it will seem natural and you should be able to adjust to a new blend in about 3 shots.

Dose

Different machines will like a different dose, why is that?

Basket depth, and how far down the shower screen in the grouphead is. Some machines have lots of headroom, others have little, some are medium, you get the picture. If you use a dose, say 18 grams and this is to much for your machine, then when you lock in the portafilter the screen will push down on your coffee puck and crack it open. This causes a channel to form inside the puck and since the water is under 9 bars of pressure it will take that path of least resistance. The coffee around this area will be overextracted and the rest of the coffee will be underextracted, or not extracted at all. The result is a sour nasty tasting shot of espresso.

That’s why it’s important to find what dose to use for your machine.

As double shots are much more forgiving and easy to get right, start out with doubles. The standard for a double dose is 14 grams of coffee. You will need to experiment with your own machine and try different doses, re-evaluate and see if it’s better or worse. Start with 14 as you are still learning. Then try with 18 grams re-evaluate, then work your way down towards 14 and see what happens. An invaluable tool when finding the correct dose is the bottomless portafilter which you can read more about here: Naked Portafilter Modification

Distribution

After you have grinded the coffee into the basket, there’s a little mound on top, that needs to go. The method I use is to use my pointing finger and move it in a circle over the basket so the coffee is as level and even as possible. Try not to press the coffee down, sweep the finger over the coffee but don’t press down.

Tamp

First of all make sure you get a good tamper that fits your basket like a glove, that plastic thing that comes with your machine? Right into the trash, it’s useless.

Place the tamper staight into the basket, be carefull that it sits level. A good tamper will have a sharp upper edge on the base, when you press down on the tamper you can easily see if it’s perfectly level.

Press down with about 30 pounds of pressure. Why 30? that’s just the amount of pressure a normal person can tamp all day long when working as a professional barista without getting repetetive stress injuries. If you want to tamp with 40 or more go ahead, just make sure you allways use the same amount of pressure. A good training tool is to grab your bathroom scale and tamp on that so you can see how much force you use and learn to be consistant.

After your tamp, release a bit of the pressure and twist the tamper as you release the last pressure. NO TAPPING. I know you see all the vidoes of people performing percussion exercises tap tap tapppeti tap. It serves no purpose other than to disturb the puck and cause channeling. People do this to get rid of the little bit of coffee stuck to the basket so it doesn’t gunk up the grouphead gaskets. Since you should rince the grouphead and gasket frequently anyways as part of your cleanup the little bit of coffee is of no concern, DON’T TAP, it’s not smart or cool, it’s stupid.

Time to brew a shot of espresso

Now lock in the portafilter handle and put a measuring cup under it, start the machine look at the clock and stop the shot when 25-30 seconds has passed. If there’s 60ML in there you nailed it so have a taste. If there’s less than 60ML you’r grind was to fine so ease it up a notch. If there’s to much your grind was to course so adjust it one notch and try again.

When to start counting?

With E61 machines you have a pressure buildup so start counting when you see the first drop. With machines without the E61 preinfusion, count from the moment you start brewing.

Do you measure 60ML with or without crema?

The accepted way is with the crema.

If you want to work a bit more for perfection you can use weight instead of volume and use what’s a called brew ratios which is much more precise instead.

A standard shot uses the ratio 50% by weight using brew ratios. The formula is quite simple, if you have 14 grams of coffee your shot should weigh 28 grams in 30 seconds.

The reason brew ratios are more presice and better, is because crema is never a constant. The type of coffee beans, how they were roasted, how old they are, what the air humidity is, all have an effect on how much crema you get on any given day, so using volume including crema is going to vary a lot, weight will not vary. You kinda have to include the crema when using volume, or you would have to wait until the crema has settled and the shot would be cold.

Read more about using brew ratios here:  Brewing ratioes for espresso and dosing by weight

The naked portafilter and why you should get one

A naked portafilter is simply the normal handle where you put the basket into with the bottom cut off. It’s very easy to create yourself one and it will allow you to take your espresso to the max. You can read my article about the Naked portafilter modification to learn more about using it.

That’the basics on how to make good espresso, yeah right hehe… but espresso is an art that requires skill, with a bit of practice you’l get there.

Good luck on your journey in espressoland, it’s going to be a wild ride