The Ultimate Espresso Brew Guide

Brewing incredible espresso can be a very tricky process. Every coffee and every palate is a little different and as such, there is no “one true recipe”. This guide arms you with a fantastic starting recipe, but more importantly the tools to understand how to tweak it to get the best out of every drink. Be sure to check the ‘fine tuning’ section at the end.

Quick Guide

Dose: 20g (we like big shots)
Grind: Fine to medium fine
Ratio: 1:3 (20 grams of coffee, 60 gram yield)
Time: 18-22 seconds
(if we are adding milk, we usually grind a touch finer, and shorten the ratio, 1:2.5 in 25 seconds)

You will need:

Good Coffee
Espresso machine
Coffee Grinder
Nice Tasting Water
Scales
A timer

Preparation

Fire up your espresso machine ahead of time, many machines take some time to fully heat up. Lock in your portafilter and periodically give the metal parts a touch, if it's starting to get warm, you’re in a good place.

Dose

Accurate dosing for espresso is critical. This allows us to be consistent from shot to shot, making sure that we are always using the same amount of coffee. Most often, the dose size is dictated by our basket size. Common basket sizes for double shots are usually 14, 16. 18 and 20 grams (some maniacs even have 22s floating around). Some baskets have their dose written on them. If not, use a little trial and error, fill and tamp your basket and get a feel for how much it holds. Remember these are guidelines, your 18 gram basket might work best with 19 grams of a very lightly roasted coffee or 17 grams of a darker roast, use them as a starting point.

Grind

Possibly the most (maybe second most now distribution is all the rage) discussed aspect of espresso preparation. Too fine, and your machine chokes,you get a tiny dribble of coffee and frustration. Too coarse, and your coffee gushes out, sprays everywhere with a bottomless portafilter and makes a mess…oh, did we mention the frustration. “Dialing in” your grind size for the first time can seem a little daunting.

As a starting point, grind a tiny portion of coffee into your hand. Pinch it, if it holds a finger print you’re close! Go a tad coarser, and try again, just ever so slightly too coarse to hold a fingerprint is our usual go to starting point. Expect you may need or want to adjust a little from here, but this will get you to the ballpark. Some grinders might have 70-80 grind settings, good espresso may only be available at 2-3 of those, we want to get as close as possible with as little precious coffee wastage as possible.

From here, we will need to use the next couple of steps to test our grind size. Fear not, once you've done this process a couple of times, you intuitively learn to tweak settings on the fly, almost every shot of a new coffee we try now is drinkable and enjoyable, with only one or two tweaks to get it to incredible! (Yes, we spent kilos of coffee learning to dial in like idiots in the early days, yes we are ashamed, yes we made a mess…yes some of you will too)

Tip: grab a small spray bottle or the end of a spoon that's wet, and add a tiny tiny amount of water to your beans before grinding. This for a number of reasons helps the grinding process, and makes less of a mess too.

If Possible feed your beans SLOWLY into your grinder. This is probably the single best thing you can do for the quality of your coffee grounds. If you have a single dose grinder and the ability to do this safely PLEASE ‘slow feed’.

Distribute

We won’t say too much here, this arguably is where some of the personal preference, art and finesse of the process comes in, there are many strong opinions floating around out there. The goal with this process is to ensure that the coffee is spread evenly in the basket, allowing for the water, to have a uniform resistance throughout the bed for it to pass through. We have some ideas and opinions of our own about distribution, you can find them in our Grinding and Distribution Guide (Coming Soon)

If you have access to distribution tools, go wild for now, just be mindful that how you distribute will effect how fast your shot pulls and potentially your extraction. Personally, we grind into a shaker, give it a couple shakes, pop it into the portafilter, one tamp on the bench and then tamp. 

In a pinch however, get your grinds into the portafilter, a couple taps on the side of the portafilter, a tap on the bench, and maybe a smoothing finger over the top and you are ready to move on.

Tamp

This step sees us compacting the grounds to create a firm “puck” of coffee in the basket, creating enough resistance that our machine builds pressure later on in the process.
You cannot, tamp too hard.
There is also, nothing good that will come from tamping so hard you've got veins popping out. 10kg of pressure nice and evenly downward across the bed of coffee and you are golden, it will always have a little give and flex after you've tamped, don't stress, that's just the nature of coffee.

Gentle, even, don’t overly complicate. This is likely the simplest thing about espresso - enjoy it.

Extract

It's go time. Gently lock your portafilter into the group head, just firm enough for it to feel secure, over tightening can crack the coffee puck and ruin all your hard work. Place your scale and drinking vessel underneath.
Start your timer and start your brew. Hit stop when you reach your desired weight.

Some Notes:

If you have pre-infusion on your machine, we highly suggest using it, for at least as long as it takes to see the first couple drops of coffee. (We include pre-infusion in our times). 

If you have flow control - good for you, very fancy. We enjoy a slow ramp up to 6 bar of pressure, then a steady decline from that peak. 

Everyone else - hit the go button. Until you've reached your desired weight. Then stop.
Should you, from here, like to enjoy a latte or a cap, steam and add milk, otherwise, enjoy! 

How To Fine Tune Your Brew

Shot ran too fast? Taste it, if you're happy, great you saved some time. Contact time, while discussed at great length in the community, is a relatively unimportant metric, we've had great shot pull in 12 seconds as well as 55 seconds. Let your taste guide you. Should you want to slow it down despite this, grind a touch finer. 

Too slow? Similarly, taste, taste, taste. Otherwise, a tad coarser

Too sour? May have not extracted as much as we would have liked. Most tell you to grind finer, before you try that. Pull a longer shot next time, a higher ratio will always be a higher extraction. If still unhappy, grind finer.

Too bitter? The inverse, extracted too much! Grind a little coarser, speed up your shot or pull a shorter ratio.

Lacks Body? To some extent you are at the mercy of your beans, however, generally, a slower shot will be a more syrupy shot. If you’d like some more body/texture, grind a touch finer, or pre-infuse for a tad longer to raise that contact time. 

Too much body? Similar to above, speed that guy up, or find a way to lower the pressure (OPV, Flow control, grind size). Some people use a paper filter on the bottom of their basket, does it work? yes! Is it fiddly annoying and one extra step…also yes.

Matt’s controversial note about Crema. 

Some silly people will insist, the value of an espresso is defined by the quality of the Crema (the foamy head on-top of your shot). This is not the case. There are many reasons for this, and I will likely discuss them elsewhere. Crema can exist on good shots, it can also exist on bad shots. Similarly, I've had incredible shots with little to no Crema, and some crappy ones without too. Crema is a byproduct of the brewing process, and is linked closer to the amount of CO2 and oils in the bean itself. Neither of these have an earth shattering impact on taste when compared to many of the other factors discussed above. 

Fresher coffee has more CO2 than stale therefore fresher coffee is more likely to have more Crema than less fresh coffee, that's about it. You're a conscious coffee drinker, you're using fresh coffee anyway. Stop worrying about Crema.

There. I said it.