The Guide to a Good Espresso
Some simple rules to better coffee in your life
Espresso. The epitome of coffee tradition. A classic that emerged from Italy in the 19th century and has since then conquered the world. Some may enjoy it pure, others rely on it as a base for one of the plenty of milk-based variants. For many, it’s their daily driver, for some a feeling of vacation and a special pleasure.
A good Espresso is often perceived as something that can only be achieved by an experienced barista equipped with a professional Espresso machine worth thousands of dollars. That’s what manufacturers of expensive machines and owners of modern coffee shops would like you to believe. But it’s not true. If you follow some simple steps and take to heart a couple of rules, you’ll be able to up your coffee game to a whole new level.
Frankly said you’ll be able to achieve better results than a lot of coffee shops boasting of their high quality-drinks.
A good Espresso
But why should you care? Or as David Lynch put it
Even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all.
This seems to be the maxim many people live by every day. Just quickly grab something that contains caffeine and ignore the acidic flavor it comes with. Or drink it with so much sugar and milk that you don’t notice how far off the actual coffee’s flavor is from what it could be.
But should you really be content with low quality if it comes to a drink that has in fact more flavors than wine? A drink that you may prepare and consume daily? I think you shouldn’t! You’ll be surprised what you can get out of those beans, once you decide to give it a try. Learning to appreciate little things, like good coffee, introduces a new level of satisfaction to your everyday life.
So before we start looking at the process, we should first take a look at the expected result. A good Espresso. What does this mean? While the exact taste can vary quite a bite between different configurations of equipment and ingredients, some key aspects apply to every situation.
Taste By far the most noticeable dimension, yet still neglected by a lot of people. A good Espresso is balanced between sour and bitter. Neither of both flavors is dominant enough to be noticed as a negative aspect. This allows you to discover the actual taste of blend and roast.
Consistency During extraction the Espresso should flow like honey. The ideal consistency is a bit thicker than water which results in a good mouthfeel.
Crema The “foam” on top of the Espresso. It usually accompanies a good Espresso but is not necessarily the sign of quality people think it is. A nice Crema is related to freshly roasted beans and the right brewing temperature, but can only be compared between extractions of the same roast and blend.
Equipment and Ingredients
Preparing an Espresso does not require extensive tools. Still, meeting some basic requirements concerning the quality of equipment and ingredients is necessary:
- Espresso machine with a portafilter. It does not need to be the most expensive one. It does not need to be fancy. It does not need to be a dual boiler. There are only two things the machine needs to do: keep the brewing temperature constant and being able to reach a certain pressure (around 8–9 bar). There are a couple of machines out there that can do this and don’t break the bank. Make sure to keep it clean, old coffee oil can ruin the taste pretty badly.
- Adjustable coffee mill. It can be a manual mill but most people will prefer an electrical one for daily use. It is important to use a quality mill here, the grind quality directly affects the brewing process. Don’t try to use grandmas old mill, the result will almost certainly be too heterogeneous and coarse.
- Precision scale. Optional, but very useful for some machines to get the parameters right.
Of course, the equipment is only useful if you got the right ingredients to work with. Let’s take a look at what you need:
- High-quality coffee. That’s a no-brainer. If you want great Espresso, use quality coffee which has been roasted recently. Talk to your local roaster or order from one of the online shops in this business. Stay away from supermarket coffee and ground coffee in general. Coffee rapidly loses flavor after grinding.
- Good water. Try to avoid using hard water. It’s not good for the taste as well as for your machine. Use filtered water or even bottled water.
Apart from equipment and ingredient, there is one still one important thing missing: the user. Yes, that’s you! Preparing espresso is not like using an automatic coffee machine where your only job is to push a button. You’ll need some thoughtful trial and error relying on your sense of taste, to make sure you are going in the right direction. And in the end, you’ll also be your own judge. It is your personal journey to coffee appreciation, so make sure to enjoy the way.
The process
With our equipment and ingredients prepared, let’s move on to the actual extraction process. There are only three rules to follow for a decent result:
- Constant brewing temperature between 91 °C and 95 °C. This is something most machines are doing fine in standard configuration. Depending on the roast you can fine-tune this later.
- Brewing ratio between 1:2 and 1:3. The ratio between the amount of ground coffee and the extracted espresso. Using a ratio of 1:2.5 you’ll get a 17.5 g shot out of 7 g ground coffee. The higher the ratio, the thicker and stronger the espresso. This metric is one of the first things to configure at your machine and a precision scale can be useful to get it right.
- Extraction time between 20 s and 30 s. This is the time it takes to extract your shot. As a rule of thumb 25 s is a good starting point for most roasts.
When configuring your brewing ratio, make sure to do it with coffee instead of an empty machine. This is the only way to get the ratio correct for a real extraction.
As the first two rules are primarily a matter of configuration, the last one (extraction time) is the one that requires the most attention. Extraction time can be influenced by adjusting the level of grinding. A finer grind will lead to a much more compressed coffee disc and reduce the flow rate of water through the disc. Therefore the extraction time (and pressure) increases. A coarser grind will do the opposite and decrease extraction time.
With this knowledge, you can now tweak your grind level until you get an extraction time of ~25 s. This is your base configuration. From here you can proceed to fine-tuning parameters to your blend and roast. For a lot of roasts, this configuration will already produce very good results.
Fine-tuning
Congratulations, you got the basics. Now it’s time to pull a shot or two and taste it! Great right? But maybe not perfect. Don’t worry, fine tuning will help you to get the most out of your roast.
As mentioned before, an Espresso should be balanced between bitter and sour. If you notice one of those sensations, you can use this as an indicator to act upon. Fine-tuning to your liking can take some time and careful adjustments. It is an iterative process that you have to perform again each time you change blend or roast.
If your Espresso is sour this is a sign of under-extraction. Most likely the extraction time was too short. Change to a finer grind level or increase tamping pressure. A sour taste can also be the result of the brewing temperature being too low.
If your Espresso is bitter this is a sign of over-extraction. Most likely the extraction time was too long. Change to a coarser grind level or decrease tamping pressure. A bitter taste can also be the result of the brewing temperature being too high.
Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between sour and bitter. If you’re having problems with this here is a little help: we taste sour flavors at the edges of our tongue while we notice bitter at the back of our tongue.
Additional Tips
Heat the portafilter by pulling an empty shot before the actual extraction. Wipe the portafilter dry afterwards. Espresso extraction with a cold portafilter will decrease the brewing temperature and affect the taste.
Try to consistently apply the same pressure when tamping. This way your results are not fluctuating. Only tamp once, as tamping multiple times will only increase the risk of channeling.
If you drink a lot of milk-based drinks like Cappuccino or Flat White, consider blends with some proportion of Robusta beans as well. Although widely considered inferior in taste compared to Arabica, Robusta flavors tend to go nicely with milky drinks. Also note: Robusta often produces a lot more Crema than Arabica.
That’s it, now you know the process of getting the best Espresso out of your equipment. It has been a lot of steps so let me summarize the process again:
- Use quality ingredients.
- Set the brewing temperature between 91 °C and 95 °C.
- Set the brewing ratio between 1:2 and 1:3.
- Adjust grind level to achieve extraction time around 25 s.
- Fine-tune temperature and extraction time by taste.
- Enjoy!
