In this chapter I go over the process of making espresso. I assume you have decent home espresso equipment and fresh roasted coffee, as discussed in previous chapters. I provide specific tips for the grinder and espresso machine that I recommend (the Baratza Sette and the Breville Dual Boiler), but most of the advice is generic and would apply to other grinders and machines.
Set yourself up for success
If you have fresh coffee and decent equipment it is a lot easier to get going. If you don’t, you will spend many frustrating mornings and afternoons trying to get it right, and you might once in a while. But it is difficult to learn what went wrong and what to do about it if your coffee or your equipment are not consistent. Save yourself the pain, and enjoy drip coffee (which can be excellent) with good beans until you can get set up for espresso.
For coffee, see Coffee for espresso for the requirements. Essentially a roast that is fresh (less than 20 days after roasting, ideally 3 to 10 days), balanced in flavor, and roasted not too light, not too dark. For equipment requirements, see What is good espresso? and Grinder recommendations and Espresso machine recommendations for the details on the equipment that I use and recommend. If you have any questions, see the Contact page.
You will also need a scale. I use a basic one similar to this one here, and it works great. You can spend up to $300 on espresso scales, but less than $20 suffices for home use. Your scale needs to fit on the drip tray, so it cannot be too large.
Preheat your machine
Temperature stability is critical for making espresso that tastes great consistently. Turn your machine on ideally at least 30 minutes before you want to use it. This enables the boilers and all the components to come up to temperature. Even if that is the case, the portafilter is heavy and has a lot of metal; it takes a bit of time for it to get warm. A warm portafilter contributes to temperature stability during brewing.
The portafilter should be hot to the touch before you brew espresso. If you did not turn on the machine in advance, lock the portafilter on the group head and run a shot without coffee. On the Dual Boiler, press and hold the 1 CUP button for about ten seconds. The hot water heats the portafilter, but you have to dry it out with a towel before using it. If your portafilter is not up to temperature, you will most likely brew sour espresso.
Weight your coffee dose
As discussed in previous chapters, I recommend not leaving coffee beans on your grinder hopper because they get stale quickly at home where only two or three espressos are brewed every day. I also recommend you use a grinder that retains very little coffee, so you can pre-weight your coffee dose before making an espresso, put that amount on the grinder, and grind it up into the portafilter directly.
Take the lid of your grinder hopper, flip it upside down, and place it on your scale, then tare the scale. Take your coffee out of your airtight container and pour the beans on top of the lid until the scale reads close to your target amount. On the Dual Boiler, with the double non-pressurized basket, a good starting point is 19 grams or a little over.
I discuss later in this chapter how to adjust the optimal dose for your coffee, basket, and machine.
Choose a target brew ratio
The brew ratio is the weight of the brewed espresso divided by the weight of ground coffee in the portafilter. The brew ratio is important because the appearance of the flow of espresso is an unreliable indicator of flavor, as it changes coffee to coffee and as the beans age, so it cannot be used to stop brewing reliably. To achieve a consistent flavor profile in your espresso, always brew to a target brew ratio. For example, if your dose is 19 grams, brewing 38 grams of espresso gives you a ratio of 2:1.
For many coffees, a brew ratio of 2:1 is a good place to start. For darker roasts, a brew ratio closer to 1.5 usually works better, as they extract more easily. For lighter roasts, a brew ratio closer to 2.5 usually works better, as they are harder to extract.
Once you select an initial dose and target brew ratio, multiple the two to figure out how many grams of espresso you need to brew and remember this as you will use it when brewing later on. For example, a dose of 19 grams and a brew ratio of 2:1 says you are looking for close to 38 grams of brewed espresso.
Check your grind setting
If you have not brewed this specific coffee before, you have to select a grind size setting and go from there. If you were previously brewing some other coffee, start with the same grind setting. If the new coffee is lighter roasted than your previous one, adjust the grind finer, and if the new coffee is darker than your previous one, adjust the grind coarser (on the Baratza Sette, moving 2 letters on the micro adjustment ring is a good starting point).
If this is your first time brewing espresso, see if the manufacturer of your grinder recommends a startin point. On the Baratza Sette, I started grinding around macro setting 9 and as the burrs broke in and settled most espresso coffees grind well somewhere in macro setting 8 for my setup.
I discuss later in this chapter how to adjust the optimal grind setting for your coffee.
Clean and dry the portafilter
You should have cleaned the portafilter of any previous coffee grounds after making your last espresso. If that is not the case, do it before putting a new dose of ground coffee in it. Hit it against the knock box to clear any chunks of used coffee grounds, then dry it with a towel. If it is still dirty, you can hit the brew button for a few seconds and put the portafilter under the group head to rinse it out. On the Dual Boiler, press and hold the 1 CUP button while you rinse the portafilter. Then dry the portafilter basket thoroughly before putting a new dose of coffee in it.
If the portafilter basket is not completely dry, this can cause a bad seal with the ground coffee. Water under pressure may create a hole around the wet areas, and this can result in very sour coffee and too fast espresso flow.
Grind the coffee
Take your pre-weighted amount of coffee and put it on the grinder hopper and put the lid back on. Take your clean, dry, and warm portafilter and put it underneath the grinder, making sure it is centered. Then run the grinder (PLAY button on the Baratza Sette). On the Sette, I set the timer for around 3 seconds, which enables grinding in two phases so the coffee does not overflow. On the Sette, adjust the grind time with the UP and DOWN arrows.
After the first phase, tap the portafilter on a towel or tamping mat once or twice to remove air pockets and settle the grounds. This makes room for the full dose too. Then place the portafilter back under the grinder and run the grinder again (PLAY on the Sette). This will grind most of the dose but a few loose beans at the end require running the grinder again for usually less than a second. Once all the coffee is ground the grinder makes a different sound and you know you are done.
Tap the portafilter again. You should have a small mountain or volcano of grinds that is mostly even but a little taller on the center. Use your finger to flatten the grounds a bit on the top towards the sides. If you have taken care of centering the portafilter under the grinder, then this is all you need to do. You will see there are many techniques out there to distribute the grounds evenly on the basket, some too elaborate to perform if you have not had any coffee yet. My solution to the distribution problem is simple: get a grinder like the Sette that has fluffy grounds and that distributes them well on the basket, then use it correctly.
Tamp the coffee
There are two aspects of tamping that are critical: a level tamp and consistent pressure. If your tamp is not completely horizontal, then more water will flow through half of the coffee than through the other half. At best, this results in a shot that doesn’t taste as good as it could. At worst, this affects the flow rate making it too fast and the shot may taste bitter and sour at the same time. If your tamp pressure is not consistent drink to drink, then the same coffee dose and grind setting result in different flow rates, making it impossible to have any repeatability in your espresso.
The tamp pressure can be too little and also too much. If you don’t tamp or tamp too light, the water may find a way to bypass the coffee grounds by blowing a hole through them, resulting in sour coffee. This is especially true for larger doses (19 to 21 grams) where the grind is coarser than smaller doses (14 to 16 grams). If you tamp too hard, the initial flow will be too slow, but then the water may find the easiest way out if your distribution of coffee in the portafilter is not uniform. In those cases the second half of the shot flows much more quickly than the first, and the shot does not taste right.
Your tamper must also be the right size for your basket. The Dual Boiler comes with a tamper that attaches magnetically to the machine that is the right size, so you don’t need to get a separate one.
To ensure a successful tamping, start by distributing the grounds and settling them as discussed in the previous sections. Then pick up your tamper and put it softly on top of the basket while resting the portafilter on a towel or tamping mat. Use your fingers to push the tamper around its edges, close to the edge of the basket, and push softly. Pushing softly from the edges enables you to compact the coffee a little bit while ensuring your tamp is level because you can more easily compensate by pushing from the edges with several fingers. You might want to look from either side to make sure your tamp is level and compensate if needed.
Once the coffee has compacted a bit, remove your fingers and use the palm of your hand to press from the top of the tamper, using your fingers to grab the tamper handle. (At this point, you know you’re starting with a horizontal tamp.) Then press the tamper harder in small increments of force to compress the coffee some more. When the coffee does not compact any further (the tamper does not move any lower on the basket), your tamp is complete. You could tamp harder, but it may be counter productive. Tamping until the coffee stops compressing is easy to do consistently and produces a good shot of espresso if the tamp is level (horizontal). Tamping consistently well takes a little bit of practice, but it gets easier soon if you follow this procedure.
When you are done tamping, notice the relative position of where the tamper ends up with respect to the basket, as you might later use this information to adjust your dose, or to know whether your dose is in the ballpark. I discuss this later in this chapter.
Flush the group head
Flushing the group head before making an espresso accomplishes two things: it gets rid of any coffee grounds that got stuck to the group head from the previous drink, and it gives the machine a chance to stabilize the brew temperature before the next shot, especially if the machine has been sitting idle for a bit. To flush the group head, hit the brew button without the portafilter attached for three to five seconds on most machines. On the Dual Boiler, press and hold the 1CUP button for three to five seconds before locking the portafilter.
Lock in the portafilter
Locking in the portafilter is an easy step, but you have to watch for two things. The first is you don’t want to accidentally hit the portafilter with the side of the brew head too hard, as that may break the compacted coffee that you have worked so hard to distribute and tamp correctly. If this happens your shot will be too fast and sour, even though you did everything up to this point right. The second is you don’t want to leave the portafilter too loose or tighten it too hard. If you leave the portafilter too loose it may come off during brewing and make a mess. If you tighten it too hard you will wear out the group head gaskets very quickly.
Get your cup and scale ready
Place your scale on the drip tray under the portafilter and then place your cup. Then tare the scale. Your cup should be preheated; for most machines, leaving the cups on top of the machine warms them up. Otherwise the espresso cools quickly and the brisk temperature change can affect its flavor.
Brew
Start the brewing process. On the Dual Boiler, press the MANUAL button. The espresso should begin with a very slow flow if the grind is right, but not a drip, that should be dark in color. The flow will progressively and slowly become lighter, faster, and less viscous and more liquid as the brewing progresses. Watch the scale and as you approach your brew ratio (say 38 grams for a 19 grams dose and a 2:1 brew ration), be ready to stop the brewing process. On the Dual Boiler, press the MANUAL button again to stop brewing. Depending on the reaction time of your scale and machine you usually have to stop brewing about two seconds before your target weight is reached.
Here is an example of how the espresso flow might look like:
If your espresso does not look anything like this, check the following sections below for adjustments you can make.
Adjust the dose
(work in progress)
Adjust the grind size
(work in progress)
Adjust the temperature
(work in progress)
Adjust the brew ratio
(work in progress)
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Great Espresso at Home 