Transcripts
1. Trailer - Welcome to Espresso!: Hey everyone, welcome to my very first ever course for
this site for you all. This is going to be
the beginner's guide to making espresso at home. In this course, the goal is
for you to get to a point of maybe never having ever pulled a shot
of espresso before, to being able to pull
a shot of espresso. That is, dare I say, as good as your
favorite coffee shop. And to be able to do
it in a way where you understand the steps
that it takes to get there, but also the variables that go into making a shot of espresso, what it is which is going to end up getting you
to a point where you can tweak your shots
of espresso at home by yourself if you decide or if
you're using this course, which if you're
using this course to get to a professional level, I thank you for including
me on this journey. But maybe this will get you to the first steps to
getting to that point of being a professional
espresso maker and barista. And I do hope that it benefits
you whether you've never made it before or you're looking to understand the process
a little bit better. And that's pretty much it. So let's get started
in the next video.
2. About my Journey: So as a little bit
of a bonus episode, and this is entirely not necessary for the
remainder of the course, but I figured I'd give
you a little bit of insight into me and what got me to the point where I'm making a beginner
espresso course. I am not at all a
professional barista. I have really only
been doing this for myself for the
last couple of years. And it really came about from a growing affinity for
lattes specifically. What happened was a
couple of years ago, I started to develop
a morning routine. And at the same time
I was on a trip and I wanted something that had
like a coffee taste to it, but tasted a little bit
more on the sweeter, creamy side, but not too sweet. This is literally
what I was telling the barista when I
walked in that morning. And he recommended a latte, and he also recommended
a breve latte, which was a latte with
2.5 instead of milk. Getting into the weeds
a little bit here, where the point is, I really
fell in love with that. And that got me to a point
where I was starting to drink it without any sugar, which is a big deal for me. That started to
become part of my morning routine because I found a local coffee shop
that made it that good. As good as the one
that I had had, which was actually oddly
difficult to find, but it was right by my place, and I started making that as a part of my morning routine. I then noticed that
I was spending a lot of money doing that. So I was on this kick of learning about the first
20 hours of practice, into whatever it is
you want to learn. Shout out to Josh Kaufman, who wrote a fantastic book. I'll include it in the notes. So I set out on the
journey to start learning. And it was surprisingly accessible on a very
beginner level. As I started doing it
day in and day out, I noticed that even though I
reached the point of knowing the steps every day,
that I was doing it, I was learning something
new about my technique, about how to grind the beans, about how to extract
the espresso, et cetera, and all of
the variables that I had learned to make a shot of espresso started to play
into it a lot more. And there was a
lot more planning, and strategy, and
logic behind it, and that was really
interesting to me. So I thought to myself, not just to learn
to make espresso, but as a way to extend the
skill acquisition process. I decided why not make a course on something
that I went through, the rigor of learning
that maybe I could explain it to you
and you'd learn to do it, whether or not you're an
aficionado of espresso, but even if you just want
to learn something new. Anyway, here I am
making this course. And so, yeah, that's
pretty much my story. Hopefully it gave you a
little bit of inspiration. Although if you're here
taking this course, you're probably already among the people that I
am talking about, of wanting to acquire new
skills and learn things. So here I am to say good
on you for doing it, stick with it, and just
keep moving forward. And don't even worry
about what you're learning or how much
you're progressing, Just worry about putting in the time and allowing
yourself to get stuck. Allowing yourself to mess up, allowing yourself to fail
and try different things. Funny enough, espresso
is probably one of the great things to
practice that with. Thank you for
listening to all that. Now we'll get into actually learning some espresso making.
3. Breaking Down Espresso: Now, before we get started with pulling shots of espresso, and I promise not to
make every course, me just sitting here talking to you in front of
a camera like this. I wanted to talk a
little bit about the terms that we're
going to come across. Now, I could sit here and define every
single term for you. And, you know, you could just
write down the definitions, but I don't think that's
the most engaging. And I also thought that why not introduce the
terms to you here and now. And as we go through
the course and hit those terms in
their contexts, we can then define them and you'll have context those terms. And it'll make you understand it a little
bit better and it'll make it more applicable and functional for when you actually start
tweaking your shots. And we'll go along that path together and hopefully
by the end of it, you'll be able to
tweak and adjust any part of the process and make it exactly
the way you want. The first thing
is let's actually talk about what espresso is. Now, technically, I don't
know if it's the definition, but the components that
make up espresso are either seven to 12
grams of coffee, or 16 24 grams of coffee. You want to say coffe,
I mean the beans. Seven to 12 grams
for a single shot, or about 16 to 24 grams
for a double shot. With an extraction ratio of about one to 1.8 all
the way up to one to 2.2 over a span of
25 to 35 seconds. None of that really should
make sense to you right now. If it does make
sense to you, then you've already done
some of this before. But if you're completely
beginning and none of that makes any sense to
you, that's the point. It's not supposed to make sense. But hearing it now and then
when we go through it, I think it'll start to
make a lot more sense. Now with regards to the
terms that I want to define, let's list them out here. And I want you to
write them down, type them into your notes
or whatever you want to do, but have those terms on
the side as we go along. You can write down your form of the
definition and cross them out that by the end
of it we have a list of things that we've
accomplished in this course. Those terms are dry
dose, grind size, dose distribution
extraction which includes under and over
extraction extraction ratio, extraction time flow
rate, and channeling. I know a lot of terms list of about nine or ten,
but like I said, I promise as we go through this, we're going to talk
about those terms as we come across them and we're going to define
them and they're going to make perfect sense. And by the end of it, all of this stuff will be like
second nature to you. Now with those terms mentioned, let's go ahead and actually
make a shot of espresso from beginning to end to give you a point of reference. And
then we'll go from there. All right, so here we go. Pulling our first
shot of espresso, I'm going to turn on my scale
and I'm going to go with about 18 grams of beans here. Pour the beans into the grinder. I'm going to take
my porta filter, placed it in under the grinder, and grind my beans halfway through the
grinding my beans. I'm going to take a moment
to distribute my dry dose, smooth out a little
bit, and make some more rooms for the
remainder of the beans. Once all my beans are ground, I'm going to make sure
again that they're properly distributed
in the porta filter. Tap my grind down, place it into the group head and place my scale underneath. I'm going to zero out start
my extraction and start my Tim Er with a goal of getting about 36 grams out
within 25, 35 seconds. I'm keeping an eye
on my extraction to make sure that it's smooth,
that there's no spurting, no channeling, and stop and we have reached about 36.8 grams of espresso
in about 32 seconds. Alright, achieved. We got to where we needed to get within the time
frame that we wanted. Now let's go through
breaking down the steps and figuring
out how to get there. All right, so we've pulled
our first shot of espresso. Some of that may have
made sense to you. None of it might have
made sense to you. But like I mentioned
before, that's the point. You've been exposed
to it. Now let's go and break it
down step by step. And by the end of it, that'll
be you pulling that shot.
4. Equipment: So while we're here, why don't we take a
moment to talk about the equipment that
you might end up needing in order to make
your shot of espresso. Now what you see here is not the end all be all
equipment that you would need. It's certainly not
professional grade. It's definitely a good place
to start if you're at home. But it is only one of
several options that ultimately you do
your research on to figure out what fits
your needs best. So let's go through the components needed in
order to make espresso. Obviously, first, you
would need beans. Finding espresso beans is really just a matter of
your personal taste. The way I picked mine was in
reference to the coffee shop I mentioned in my
sort of about me video coffee shop
that was local to me, that I kept getting my lattes from use the specific company
that was local to us. I basically get my
beans from there. Whatever beans you decide
to pick, totally up to you. With that said, in order
to grind your beans, you need a grinder. Now, there are several
grinders out there. The thing to really
pay attention to is the quality
of the blades and also the fine tunability
of your grind size. These can range from a beginner level to
an advanced level, but ultimately what you
want to pay attention to is high quality blades or burs and some level of fine
tunability that's totally made up word
in your grind size. Once you grind your
beans, they need to be ground into a port filter. Now, full disclosure, this
started out as a black handle, but I very recently learned that these are
not dishwasher safe. At least this specific one. It's now a matt silver
which I mean is not bad. But nonetheless, port filter, the porta filter is the actual tool that
the grinds go into. The port filter usually
comes with a basket. Now this is a
double shot basket. There are single shot basket and double shot basket you collect from the grinder
into the porta filter. And this is where all of the espresso is going
to be extracted from. When you have your espresso
grinds in your porta filter, the next thing you're going
to do is distribute them properly within
your porta filter and then tamp them down. A tamper usually looks
something like this. It can have different
variations, like this is another
form of a tamper. The purpose of this
is to press down on your grinds to remove
as much empty space around the grinds as possible. And also to smooth out the
surface in order to get the water to hit
the grinds evenly. Once that's done, you're placing your porta filter
with the grinds into your espresso maker, which consists of a group head. That's what this is. And when this is heated and
everything like that, the water tank will pass water through that to
create your espresso, which you can collect
in a little cup. Don't need a cup like
this, but they're not very expensive to get on Amazon or wherever you want
to get it from. And it's just, I mean,
they look really cool. This actually started
with some markings on it, but I've washed it so
many times and they've washed off not the biggest
deal in the world, and it was a pretty cheap cup. The other thing
you're going to need, if you noticed in the
reference shot that we pulled, we weighed our espresso beans, and then we weigh
our shot as well. Which leads me to a scale. Now, the scale that you use, this is an Akaya lunar scale. It's a bit more on
the expensive side, but I thought it was really
pretty, so I bought it. But the thing you need
to make sure of is that your scale measures and displays up to the
tenth of a gram. This particular one measures
to the hundredth of a gram, but displays to the tenth, which just makes it more accurate. But as long as you're
measuring and displaying to the tenth of a gram,
then you should be good. The other thing that this scale actually
does have built in, which you can get separately,
or you can use your phone or whatever you want is a timer. Now, the timer is going to be obviously relevant to
when we pull our shot, which we'll get into later. But any type of timer
you want to use, like I said, this one
has one built in. Now one thing you
may have noticed is almost every piece of
equipment that I've mentioned, all referenced back
to this one machine. Now this happens to be a breve barista
Express that tends to be the starting point
for a lot of people. And it is a well known
machine because it's from a reputable company and it's
got everything you need. It's got your tamper here
that's held in magnetically. It's got your grinder,
it's got your group head. It comes with its
own porta filter, which is not this
one, and it comes with a couple of
port filter baskets. This is by no means
sponsored by breve. There are other
companies that make machines that have most, if not all, of these
things in there. This is not by any means
a perfect machine. If, for example, getting into the weeds
here a little bit, has a single water tank. So it doesn't really
work best for making multiple shots and
multiple different drinks because it's switching
temperatures, right? It'll extract at a
certain temperature and then steam milk at a
different temperature. And if you keep doing
that back and forth, your espresso shots are going to degrade and not taste right. Also the grinder is probably on the basic
level of functional. It's got a number
of grind settings. They are whole
numbers, so there's only so much fine tunability, I got to stop using that term. There's only so much
fine tuning you can do within that range
that it gives you. And I have yet to figure out
how strong these blades are. Let's see how long it takes
for them to fade out. But the point is that there is a certain level of limitation to having a machine like this. But if you want to
start out looking for different machines from different companies
that have most, if not all, of what you need
is a good place to start. That being said, especially if you're the type of person who likes the collecting process and likes to figure out
exactly what they want, totally by all means, just make sure that you end up having all the
equipment you need. You should be well on your way.
5. The First Shot & Adjusting Grind Size: So up until this point, we have discussed
what the general idea of what makes up espresso. We have demonstrated
our reference shot, or we've pulled a shot
from beginning to end, breezing through the
step by step process. Again, you don't have to
understand any of it. But the point is, by
the end of this course, you will understand that entire thing completely on your own. Now, the time comes to actually start breaking
this process down. And we're going to break
it down piece by piece. Now, the first thing needed for any espresso is
obviously the beans. We need some beans. Once we have the beans, we need to put them into
the porta filter, which is the actual thing
that holds all the grinds. Which, speaking of
which, we actually have to grind the beans. The question then becomes, if you have your own grinder, and you've seen that there's
settings on the grinder. What setting do we
put the grinder to? How much beans do
we actually put? How much beans is that English? What's the amount of beans that we're
actually going to use? So thinking back to the
definition of espresso, we talked about a
single and double shot. A single shot being
somewhere 7-12 grams, and a double shot being
somewhere 16-22 or 24 grams. That's your dry dose. That is the amount of
dry beans that you're going to use to then
pull your shot. Now we're going to do a
double shot and we're going to go somewhere like smack in the middle, around 18 grams. The reason I'm picking this is because it's in the middle. It's the number that
I've pretty much used and it's the
number that I've heard other places pretty much
using, give or take a gram. But again, speaking of give or take a gram, you
have that range. Eventually when you get point, you can decide how much you
want to add or subtract. We're going to stick
with 18 grams. Then what we're going
to do today is we're going to pull two example shots. And we're going to change the grind setting but not
pick particular settings. We're just going to
go all the way to the maximum and all the
way to the minimum. Now on your machine,
them might be the ultimate fineness or it might be the
ultimate coarseness. In my case, the
highest number is the most coarse grind and the lowest number
is the finest grind. Let's go ahead and do that. Got my beans here, like I said, we're going to go with 18
grams for a double shot. That's going to be our dry dose, which is one of our terms
in our list of terms. What I'm going to do is
pull two different shots, and I'm only going to
focus on one variable, and that is the grind size. Now in this machine,
I have grind size 15-115 being the most course, one being the least course. For the sake of this
course, no pun intended, we're not going to
focus so much on the numbers as much as the
principles because your, the numbers are going to be completely different,
your grinder, the numbers are going
to be completely different in terms
of the settings. What matters is
understanding how to manipulate them to get
your result that you want. For this sake, I'm going
to go one shot with the most coarse setting and the other shot with
the most fine setting. And we're just going
to see what happens for shot number one. We're going to go 18 grams on the dot into the grinder. And I'm going to set my grind setting all the way down to one. My grind setting
is now all the way down to one which
is the most coarse. And we're going to go
ahead and grind our beans. Okay, now I've ground half my
beans because like I said, I'm making a mess. I like to try and distribute
the beans as much as I can before adding the remainder. I have this tool here that
came with the machine. It's basically just
a piece of metal that helps you even things out. And then it has these little
wings here or blades, and it helps you just spread out the beans and we'll
grind the rest. All right, so I've
distributed the beans as much as I could inside
the port filter. And we're going to go
ahead and tamp our beans, our grinds down into
our group head. Now what we're going
to do is we're going to run the machine,
get our espresso, and just see what happens, what we get in the cup, what we get on our scale, what we get with our timer, because we're always
going to be running the timer when we pull
our shots of espresso. Sorry, I know this is a bit slow and boring,
but bear with me. Okay. So the machine's
finally done. I just let the thing run. We got 26.5 grams of espresso in about a
minute, 59 seconds. It is what it is. So
now what we're going to do is we're going to try
the same thing again, but we're going to do it
with the cost grind setting. Okay, I'm going to weigh
out my beans, 18 grams. Once again, 18 grams in.
And we're going to grind. And we're just going to do the same thing we did last time. We're going to distribute
our grins as much as we can, as evenly as we can,
tamp them down. And once again we're
going to pull our shot. We're gonna watch what
happens in the cup, on the timer, and on the scale. Interesting. We got 68.2 0.1 0.1 0.2 gram, 68 grams of espresso and I
almost overflowed in the cup, and we did it in 22 seconds. Now it's almost like those
numbers are reversed before. We did like 26 grams or something like that,
and that was a minute. This time we got 68 grams of espresso
and it took 22 seconds. What we know now is with
the same amount of beans, changing the grind setting
to the most fine setting, and changing the grinds to the most coarse setting changes how much espresso we get and how long it
takes to get that. More specifically, when we
bring it all the way fine, we get a little bit of espresso. And it takes a long time
relative to the cost setting, which didn't take
a lot of time at all to get a lot more espresso. What does this mean then, by keeping it 18 grams? In both examples, the lowest
grind size setting for me, or the finest grind size, slowed things down a lot. It took a lot of time
to get a little bit of espresso relative to
the cost grind setting, which gave us a ton of espresso
in not very much time. This is what gives us a bit
of insight as to what's happening inside of
the Porta filter when pulling our
shot of espresso. Next, let's take a tiny bit
of a deep dive into what extraction and flow
rate actually do when it comes to
pulling a shot of espresso onto the next episode.
6. A Word on Extraction: So we just got done pulling a shot using wildly
different grind sizes with the same amount of dry dose in our porta filter. And we saw that what
basically happened was just extreme differences in how much espresso we got
and how quickly we got it. To be more specific, the coarser grind
size gave us a lot of espresso in a relatively
short period of time relative to the
finer grind size, which gave us not nearly as much and it
took a lot longer. What exactly is going on here
and how do we understand this and play with this
information that we've gotten? Well, I have two jars here, both of espresso beans. One as you can see or maybe can't see because
it's not focused. I'm going to break
the fourth wall for a second and change
the focus here. Great, now I'm out of focus. Try not to let that strain
your eyes too much, but here we have our
two grind sizes. And this jar of beans is going to be full beans
that are not ground. And that's going to represent
your course grind size. This jar is finely ground beans, which are going to represent
your finely ground beans. What we're going to do
here is we're going to pour some water into
both of these jars. And we're going to see
what exactly happens. And we're going to do
this in real time. So it might be a
little bit boring, but here I'm going to pour some water into the fine grinds. Here we go, on this side, can you see what's
happening there? The course grinds
already have water all the way at the
bottom. No real surprise. The fine grinds are still, I don't know if you
can see bubbling away. Bubbling because the
air is coming out. But very slowly going down, I still got a ton of
water up top here. What's going on here? Let
me get the focus back. It might be a no brainer to you, but obviously this jar of beans doesn't really have much resistance for the
water to go to the bottom. Whereas this basically jar of mud is taking forever for
the water to pass through. In fact, it might not even be going down that much anymore. This explains what we're dealing with in terms
of the amount of time it took us to get the espresso shots
that we just pulled, But also because we're giving a certain amount of time for the water to be fed
through the machine, you're going to get a
lot more espresso going through the coarser beans given the same amount of
water being passed through. Right? Because the
fine beans look, they haven't even
reached the bottom yet. But there's another subtle point that we're dealing with here. And that is, if you take
a look at this jar, if you look how quickly
it went to the bottom, some of these beans
might not even be wet. And the ones that did
get wet only got in contact with the water for a
very brief period of time. And this brings an interesting
topic of extraction, which is one of the terms
we have on our list. Specifically two other terms, under and over extraction. It's important to
go through this because I have found that there seems to be some misconception
of what extraction is. For some people, extraction
to simply understand it, is the beans ability to give
off what it has to offer. If you have water passing
over the beans very quickly in your
espresso machine, the beans are ground up. They've got oils,
they've got caffeine. They've got all of
these different solutes that the whole point of passing water over them is to pull them out into the water
or extract them. If the water doesn't stay in contact with the
beans long enough for the beans to give what
they have to offer, then the beans will not have been extracted of what
they have to offer, they will be under extracted. The water will end up coming
out at the other end, fairly dilute. There
won't be much in it. However, if you pass the water long enough
over the beans, you will eventually wash the beans of what
they have to offer. They will then be
over extracted. But I'm making a point about
that for a specific reason. Now, before I clarify that, let's look at the finer grinds. How this water is sitting
there for this long. It hasn't moved.
It's got no more, like it's no more water up top. It's got no more reason to move down So that water is sitting, overstaying its welcome
around those beans. Now, as the water sits
around these ground beans, the beans will continue
to give what they have to offer until the
water is saturated. And then as the water
continues to pass through, the next amount of water
that's coming through, the next drop of
water comes through. And it doesn't have
anything to pull because the beans have been
over extracted. Important to understand that
under and over extraction is not really a
static definition. It doesn't necessarily just happen in coarse or fine grinds. Because again, going back
to the course grinds, if I pass the water over
these beans very quickly, but for a very short
period of time, there isn't going
to be enough time for the beans to give
what they have to offer, and that will be
under extracted. However, if I run it for longer and I run more
water over the beans, the beans will become
over extracted, essentially like
they're being washed. Now, going back to
the fine grinds, if I'm passing
water through here, sitting there for a long time, it's going to spend more time
extracting from the beans. But if the water
now sits there and it's saturated and
not pulling more, the beans don't have any wear to give what they have to offer, and those beans might
stay under extracted. The point here is, again, going with one
method or another, or making one
mistake or another, doesn't necessarily give you the answer as to whether you have over or
under extraction. Also, the volume
that you play into the espresso does
not necessarily define extraction either
over or under either. It's important to understand what's happening
with extraction and the multiple factors going
into it will help you understand if something is
over or under extracted. Now the greater point
that we're dealing with is some other subtlety
that we've seen now, which is it's not
just the amount of water that we
have going through, but it's also how
quickly it passes. Both of these things
make a difference. What we're dealing with
is how much the amount of something and how quickly
or the time it takes, like miles per hour being an amount of distance
over a period of time. That's the rate of
speed. We're not dealing with the
rate of speed here, but we're dealing
with a rate of flow. How much water is flowing
over? What period of time? That's flow rate, which is another term on our
list of definitions. Understanding flow rate is the amount of water that's going through the beans and
how quickly it's passing. Now if we think back to our
two shots that we pulled, the really course grinds gave us a lot of
espresso at the end, which means a large
volume of water or a certain amount of water went through the beans at a
certain period of time. Then when we look
at the fine beans, a lesser amount of water went through over a greater
period of time. Which means the flow rate was significantly greater with the coarser beans
than the finer beans. Looking at this visual
here with these two jars, that doesn't seem too
difficult to understand. Obviously, if you
have coarser beans, you have more space to
pass, less resistance. And it'll go faster if over
a certain period of time, faster through the beans
is going to lead to more and slower through the beans is going
to lead to less. And there you have your
flow rate determining your espresso at the end now, is it over extracted
in one or the other? Is it under extracted
in one or the other? You can't really
tell that answer, which is why super high end professional baristas and scientists will use
refractometers, which is beyond the scope
of this discussion. But they will look at
the espresso that's pulled and basically look at how much distortion there is, how much refraction there is. Because that gives an idea
of how much solute there is. If you have a certain
amount of volume and a certain amount of solute in there and it could be diluted or it could
be concentrated, That's a whole other thing, but the important thing
to understand is that flow rate
affects your extraction. Why? Because you want to find that fine balance
of passing water over your beans at
a certain rate so that it spends enough time
around the beans to extract, but you also want a
certain volume of water to continue
to pass so that a good distribution of the extract is in a
certain amount of water. Because if you put too much
water over too much time, you'll wash the beans, you'll extract all of the beans
of everything they've got. But you'll have a dilute shot, vice versa, for a
concentrated shot. That's how we
understand extraction and flow rate and how they
relate to each other. The next step will be
figuring out how to get the balance between
these two and get to a flow rate that gives
us the extraction we want.
7. The Macro - Fine tuning Our Grind Size: So up until now we've actually gained quite a bit
of information. So we started out pulling
two different shots. We picked a certain dry dose to put in our porta
filter and we selected two completely
opposite end grind sizes and
pulled our shots. We noticed that one gave a lot of espresso
really quickly, the other one gave
a little bit of espresso and took
a while to do it. Then we took the next step to understand what's happening
inside the port filter. So we've ground our beans,
picked our dry dose, picked our grind
size, in our case, two different grind sizes. Put it in the port filter, tamped it down in the group head and let
water pass through. That's the stage we got to where we started to ask
some more questions. What we realized using
our example with the two jars is we had a visual representation of when you have two different
grind sizes, you're going to affect how
much water can pass through the grinds in a given period of time and how quickly
they can pass through, or to put that last
one a different way, how much time the
water is going to spend up against the grinds. And what that ends
up affecting is how much the grinds are able to give, what
they have to offer, or how much the grinds are
able to be extracted of what they have in the oils and the caffeine
and the solutes, et cetera, how much water
passes through and how long it sits up against
the grinds will make an effect of how your espresso. Turns out, understanding
both of those variables, IE, the quickness with which it
passes through, the grinds, and how much water
is actually passing through gives us our flow rate. These are all the
important terms we've learned up until now. The question then becomes, how can we then go back to the first two shots and
change what happened? But then the question
then becomes, what matters about
what even happened? What did even happen? Well, let's go back to the definition of espresso as we've defined it in the
beginning of this course. We said it's for a single shot, seven to 12 grams, or a double shot, 16 to 22, or 24 grams of dry dose with the extraction ratio of
one to 1.8 to one to 2.2 over 25 to 35 seconds. Maybe those numbers make a little bit more
sense as to how we're going to play with them
if we took those numbers, the finishing time, the ratio, which may not make
complete sense to you yet, or you may be putting
the pieces together and we look back at the
shots that we pulled. One took like 20 seconds
or something like that, don't even remember the numbers. And the other one took
well over 45, 52nd. It took a minute for the
other shot to be pulled. Clearly, when it comes
to the definition saying 25 to 35 seconds, we're off on both counts. But what about this
extraction ratio? Well, first let's go
back to the machine, and let's adjust our
grind sizes a little bit to get them closer
to where we need to be. Now, before we do that, what I am going to say, and I
mentioned this before, I'm not going to make a point of what grind size
setting I'm picking. I'm just going to make
a point of where I'm moving the grind size setting relative to the previous shot. Because your grinder will act differently depending on
which model you have, depending on how old it is, and depending on what you
parameters you're looking for. But the concept of how we adjust these parameters
is really what matters. So let's go back
to the machine and start adjusting our
grind size, okay? So I've got my grinder prepped, and I've got the grind size currently at the
coarsest setting. So what I'm going to do
is I'm going to drop it a couple of notches and now we're going to
grind our 18 grams and we're going to
pull another shot. And then what I'm going to do after that is we're going to go down to the finest
setting and move it up a couple of
notches and then do the same thing and see what
happens with our numbers. Okay? So we went from the coarsest grind
setting that we had before, dropped it a couple of notches, and now we have
some new numbers. But before I show
you the numbers, you'll notice that I stopped the machine. Now,
why did I do that? This brings me to
the other piece of information that we have in
terms of our definitions. Now we talked about
extraction time, which was the 25 to
35 second range. That's the amount
of time it takes to get to your desired
point of espresso. But the other definition
that we didn't define yet, which I'm about to
tell you right now, is extraction ratio. Now we go back to the
definition and we mentioned 11.81 to 2.2 What
does that mean? That is the ratio that
you want to get out in grams of your espresso compared to the dry
dose that you put in. Now, the typical ratio to start with is pretty much
right in the middle, just like everything
else, one to two. And that's the ratio that
I've been using, what you. Want to shoot for in that point is if we're going
with 18 grams in, we want to try to get 36
grams of espresso out. Now what I decided to do for
this shot in order to bring that definition into
the context is stop the machine as soon as we
got to about 36 grams. Now I did miss it a little bit and we ended up
getting 38 grams. But look at how
quickly we got it. 18 seconds for 38 grams. Now, what does that
mean? Well, the first shots that we pulled,
we just ran the machine. Just to give you an
example of what happened. But now we have a bit
of a reference point. But why don't we continue
to find the grind down and see if we can continue to get it closer to our
desired extraction time, which is 25 to 35 seconds. All right, 18 grams in a
few notches more fine. So let's see what we get now. Okay, I got a little bit closer
on the extraction ratio. This time I got 36.5 grams
and it took me 26 seconds. Now, to be fair, a little bit of an
error because I did start the timer a little bit too quickly and it didn't
stop just in time. I would say it's probably
23 to 24 seconds. But we're making
the grind a little bit finer and we're getting
closer to our goal. Now, like I said before, you could play around in
both directions, right? You can at home experiment with two shots of the complete
opposite ends of grind size. And then you could one
by one on each side, bring it closer and closer. And that might
seem like a waste, but when you do it the
first time around, it teaches you so much
that you walk away with a ton of information and you
never have to do that again. Really, I encourage
you to do that, to get familiar
with your grinder, to get familiar
with the process, do be careful
because your grinder could distort the
grinds over time. If you keep grinding
again, again, again depend on how high
quality your grinder is. But the point is just because I'm changing the grind setting in one direction doesn't mean you
have to do that. I would encourage you to go in both directions and see what
happens in either direction. You might find that
you'll come to your desired grind size
a bit more quickly. We're going to try
one more time to get the grind size closer
to where we need to go. And see what happens then, huh? A couple of things that
are going on here. One is we got it in
about 36.4 seconds, which comes down to me
not being super accurate, stopping the timer
or the machine. We got it in 27 seconds. We got within the range
of 25 to 35 seconds, we got our extraction
ratio that we wanted. What we've really
realized here and made apparent is that by putting all of these
parameters together, by controlling how much is in the porta filter and how
fine or coarse it is, combined with what we
talked about with properly tamping and properly
distributing the dose to the best
of our ability, we affect how quickly the water passes through the
porta filter and therefore, how much water comes out
the other end or espresso, and how long that water sits with the beans to be able
to extract what it can. You notice that the espresso
even looks different. It's got more crema on top, It's got a little
bit more substance, it looks less watery. So this is really just a
realization of these factors, the theory that goes into
pulling a shot out of espresso, and there's tons more science. But this is the basic level. This is for you to be
able to understand how to manipulate these parameters
to get where you need to get. But speaking of which, like I said, we're within the range, but for me at least my goal is typically 30 seconds.
What do I do now? By the way, incidentally, did you notice anything
that's happened to this shot? While I've been talking to you, the chroma up top
is a lot less than it was when we finished
pulling the shot. Why am I making a point to this? Well, let me ask
you this. This is an old cup that's been washed a lot, all the markings are gone. But if you had a cup that
had markings of ML's on it when the Ma was thicker, how high
would that number be? Do you measure from the top of the Ma or do you measure
from the bottom? Now, if you measured from
the bottom and the Ma thinned out, where is that line? Now, if you've got good enough
chroma on your espresso, if you wait long enough, the volume will change. Do you see where I'm going here? That's why we don't measure
our espresso in volume. We measure the extraction
ratio based on the dry dose and we weigh it in grams because as the
chroma goes away, you're not losing the
weight of the shot. That helps to be more accurate. Onto the next episode where
we're going to talk about one last thing to
dial in your shot.
8. A Word on Tamping & Dose Distribution: So in this episode, I
wanted to take a moment to talk to you about two things, tamping and dose distribution, which also is on our
list of terms to define. Tamping is an important part of the process of pulling
a shot of espresso. And if you've been to a shop or watching this series here, you've seen that
there's a period of time after you
grind your beans where you're using a tool to push down on the grinds
or tamp them down. Now it's important to pay attention to this and
spend some time on it because not only is this
an important aspect of getting the shot that you want for the reasons we're
going to describe in a moment. But there's also a
bit of misconception, at least from what I understand, with regards to tamping
and what you should be focusing on and what matters
when it comes to tamping. Now in the references below, I've mentioned James Hoffman and Scott Yo, who are, I mean, two of really the only
resources you really need to get started out like there's tons of information
that they teach. But Scott actually talks
about this in his books, where if you think
about the fact that this machine is using pressurized water to
pull a shot of espresso. And you look out there
and a lot of people will say that there's a certain
amount of weight you need to be putting in your tamping when you're
tamping your shot down. That it needs to be like
roughly 35 pounds of pressure. When I first started out, I started looking
for like scales that I could use to figure out how much pressure I'm
putting and learn that muscle memory until Scott
mentioned an interesting point. First of all, the
machine that you're using typically will put
6789 bar of pressure, which is way more pressure than the 35 pounds you're
going to be putting with your hand If you
think you're under or over tamping because
you're not doing 35 pounds. It seems like a bit
of a moot point when the machine is putting
so much more pressure. The other thing in the
opposite direction, if you've ever seen a
sponge that's dry or like a packed piece of dirt
and you put water on it, what happens? It expands. Now, in the machine,
there's a period of time where the machine is pre
wetting your grinds, right? It's adding water to make the entire stack of
grinds or the puck moist. And then it passes the water through for a number of reasons. But the point here is
that if that's happening, the pressure that you
applied is being released. Maybe it's not a lot, but whatever accuracy
you tried to shoot for, that pre wetting is going
to negate that as well. Then the question becomes,
what's the point of tamping? Well, the point of
tamping is twofold. One, it's to reduce the space within the grinds so that
the water has some pressure, some resistance to push against. But also creating some level of uniformity through
the grinds in order to ensure to the best of your ability that the water
is going to pass evenly, that it has some level
of even resistance. The second part of
that is essentially polishing the top of
your espresso puck. By polishing the top,
you also increase the chances that the water
will distribute fairly evenly. Or you reduce the chances that the water will pick one
spot versus the other, which is channeling, which we're going to talk
about in a bit. The other aspect of tamping, which comes before tamping technically is
dose distribution. Now that's what I'm going to get into right now before we
talk about the tamping. Because the tamping
is really, I mean, once you understand
what your goal is, it's not that involved. But let's talk a little bit
about dose distribution. And I'm going to
show you two tools, one which came with my machine and one which I
bought separately. Both of which will give you a
bit of an idea of what they accomplish and what the
potential ramifications of each one can be.
So let's take a look. Okay, one of the things that you'll notice here
or may not notice, but I'll tell you
is I've actually only done half of
my grind so far. I've mentioned this
before, that one of the techniques that I
use at home, since time, is not of the essence
necessarily is I only grind a certain portion of my beans first in order to
distribute these. Create more room
and make sure that the bottom layer is
well distributed. Roughly before I
add the rest of it, what I've noticed
is having all of the beans ground right into the porta filter before
distributing and tamping them just makes a
bigger mess and it makes it more difficult
for me to manage. And also, I lose out on, you know, small grams of beans because they end
up falling out anyway. So here I have my first half of my 18 grams in the port of filter and I'm tap it down to get the beans
to come down a bit. And you already noticed that a lot of it's already come down. This gives you an idea
of how much space there is among the grinds for you to actually remove.
Bringing it down a bit. Many people, and this is
pretty normal practice, will use their finger to
actually spread it out. Now I'm using this to demonstrate the first tool
that I want to show you. This is just a blade is distributing blade that
came with my machine. One of the things you can do is you can use it like a card, you can use it to
spread your beans out. Then on the edge of these two
fins and what you can do. Spin it around, and
you might notice that the excess beans up top are being pushed into the
****** that are there. Now obviously this isn't smooth, there's still a lot
of rough edges, but the point is you've got some level of distribution
and now I'm going to go grab the rest of my
beans which are now sitting on top and
not overflowing. So I'll use the back to get the beans kind of in some of these grooves
that are available. You already see I
spilled some out there trying not to do that
because it's just a waste. And getting them into
the grooves here, not the most exciting
thing in the world, but it gives you an idea of what it means to
distribute your dose here. Okay, most of the
gus are filled. Tapping it down a little bit, you notice something
interesting right there. This crack down the middle. One thing that's really
important to remember, and we'll talk about
channeling it a bit, is you don't want
to be tapping this once you've tamped
down your grinds. Because if a crack
like that shows up, you've now ruined
everything that you've tried to do by tamping everything and
distributing it properly. And now you have an
area for the water to just channel right through. It's just going to ruin
your espresso shot. This is the tricky part, trying to get all of
the beans distributed. And I'm making it a bit
laborious here for a reason. Now for those of you who would be using a
technique like this, the point of this is to show that it works and it's not a bad thing
to do to get an idea. Get your hands in all this stuff and
see how it all works, but it also gives you an idea. It's not the cleanest
way to do it. I've distributed it as best I can without making
too much of a mess. Now take my tamper. Place it on top with the bottom here
flat as much as I can, making sure it's as
even as possible. And I will place pressure
with my fingers. You can see on the edge here. That just helps me make sure that I'm applying
even pressure. Because what you don't
want to do is apply pressure this way or that way. You want to apply even
pressure and polish the top. Now you have your tamped grimes. Now what we're going to do
is I'm going to show you up close because the bottom of this ported filter
is bottomless. I'm going to show
you up close what it looks like when these
beans are extracted. What the flow looks like and what the potential
mess might look like. Okay, round two. This time I've got my same first half of my
grinds in my Port filter, except this time I'm
using one of these. This is a type of distribution tool and you can see one side is totally flat. Other side has got some of these little wings here, these fins. This side is your tamping side, this side is your
distribution side. Now most of the distribution
tools like this, these threads on both sides. And you can basically set
the depth of how far, how deep you want
the tamper to go, how deep you want the
distribution part to go. I have it pretty much
set the way I want. So what we're going to do here, I've got my first half here and I'm going to take the fins, put them in and turn
in one direction, turn in the other direction, because the fins are at different angles depending on the direction
you're turning it. As you can see, it's
pretty distributed, there's ****** here,
but we haven't filled the port of filter
with our grind yet. Go back and fill some more. Write it out a little bit here. Take my fins again,
place it inside. Now you might see this time,
well you can't really see. But if you see here, these
edges are not resting on the basket because there's
a lot of grinds in there. But we're going to
turn in one direction, Turn, turn, I know
this is super boring. Turn in the other direction. Not really putting any pressure other than the weight
of the tool itself. Now you look, it's pretty
much resting right on it because the distribution
has done this. And you can see here that
it's a lot smoother, but it's not tamped yet. We're now going to take the
other side, place it here. And now the beauty of
this is the fact that because the edges are essentially
resting on the basket, and I know it's a little
bit out of focus here, but because they're resting
on the edges you press, you're not worried about
putting too much weight, You're worried about
putting uneven weight. There's going to be an even
distribution because it can't go in one direction
and not the other. All you're worried about
is making it smooth, polishing it down there
you have your smooth. Puck. Now what we're going to do is we're going to
put it into the port filter and see how much better of a flow we get compared
to the first one. First lesson right off the bat is it doesn't always
come out perfect. But the other thing
that I wanted to demonstrate was there was a little bit of a
difference in the flow. Now with the distribution tool, I got much more even of a
distribution in my puck. I got a more even tamping simply because
by way of the tool, you can't really go
outside of what it allows. And of course that's up to
you to set with the threads. But the point is, gives you a more consistent shot
every single time. The other thing that I didn't actually show on the camera, but you may have noticed, is it took a little bit longer
to pull that second shot. Some of that does come
down to the fact that if you tamp it and distribute
it a little bit better, it reduces what we
call channeling. Now, before we get to that, just take a look at the
two shots again and notice the mess
that each one made. One of them had, I think, more consistent and more
widespread spurting. It had these little shots of espresso coming out in
different directions. That was more the first
shot from what I saw. The second one did have
moments where it did that, but it didn't do it as much. But on the flip side, it did have these slight
interruptions and flow. Nonetheless, we did get our desired shot within pretty much our desired
periods of time. But the difference comes to
looking at that spurting, I was talking about those
different little streaks of espresso coming
out of the puck. Now that refers to what's
called channeling. Now, channeling, just
like in any other type of flow of water or
any other liquid, when the water finds a path of least resistance, it
will take that path. This leads to a couple
of interesting points. Number one, it gives an idea of how well distributed your grinds are evenly off the standard. The mean they are like, you'll get some more course and less coarse grinds from
one grind setting. But it's a matter of the
average of all of it that comes down to your
grinder and how good the burrs or
the blades are. But the other thing is
distributing them and tamping them to make sure you remove as much space from it as possible. What I was talking about before, when I was tapping
on that first puck, there was a crack that came. Now, that was before I tamped. But if you have a crack
like that when you do tamp it and then you
put it in the machine, the water is just going to
go right through that spot. Which means you're going
to get uneven extraction, which means some spots will be under and some spots
will be over extracted. You will get way
too fast of a shot. It'll probably be dilute, but your parameters will all be off and ultimately your
taste will be off. And also it removes any of
the control that you have. In trying to nail
all of this down, how do we remove the risk, or the frequency, or the amount of
channeling that occurs? Well, distributing your dose inside of your porta
filter as best you can. Having a good grinder with clean good burs so that you can get an even grind
every single time. Making sure you tamp
down as best you can. Then at the end of it,
once you've tamped it down and you're ready
to put in the machine, try not to jostle
the porta filter around because it
will then crack. Even if it doesn't
crack down the middle, it can loosen from the side, then you'll just get
channeling around the sides. That's one of the
benefits of having a bottomless port
filter that I found. It does look really cool, which hopefully some of
the shots do look cool. But it also helps you diagnose downside
makes a ton of a mess. But that's now an understanding of dose distribution,
tamping, channeling. Let's get to the final shot. Let's put all this together. There is one more
parameter that we haven't really taken into account that we're going to
on this last episode. Then we're going to go back and pull our reference
shot one more time. But this time you're going to know exactly what's happening
from beginning to end.
9. The Micro - The Role of Dry Dose Adjustment: Up until this
point, we've pretty much covered almost everything. We've talked about
the definition of espresso and understanding the parameters to dial in
what we're trying to pull. We've understood
pretty much everything in the glossary. We've
defined all of it. In our last shot, we
realized that by dialing in our grind size to
just the area we want, we can get 18 grams to
give us about 36 grams, give or take, one
or two tenths of a gram within 25 to 35 seconds. In fact, we got just above 25, we got 26, 27 seconds. Now the question is, what's
the next thing to set? Because let's say I go for 30/32 every single
time I pull a shot. But you might notice if you're experimenting, which
I hope you are. If I move the grind setting
even one more click, it might push me in
the other direction. It might put me just
outside the parameters. I might be sitting
here floating back and forth among my time range, but not really nailing it
to the time that I want. Well, let's think back
to the jar example. We talked about how
having finer grinds and coarser grinds affects how
quickly the flow rate occurs, added more grinds, right? Because we remember we're
going for 18 grams, but the range is 16 to 22. Now if you think about it,
if I added more grind, that would increase
the amount of time for the water to
get to the bottom, just by way of a greater
distance to travel. Let's go for 19 grams. 19 grams in same
grind size settings, going for 25, 35 seconds
with 36 grams out. Well, would you look at that 40 seconds to
get to 36.5 grams. All we did was add
1 gram of espresso. What have we learned
here? We've definitely learned that there is one
more parameter that we can play with to figure out how to get us closer
to where we want to get. But there's another thing
that we need to talk about. Actually, there's a couple of things we need to talk about. Let's go back to the section. We just demonstrated
something in real time. Adding a single gram
of espresso took us significantly outside of our time frame, in
the other direction. Now we're talking about
micro adjustments now. That's a pretty
macro adjustment, but I added a whole gram to
prove the point that you have the ability to change so much with just 1 gram of coffee. And we're talking about
a couple more beans. Here's the thing
though. First of all, you notice something. If you look back to
the definition of espresso, you might
have picked this up. We added 19 grams now, which means our dry dose is not matching our
extraction ratio. One to two would have
been about 38 grams out. Now granted, you do have
the range of 1.8 up to 2.2 but the point is changing
these parameters like this, you have to be cognizant
of the end result. Whatever end result
you're shooting for, you do have to make
sure that you meet the variables that
you're entering in the beginning. Hope
that makes some sense. But more importantly, this is where it's
important to talk about why we pick grind size as
your initial adjustment with a single dry dose
and then changing later if 1 gram changed our, our extraction that much, then that means that if
we put just a little bit, we can still manage to
get a little bit of a change without
using too many beans. This is the first point when
you adjust your grind size. Think back to one of
the first lectures in this series that we talked
about, your grinder. When you first grind beans, you have to grind about five, sometimes even 10
grams of wasted beans. To buffer the burs, there has to be some level
of grinds inside the burs, otherwise you're
not going to get the dose out that you put in. Also, every time you
change the grind size, you have to re buffer
because the beans that are sitting
inside the grinder are the previous grind size. You might see where
I'm going with this. Then also, every
time you clean it, you have to make sure you go through that buffering as well. But if you're
constantly changing your grind size and never really finding
the one you want, you're always wasting
five to 10 grams of beans every time
you change it. The second reason is what we just talked about,
The macro and the micro. The grind size, because
they are finite numbers, is going to be a macro
adjustment, fine tuning. It is not for the grinder. Once you set that grind size, you pretty much always
want to leave it there. But now you get to
play around with your dose because
everything has a range. Like you can go 16 to 22
grams and you can do a one to 1.8 to one to
2.2 extraction ratio. And you have to get it
within, or you should get it within 25 to 35 seconds. You have room to play here. Ultimately what ends up mattering is you getting
to your end result. If we were to add a four of
a gram or a half a gram, which we're going to
demonstrate in a moment, you'll notice that
you get to move the timer a little
bit more finely. The final point that I want to make with all of
this before we pull our final shot is at
the end of the day. This is all taste. If you decide that your shot
tastes better with 18.5 grams at 42 seconds or whatever other variations
you want to make. If it tastes amazing to you, if you nail it
every single time, the same way and you're
like, this is it for me, I love it, Then what
does it really matter? We're going through all of these parameters
because we want to learn the way to do it,
the science behind it. And then we can add to the art. But having the foundation
and understanding the parameters can then
allow you to manipulate. It. Can then allow you to change certain things and
add or subtract certain techniques
that ultimately make it yours. That's
the point here. There is no right
or wrong answer. Ultimately, if you, at
the end of the day, are loving what you're making, If you're making it for
yourself and you love it, odds are someone else is
going to love it too. While we've been very
stringent on the rules here, let's use them to our advantage to then find the
exceptions to that rule. That's a good one.
I like that one. Now what we're going to
do in the final episode, we're going to go
back to our reference shot and pull one more shot. And I'm going to tell you every single thing that I'm doing, what goals I'm shooting for, and what my end result is.
Then you're on your own.
10. Skillshare Espresso Episode 10 The Final Shot 1: So you've made it to
the final episode. Thank you for staying this long. Thank you for finding some benefit. Can I
thank you for that? I hope you've found
some benefit. I would assume if you're
at this point now, you have found some benefit. Before we get into
this final thing, please leave comments
on what you think, how it benefited you, what
you think could be better. I'm more than happy
to revamp this if it's actually reaching people
and serving some benefit. But you think I could do
it better, let me know. I would love to
hear your comments. I'd love to hear your
experimentation, your results, the things you've learned about espresso yourself. Hopefully, if I do this right, there will also be references to some books and resources in general that I think
are super useful. Like I mentioned, Scott 0 and James Hoffman are
like the go to. Yeah, here we are at the final step of putting everything together
that we've learned and making our shot of espresso. Going back to our
reference shot, but this time you're going
to understand it from beginning to end, what
we've understood. We understand the definition of espresso based on those things. We understand that there
is a certain amount of your dry dose or the grinds in the porter
filters that you want. They're going to be a
certain grind setting. When you have that,
you distribute them to the best of your
ability as evenly as possible. You tamp them down to reduce the space around the
grinds and also to polish the surface so that the water can hit as
evenly as possible. And then you put it
in your group head and you pass the water through. And your grind size and dry dose combined will
affect your flow rate, which is the amount of
water passing through in a given period of time and how quickly that water
passes through. Also by extension, how long that water comes
in contact with the grinds in order to extract the goodness that's in these beans that gives
you your espresso. Those things combined give you your extraction ratio goal, which is based off
of your dry dose and your extraction time, which both of those are going to be affected
by your flow rate. And there you have espresso. We also realized that there are certain parameters
that you have that will affect your dose on the macro and it'll affect your espresso dose on the micro. Figure out your grind setting. First, get yourself within the range of what you want to be at and then start
adjusting your dry dose. I would say by like a quarter
of a gram at a time. Right? And then use that to
nail your final point. With all of that recapped, let's go pull a
shot of espresso. And you're going to notice
a few nuances that are different from the
specific parameters we've talked about.
Let's get to it. First step, as always, is to weigh out our beans
before we grind them. This time I'm going
for about 18.7 18.8 grams into the grinder. Grinding it directly
into our port filter in two phases to distribute it
more evenly and more neatly. Once we've ground all of our
grinds into the port filter, we distribute them and we
tamp them down to smooth out the surface and to reduce the amount of space
among the grinds. We then place it
into the group head. Place our cup on a scale
and run the machine. And notice how smooth
the flow is through the porta filter and aiming for 25 to 35 seconds to
get 36 grams out. Although this time I
went to 36 seconds and then we have our shot. Like I said, hopefully
that entire process now made way more sense to you than the first time we
went through the shot. You'll notice that
I went a little bit off the expected parameters. I pulled a 36 gram shot and I pulled it in about
35, 36 seconds. But I also put in 18.7
grams of dry dose. And I typically do like 18.5 to 18.8 Now why do I do this? Well, after doing it every single day for
like a year and a half, now you start to pick
up on certain things. Like, for example,
some of the shots you saw earlier in this course. As we were getting
to the right point, they were still spurting. There was still some channeling. It wasn't flowing the best. Whereas this shot
flowed completely, perfectly smack in the middle. With perfect striping down, like there was no channeling. It was all perfect. What I've noticed
is that it gives me the most consistent
and the best taste, the taste that I'm looking for. That's what I want
to highlight here. Yes, all of these parameters are in place and they give
you a foundation, but ultimately you're
consuming this. It's something for you to enjoy, it's something for
your palette to enjoy. Ultimately, deviate
from the rules and you make something
that you love. Well, first of all, that's
really all that matters. And secondly, chances are someone else is going
to love it too. That's really all that matters. This space where you're learning this and you're
able to put comments. You can talk about how you tweaked yours to make
your shot yours, but from a specific
tactical point of view. The reason why I changed
these parameters is because I noticed that when I got
to the right grind size, it took me a couple of weeks of grinding at a
particular size to then change it again and get
to that right spot. Then I noticed that if I added
a little bit more grinds, added to the dry dose, it started to slow the flow down a little bit better.
It made it neater. Right? Which is really
important too because what, you know is you're getting decent extraction that led
to a slightly longer time, but everything else turned
out the way it should. At least in my mind.
It was smoother, it was cleaner, it was neater,
it was more consistent. I could replicate it
every single time. Like I just said, it
just tasted good. That is my attempt at sharing with you my
process of learning, espresso, understanding it
down to the nitty gritty now, down to like all of the
facets and variables and things that go
into making espresso, adjusting it, tweaking it, correcting errors, who knows
where this might lead you. Thank you again for being here. Leave comments. Let me
know what you think. Ask questions and if I
can answer them, I will. If I can't, I'll find
someone who can enjoy.
Atif Farooqi
