The 10 things you need to make your perfect espresso.
… make sure you take all these into consideration when buying any coffee making equipment.
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Making espresso coffee is an adventure. It involves a lot !
We’ve outlined 10 things to be aware of in order to make the best espresso. Some are under your own control, and some will be governed by the machine you have to help you. So keep these in mind when you’re buying a machine.
…needless to say a bonus point is to have the best recipient to appreciate all that effort or cost in making it !
The 10 things you need to make a perfect espresso…
1: The best beans for taste and to work with your machine.
2: The best roast type for your taste.
3: The perfect grind of the beans to work with your machine
4: The best quality water.
5: The right temperature of water.
6: The precise quantity of the water and coffee grounds to make a precise quantity of espresso.
7: The optimum pressure to push the hot water through the grounds.
8: The timing, of a pre-soak of the grounds and the time taken to push the water through the coffee puck.
9: A good barista, or machine to make it for you !
10: Pre-warmed espresso cup ( better still, an insulated one that will stay warm) so you can enjoy it at the right temperature, right to the last mouthful.
1. The Beans…
Size colour, flavour
With coffee beans you pretty much get what you pay for. Enjoy sampling the best beans from around the world to discover their subtle flavours. The quality of the bean depends also on where it is grown, and on the conditions of the soil, the weather, and the altitude.
Things to look out for are acidity, caffeine content, the roast, flavour / taste, body, aroma,
Until I started doing the research I thought there would be so many coffee beans to cover but in fact there there are basically only two beans to choose from – Arabica and Robust – and all the blends are made from these. You can choose beans from different regions of the world to suit your taste, or you could choose a blend.
Arabica
About 60% of the worlds beans are Arabica, and they come from high altitude areas, needing more rain than sun ! Arabica is the type of bean, but the name on the bean is down t the region – eg the famous Blue Mountain coffee bean. They generally have lower caffeine content, but a fuller more delicate flavour because it has taken longer to grow. So, they’re more best suited to a good black espresso, ristretto or lungo coffee.
Robusta
Is easier to grow and prefers to be in a hot climate.It has almost twice the caffeine content to the Arabica and is strong and full in taste. So it’s a great choice for only milky drinks or iced coffees.
Some semi and automatic machines provide more than one hopper ( for the coffee beans) so that you can make consecutive cups with different types of bean if your household has varying tastes – or if you just like to taste test. We settled on a Brazilian blend of the Arabica bean.
Once you’ve chosen the bean, the next stage is the roasting. Coffee beans start out green, not brown. How much they are roasted will determine the flavour – so you need to know what you like to drink before you choose the right bean for your daily tipple.
2. The Roast…
4 types
You can pretty much tell the roasting process by looking at the colour and hardness of the bean. The longer its roasted for and the higher the temperature its roasted at determines the colour and flavour. The colour comes from the oils inside heating up and rising to the surface of the bean. Light roasting gives light brown beans, and as the temp. and time increases toward medium brown, dark brown and black beans. The darker the bean the shinier it is too as the oil reaches the outside.
Light roast
A light brown dry looking bean with a toasty flavour and higher caffeine content
Medium roast
A brown bean, a nice full balanced flavour, a little sweet and toasted… needless to say this is the most popular bean to suit all tastes. Paul used to bring back a few 2.5kg bags of Arabica from his trips to Soho, London… but we also had a good stock of a particularly good blend from Illy as a great back-up ( and I could get it so easily here on Amazon) !
Medium-dark
A dark brown bean with a full roasty flavour and some hints of other elements in the bean like spice.
Dark roast = almost black, shiny bean with a strong, spicy, even smoky roasty flavour.
Which beans are best for Espresso coffee ?
Mostly dark roasted beans are used for espresso.
Can you get decaffeinated beans ?
Fully decaffeinated doesn’t exist but it’s worth knowing that the higher the roasting temperature, the less caffeine is held as a result – so the heat literally burns off the caffeine. So for the most decaffeinated bean you would want an Arabica that has been roasted lightly somewhere between 180 – 205℃.
3. The Grind…
There are a number of ways of grinding coffee beans, including blade grinders ( well they chop really not grind ), hand grinders, and electrical burr grinders. And the best and easiest way to grind beans is with an electric coffee burr grinder.
In contrast to the others , an electric burr grinders produce a consistent grind in a way that squeezes and releases the delicious oils and aromas from the beans. They also generate very little heat, so protect the flavour of the coffee as they grind.
Why your coffee need to be freshly ground ?
As soon as you grind coffee it releases that gorgeous aroma that makes you want one ! That smell that is just released into the air signals that the coffee is starting to break down, so if you leave it without using it it goes stale. That’s why freshly ground coffee is best every time. Grinders grind just enough to go into the ‘group ‘. The group head is the thing you put it into on the manual machine.
If you are grinding and espressing all manually this is so important to get right. Apart from anything else, the smell of beans grinding is just divine and makes you long for that cup of coffee even more – so it’s best done all in succession… straight from bean to cup.
You’ve got to be as fussy as Goldilocks here because you want your grind just right – not too fine, not too coarse. You just want to get the flavour right, and if you over do it or underdo it that will affect the flavour.
The right water is passing through, at a precise temperature, for a set time is so that it exacts exactly the right flavour from your beans. So you have to make it easy for that process to work. Take too much from the grounds and it will taste bitter, take too little and it can taste a bit vinegary ( if that’s a word!)
You’ll probably have visibly noticed the difference in the grind for a filte , cafetiere or French press type of coffee ( bigger granules) compared to an espresso one ( finer). Old fashioned fast brew, pour through type coffee that is long and weak is usually from a coarse grind, whereas the thick strong treacly coffee you get in North Aftrica and Turkey is made from a grind as fine as powder.
Grind too fine…
and the water is picking up too much flavour – in effect it over extracts. All the good and the bad bits that have been ground up get flavour extracted. It can also pull some of the ground through with the water. The flow of the water is also slow since it has to struggle to pass through easily, so it takes too long and is in contact with the grounds for too long, and ends in a strong bitter taste.
Grind too large…
and there are too many spaces between the grains so the water doesn’t get through to enough of the flavour inside – in effect the water is allowed to flow through the coffee too fast and the coffee flavour is under-extracted and can taste weak and acidic.
How to get a consistent grind
It’s also so important to have a consistent grind. This is why everyone recommends only a burr grinder for espresso coffee making. Blade grinding creates lots or uneven pieces and the metal can also overheat the oils so you end up with a burnt tasting coffee. Grind with steel rather than ceramic and the coffee tastes burnt.
The grind can be a little forgiving but it’s all about getting the sweet spot between your grind and the water that is passing through it – both the temperature of the water and the time it gets to pass through the grinds to extract the flavour from the specific coffee oils in each grain.
Why do you need to tamping and level ?
After loosely filling your filter basket with about 1.5 teaspoons of coffee (i.e. 6-7 grammes ) for a single espresso, you will need to push it down to make a nice firm puck of coffee. The amount is important because if you put too much or too little in you will again get the over or under extraction types of coffee.
A lot of manual machines will provide a simple tamper to push the coffee grounds into the filter container ( the portafilter in a manual machine), if not you can buy these separately. Oncc tamped, (and sometimes before tamping if you have overfilled the container!). A leveller ( like a credit card) can be used to clean off any extra grounds from the edge of the filter so that the filter fits neatly into the machine. If you don’t have one then you can use the side of your little finger !
Other things to maximize the taste of your ground coffee are freshness (stored in an airtight box in a dark place… even in a coll part of the fridge, for up to a month), aroma.
Storing your coffee grounds
Storing is really important because once ground , the bean releases the flavoursome oils from within and the air begins to evaporate them so you lose the flavour over time. It starts to go even 30mins from grinding so that’s why the bean to cup machines are so popular to get the top flavour immediately from the bean. Once it goes stale it still taste like coffee , but just any old coffee and not the complicated amazing mix of flavours that your bean started with !
Using bought coffee grounds
Some semi and automatic machines both a bean hopper and a ground coffee chute. Apart from convenience, this means that you can use the ground chute for decaffeinated coffee if you, or your guests so wish it.
We had a separate espresso machine and bean grinder and used to order our Arabica beans online. If by some chance we ran out, Paul had worked out the best ground coffee to get in quickly while we re-ordered. . For us it was an Illy Espresso blend that worked – and that was because the fineness of the grind worked perfectly with the way Paul had set up the machine. So it wasn’t a case of looking for the nicest tasting coffee to suit us, but also getting the right grind that suited the set up of our machine – otherwise it was pointless !
4. The Water…
The quality and make-up of the water
What’s in the water ? Having done many Guinness tours in Dublin, the one lasting memory apart from the divine taste is that they go on about the how important the water is in the making of it – same thing on the Heineken tour in Amsterdam. ( I don’t drink Guinness apart from there or on St Patricks day …mixed with some fizz to make a black velvet – sweet sacrilege !) .
Anyway, so we know the make-up of water is important, what metals or minerals are in it etc, and what it tastes like matters too. If you don’t like it to drink straight then you won’t like the coffee it produces either. You are usually better using filtered water or mineral water in your machine. Although calcium can add a nice taste element it can also bung up the machine with calcium deposits.
The quantity and speed of the water
This matters more than you realise. Thing is when you make an espresso ( or a ristretto or a lungo) the machine takes the same time to push through the water through the coffee grounds. So if it’s sending more water through to make you a longer coffee, it has to do it faster, right ! And when it does it faster, it makes a difference to the taste. It makes sense that the faster it goes the less flavour it can pick up and so you can end up with a weaker, more bitter tasting coffee. (see more in the quantity section below)
5. The Temperature…
Getting the temperature of the water right is almost as important as the grind. Too hot can have a similar effect as too fine a grind, and too cold similar to too coarse a grind.
Cold water can make coffee ( it could take anywhere from 3-24hrs), but but a cold brew won’t extract the oils and nuances of the bean flavours. You can make a cup with boiling water but it will probably burn the delicate flavour of your ground bean.
The Baristas, specialists and connoisoirs will tell you it has to be somewhere between 90-96℃ / 194-202℉.
The Water Boilers
In a single boiler machine, there’s often a delay in being able to use the steam wand as it takes time to heat the water to the necessary temperature. A dual boiler, like in the Sage Dual Boiler machine, they have one dedicated to heating the water for the coffee making and the second for heating the water to a higher temperature to steam through the frothing wand. De Longhi has a patented thermoblock boiler system even in their entry level machines like the Dedica, which keeps temperature constant and consistent even if you leave the machine on for a long time between cups.
The steam chamber of the best machines are also usually made of steel, aluminium, or brass in order to maintain the high temperature. Steam is forced through the grounds by the machine pump under 8 to 9 atmospheres of pressure. Some machines have an external pressure guage so you can see the pressure. The idea is that the pressure allows the water to make contact with every grain. The ideal temperature range for hot brewing is 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit. This is hot enough to extract carefully and quickly, but not so hot that it’s uncontrollable.
6. The Quantity…
Precise quanity of coffee grounds.
The precise quantity of hot water that goes through the precise amount of grounds ( 6-7 grams dose of ground coffee) , to make a precise size of 30ml ( i.e. 1 ounce) . We usually have a double, and that’s what is also typically used to make up espresso coffee based drinks like a mocha chocca etc !
Other coffees use the same quantity of ground coffee but with a different quantity of water… and usually brew for around the same time. For example, a double espresso is 60ml or 1 ounce, a ristretto is half an espresso size ( 15ml / 0.5 ounce). A lungo can be anything from 1.5 to 2 ounces or more.
You can vary the quantity to suit your tastes and we often see that people are using more coffee grounds. In fact, Nespresso machines seem to use much more water than the ‘official’ quantities ! ( more about that later).
You need to know what you like to taste, and how to get it – even with the most automatic machines. So it’s worth experimenting at the beginning. Espresso’s can be made at 40ml ( that’s the default on the Sage Creatista plus machine) and our commercial Nespresso makes a 50ml espresso. There’s usually a machine default and you can often change this. So check what you’re getting, see if you like it, and if not then alter it to your taste.
Precise quanity of water.
Other coffees use the same quantity of ground coffee but with a different quantity of water… and usually brew for around the same time. For example, a double espresso is 60ml or 1 ounce, a ristretto is half an espresso size ( 15ml / 0.5 ounce). A lungo can be anything from 1.5 to 2 ounces or more.
You can vary the quantity to suit your tastes and we often see that people are using more coffee grounds.
Coffee lengths in automatic coffee machines
Nespresso machines seem to use much more water than the ‘official’ quantities !
You need to know what you like to taste, and how to get it – even with the most automatic machines. So it’s worth experimenting at the beginning.
Espresso’s can be made at 40ml ( that’s the default on the Sage Creatista plus machine) and our commercial Nespresso makes a 50ml espresso.
There’s usually a machine default and you can often change this. So check what you’re getting, see if you like it, and if not then alter it to your taste.
What’s the difference between a lungo and an Americano
One of the biggest mistakes people ( me included ) make is making a lungo when you really want an americano. They aren’t the same thing.
An Americano is an espresso topped up with hot water ( a long black is the same… but the other way round). I just measured that on my machine and it’s a 50ml espresso and the hot water button gives 175ml hot water – so I get a full cup of 225ml Americano and I love it.
If I press the lungo button ( I have 3 options – ristretto, espresso, lungo) I get a 125 ml coffee but it tastes more bitter than an espresso ( of course! ). And, it’s not long enough. So if I add water to that, then it just gets weaker – so I get a weak bitter coffee.
So why do people like a lungo ? Well, if you try to make a lungo from your favourite espresso pod, it’s going to taste inferior, so Nespresso make specific lungo pods. There’s so much more to say on this subject – this calls for an FAQ on coffee types.
7. The Pressure…
The Barometric pressure is measured in number of Bars. A bar is the atmospheric pressure of air found at sea level.
9 bar seems to be the general consensus for the minimum pressure people say is required for producing a great espresso. ( bars = 130PSI by the way, for those of you that know your car tyre pressures ! ) You’ll find most machines however provide 15bar or more. 15bars seems to be the industry sweet spot for making the perfect espresso. You’ll find a lot of great Pod machines and the latest super automatics use 19 bars to push the water through the coffee as fast as possible !
It’s worth noting that the manual portable machines need a human parts of the machine to press the water through the coffee, so what pressure can a human being exert ! ….. I’ll find out .. and get back to you on it.
The Crema…
The crema is that gorgeous, golden creamy froth on top of a great black espresso. It comes from the oils in the coffee beans and getting a good crema is a direct result of having the right pressure and water temperature.
8. The Timing…
The timing involves the rate of flow of the water, and time that the water is allowed to come in contact with the ground coffee. It’s usually somewhere between 20-30 seconds ideally.
9. The Right Machine…
You may not be able to control everything so finely depending on how good your machine is. Of course, you usually pay more for precision, quality and robustness but also for the ability to either be able to manually adjust things or have them done automatically for you.
Don’t forget to check out our detailed posts on what we think are the best manual or bean-to-cup ( from semi to super-automatic ) espresso coffee machines this year.
10. The Right Cups…
Make sure that your cups are pre-warmed ! What’s the point of getting the espresso to the correct temperature only to chill as soon as it gets into your cold cup. So make sure you have a pre-warmer on top of the machine – or at the very least get some lovely espresso thermal glass cup like the ones below.
Fitting the cups in under the espresso group might also be an issue. The more automatic machines give you a minimum and maximum cup height. Manual machines take cups and espresso glasses and you may not get a mug under it. However, we feel that drinking your espresso from a wonderful espresso glass or cup is a bit like drinking tea from a china tea cup ! So, as a final little treat for yourself, or someone else… get yourself some special little coffee cups to enjoy. Click the picture to see pricing details on Amazon.
Now, these thermally insulated glasses ( known as ‘air pocket’ cups) mean that your coffee stays hot inside, but cooler on the outside so you can hold them. We love these ones from De ‘Longhi, or these fatter ones Amazon UK, but we also love the air pocket cups with a handle !
So if you want all those benefits, and also have the usual handle, then click over on the button below to see these nicely shaped one. Made from borosilicate glass so they are scratch and heat resistant (0 to 100°C). Also Dishwasher safe !
You can also then see the non-handled alternatives from there.
Finally… a bonus item
There is an 11th item to consider if you having a milky espresso. You´ll have considered that in your choice of machine already, but you still have to choose the best milk ! Whether it´s a moo milk or a nut one, the higher the content of fat in it, the better the latte or cappuccino frothing. A low fat milk will produce a thinner microfoam that will dissolve more quickly. Click the picture below to go to the lessons we learned on milk at an espresso making masterclass by Breville / Sage. You might pick up another few tips there too, and even find a free class going soon too. All the links are in the masterclass post.
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