4 ms·

If you don't mind sharing, what's your recipe / trick?

bigfudge 2y ago
In my experience, mostly just buying nice beans and not doing anything stupid with them. The hangover from Italian style coffee is quite strong and means we get a lot of over-roasted beans (or at least, cheap beans over-roasted to disguise the quality. This style was a necessity when Italians imported low grade beans from their own colonies in the 19th and early 20thC, but if buying single origin beans lighter roasts are (imo) just much more interesting and less bitter/harsh.
Arch-TK 2y ago
It's not really a trick, you need good quality coffee (lighter roasts are going to inherently end up less bitter and more acidic but realistically you can normally get something balanced from any roast level), a high quality grinder (too much grind inconsistency will make it difficult to get a reliable extraction, one time you might get a coffee that tastes good and the next it takes half the time to extract and tastes awful as a result), a good machine which doesn't go above 9 bars of pressure, and a lot of patience/experience. As a general rule, the lighter you go the harder it is to extract the coffee. The more expensive the equipment will need to be. To make good espresso from light roasts you can benefit from a machine which can handle flow profiling as the puck is so unstable at lower roasts that consistency becomes very difficult. So you pick a medium roast, a good quality grinder (although even in the expensive range, different types and subtypes of burr will produce different results) and a quality machine which can hold a stable temperature. Next, it's important to keep it all consistent, weigh the coffee, weigh the output. Things like WDT[0] can help get an even distribution of coffee in the portafilter, although recently people have started looking at shaking the coffee grounds as a better option, although there's some limited research on this. To go the extra mile, RDT[1] can help increase grind consistency, and so can freezing the coffee beans (although usually you want to single dose the coffee to avoid condensation on your frozen beans slowly causing the moisture content to increase). I also use paper filters below and above the puck, as well as a mesh filter on top of the paper filter, this helps distribute water, prevent clogging, and improve reliability (it's honestly quite a surprisingly noticeable difference). Now for dialling in: You pull a shot, you taste it, as a general rule of thumb if it tastes empty and sour you should pull a longer shot (higher output weight), if it tastes bitter and/or salty then you should pull a shorter shot (lower output weight). Once your flavors are balanced you can adjust the grind to increase or reduce the overall concentration to your taste. For medium roast I normally aim for 1:2.5 ratio (15g of ground coffee in, 37.5g of liquid coffee out) and adjust from there. The timing is a complex topic which depends highly on what you're trying to do, turbo shots naturally run very fast, blooming shots naturally run very long. You should try to get the machine to run between 20 and 35 seconds but if it tastes better if you go longer/shorter then don't blindly stick to this. It's difficult to get good espresso reliably, and especially so when you are doing it at home and don't have a day's worth of customers to offset the cost of a wasted few shots. But it's possible. You also have to start over every time you get new coffee beans. For reference, my setup is a Gaggia classic modded with flow profiling (gagguino mod) with a niche zero conical burr grinder. I live far enough away from London that Brita filtering the water produces good quality results, but some people may want to distill and re-mineralise water using a recipe for maximum consistency. [0]: https://www.baristahustle.com/weiss-distribution-technique/ https://www.baristahustle.com/weiss-distribution-technique/ [1]: https://www.beanground.com/ross-droplet-technique/ https://www.beanground.com/ross-droplet-technique/
- eurg 2y ago
  This was a nice overview, and I basically concur. I want to add a few things. Once you know your grinder, too high a max pressure is not so much of a problem, as choking a shot becomes a rare issue. Consistently good Espresso is easier using a slightly coarse ground, but something needs to give, like texture or concentration. Taken together, cheap machines can work well, although learning on them can be frustrating. Use fresh roasts, and use them up quickly. Some days after opening a bag of not single dose frozen beans , many coffees lose their good aroma, and only the roast itself remains.
- m3kw9 2y ago
  To get a better taste I lower my standards a bit to the level of my equipment
  - brnt 2y ago
    This is my solution. I already drink way too much coffee (aka rocket fuel), if I would make it _tasty_, I'd certainly develop issues.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    I switched over to tea (plain, no sugar) because I am less disappointed by mediocre tea than I am mediocre coffee. Several times a week I use one of those stainless steel conical fine mesh filters to make a single cup of coffee. Pouring boiling water over the stainless mesh filter (into the sink), to preheat it, before adding the ground coffee beans radically improves the flavor of the coffee.
    - m3kw9 2y ago
      I heard if you use immersion type method like the Hario switch it is very forgiving and consistent even if you screwup grind size and temperature. Vs percolation (flow) v60 you have to deal with a lot more issues such as time/flow rate, channeling etc.
- sjm 2y ago
  Good advice, but honestly given how complicated puck prep can be I'd suggest people struggling just go for turbo shots directly (coarse grinds, 1:2/1:2.5 ratio in 15 seconds or less, 6 bar if you can control it). It's much more repeatable which makes it easier to dial in by taste, and will get you much closer to reliably good espresso.
beagle3 2y ago
Not GP, but my recipe is simply cold brew (I'm in the 1 part coffee grinds to 8 parts water, in a metal pot, 24 hours in the fridge camp). Not at all bitter or harsh. And I like my coffee cold rather than hot, though you can obviously heat it if you want it hot. (Bonus: I'm lazy, and though the filtering stage is a little more effort, it's concentrated, and then I have instant good coffee for a week or two).

In my experience, mostly just buying nice beans and not doing anything stupid with them. The hangover from Italian style coffee is quite strong and means we get a lot of over-roasted beans (or at least, cheap beans over-roasted to disguise the quality. This style was a necessity when Italians imported low grade beans from their own colonies in the 19th and early 20thC, but if buying single origin beans lighter roasts are (imo) just much more interesting and less bitter/harsh.

Arch-TK 2y ago

It's not really a trick, you need good quality coffee (lighter roasts are going to inherently end up less bitter and more acidic but realistically you can normally get something balanced from any roast level), a high quality grinder (too much grind inconsistency will make it difficult to get a reliable extraction, one time you might get a coffee that tastes good and the next it takes half the time to extract and tastes awful as a result), a good machine which doesn't go above 9 bars of pressure, and a lot of patience/experience. As a general rule, the lighter you go the harder it is to extract the coffee. The more expensive the equipment will need to be. To make good espresso from light roasts you can benefit from a machine which can handle flow profiling as the puck is so unstable at lower roasts that consistency becomes very difficult. So you pick a medium roast, a good quality grinder (although even in the expensive range, different types and subtypes of burr will produce different results) and a quality machine which can hold a stable temperature. Next, it's important to keep it all consistent, weigh the coffee, weigh the output. Things like WDT[0] can help get an even distribution of coffee in the portafilter, although recently people have started looking at shaking the coffee grounds as a better option, although there's some limited research on this. To go the extra mile, RDT[1] can help increase grind consistency, and so can freezing the coffee beans (although usually you want to single dose the coffee to avoid condensation on your frozen beans slowly causing the moisture content to increase). I also use paper filters below and above the puck, as well as a mesh filter on top of the paper filter, this helps distribute water, prevent clogging, and improve reliability (it's honestly quite a surprisingly noticeable difference). Now for dialling in: You pull a shot, you taste it, as a general rule of thumb if it tastes empty and sour you should pull a longer shot (higher output weight), if it tastes bitter and/or salty then you should pull a shorter shot (lower output weight). Once your flavors are balanced you can adjust the grind to increase or reduce the overall concentration to your taste. For medium roast I normally aim for 1:2.5 ratio (15g of ground coffee in, 37.5g of liquid coffee out) and adjust from there. The timing is a complex topic which depends highly on what you're trying to do, turbo shots naturally run very fast, blooming shots naturally run very long. You should try to get the machine to run between 20 and 35 seconds but if it tastes better if you go longer/shorter then don't blindly stick to this. It's difficult to get good espresso reliably, and especially so when you are doing it at home and don't have a day's worth of customers to offset the cost of a wasted few shots. But it's possible. You also have to start over every time you get new coffee beans. For reference, my setup is a Gaggia classic modded with flow profiling (gagguino mod) with a niche zero conical burr grinder. I live far enough away from London that Brita filtering the water produces good quality results, but some people may want to distill and re-mineralise water using a recipe for maximum consistency. [0]: https://www.baristahustle.com/weiss-distribution-technique/ https://www.baristahustle.com/weiss-distribution-technique/ [1]: https://www.beanground.com/ross-droplet-technique/ https://www.beanground.com/ross-droplet-technique/

eurg 2y ago
This was a nice overview, and I basically concur. I want to add a few things. Once you know your grinder, too high a max pressure is not so much of a problem, as choking a shot becomes a rare issue. Consistently good Espresso is easier using a slightly coarse ground, but something needs to give, like texture or concentration. Taken together, cheap machines can work well, although learning on them can be frustrating. Use fresh roasts, and use them up quickly. Some days after opening a bag of not single dose frozen beans , many coffees lose their good aroma, and only the roast itself remains.
m3kw9 2y ago
To get a better taste I lower my standards a bit to the level of my equipment
- brnt 2y ago
  This is my solution. I already drink way too much coffee (aka rocket fuel), if I would make it _tasty_, I'd certainly develop issues.
- itronitron 2y ago
  I switched over to tea (plain, no sugar) because I am less disappointed by mediocre tea than I am mediocre coffee. Several times a week I use one of those stainless steel conical fine mesh filters to make a single cup of coffee. Pouring boiling water over the stainless mesh filter (into the sink), to preheat it, before adding the ground coffee beans radically improves the flavor of the coffee.
  - m3kw9 2y ago
    I heard if you use immersion type method like the Hario switch it is very forgiving and consistent even if you screwup grind size and temperature. Vs percolation (flow) v60 you have to deal with a lot more issues such as time/flow rate, channeling etc.
sjm 2y ago
Good advice, but honestly given how complicated puck prep can be I'd suggest people struggling just go for turbo shots directly (coarse grinds, 1:2/1:2.5 ratio in 15 seconds or less, 6 bar if you can control it). It's much more repeatable which makes it easier to dial in by taste, and will get you much closer to reliably good espresso.

beagle3 2y ago

Not GP, but my recipe is simply cold brew (I'm in the 1 part coffee grinds to 8 parts water, in a metal pot, 24 hours in the fridge camp). Not at all bitter or harsh. And I like my coffee cold rather than hot, though you can obviously heat it if you want it hot. (Bonus: I'm lazy, and though the filtering stage is a little more effort, it's concentrated, and then I have instant good coffee for a week or two).