Okay, so I might be kind of a coffee snob. Upon my last count, we have at least 7 different ways to brew coffee in our kitchen¹. Yes, it is excessive, but it’s the hobby I enjoy most!
There’s the Aeropress, Chemex (my personal favorite), French Press, Cold Brew maker, and Nespresso machine. We’ve also got Cometeer coffee in the freezer (it’s fresh and delicious), and Copper Cow Vietnamese pour-over sachets for some fun and interesting flavors (like Churro).
Did I mention I might be a coffee snob?
There are probably more gadgets tucked away somewhere, but we do cycle through these methods and change it up every once and a while.
If you’re new on the coffee scene, welcome. I would recommend checking out Jennifer Easto’s Craft Coffee book, a great source of inspiration and knowledge on brewing coffee at home.
Making true espresso.
Recently, I’ve been craving espresso and espresso-based beverages, and exploring some new hobbies. I purchased our Breville Creatista Plus Nespresso machine a while back at a steep discount, and it’s had near-daily use over the years. It’s great coffee, but it’s not true espresso. I won’t get into details here, but you can surely find out the difference with a quick search.
I also wanted to take my coffee exploration further, and take my coffee tasting to another level.
After some extensive research and working up a quick budget for the necessary tools to make decent espresso at home, I landed on the Breville Barista Pro Black Truffle. The thrifty shopper in me waited for a target price, and a few days later, it showed up!
If you stop reading here, you should know that so far it’s proven to be an excellent machine for a hobbyist (with room to grow and perfect your espresso).
Choosing the right machine.
This is a tricky topic, and I’m not in a great position to tell you what machine you should get—I’m a beginner too. But I can tell you some of the considerations that went into my choice.
If you’re looking to make very strong coffee or espresso-like coffee, there are numerous reasonably-priced options that don’t require spending over $30. However, if you want to make true espresso, you need adequate water temperature and pressure. You also need evenly-ground, finely-ground, and equally distributed coffee, and probably a few other conditions.
The Breville Barista Pro machine was a great choice for me because it features a built-in grinder and many adjustable settings for dialing-in the shot. Dialing-in just means calibrating your equipment to produce the best shot you can for a given coffee, taking into account its roast, and other factors.
The price point was reasonable, considering it had an integrated grinder (which could have cost as much as half the price of the machine) and prosumer features (like adjustable water temperature and shot pre-infusion time). There were numerous other options around the price point, even other closely-priced machines from Breville.
What won me over? The 3-second heat-up time with Breville’s ThermoJet heating system was faster than other boiler systems would take with other machines.
When learning how to use the machine and tinkering with different settings, a quicker heat-up time meant that I could learn a bit faster—trying again right away if the last shot was terrible (and there were many terrible shots to start with).
Getting started.
When the machine arrived, I probably had it set up in just under an hour. You can check out my unboxing video here!
What took longer than the setup? Dialing in a coffee for the first time to get a decent-tasting espresso. In all fairness, this was also the very first time I’d ever pulled an espresso shot. And that first shot was pretty bad.
I watched James Hoffman’s How I Dial-In Espresso video. And then I watched it again. And again. Finally, I had enough courage to try again on my machine. All told, I probably pulled about 10–15 shots before I really got the hang of it.
If you’re doing this for the first time, don’t get discouraged! Just keep going and you’ll start to notice cause and effect. You’ll pick up on what you’re doing and how it’s affecting the espresso shot in good ways and bad ones.
Tips for pulling your first shots.
A lot of things are important to pulling a truly good espresso shot (like grind consistency, distribution, tamping pressure, etc.), but initially your goal is probably to pull one that doesn’t taste awful. If you’re a beginner like me, here are a few tips that may help you get started:
- Get a big bag of decent, dark roast whole beans that doesn’t break the bank and you won’t mind wasting. For instance, I picked up this 2.2 LB bag of Lavazza Super Crema which could get you through all of your practice shots, and I found it to be pretty forgiving. You’ll likely graduate from this one pretty quickly, but you don’t want to waste great coffee beans on accidental ristrettos.
- Tamping pressure is ultimately not that important, and tamping consistency is key. Yes, you should tamp your coffee grounds, and yes tamping pressure can change the flow rate and pressure buildup of water through the coffee puck, but don’t get too fixated on the pressure. Initially, I was obsessed with finding the right tamping pressure, convinced that it was causing my shots to come out either too fast or too slow. I spent multiple initial rounds of adjusting my tamping pressure, when I finally realized that other factors had more of an effect on the final shot. If you pay attention to the right preparation — grind amount, grind size, distribution, etc — you don’t need to focus on adjusting the tamping pressure. Whatever taming pressure you use, make sure you’re consistent for subsequent shots so you can keep that variable constant.
- Don’t buy too many gadgets. You can always add more to your arsenal, but to start with, here’s what you need:
Tools for getting started.
A tamper. This may come with your machine. If not, you can find them for a reasonable price online. Just make sure you get the correct size for the portafilter you’re using.
A scale. Most home espresso grinders don’t have the ability to weigh out your ground coffee for the portafilter basket. Grind amount is important for controlling the density of the puck, and ultimately the pressure buildup and flow rate of the coffee. I’d recommend a digital scale with at least 0.1g accuracy. Additionally, they can be very reasonably-priced when purchased online!
A grinder. Do you need a grinder? Technically, no. You can use a pressurized or “double-walled” portafilter basket to pull shots with pre-ground coffee (think coffee you bought already ground from the store). However, you should know that if there’s no roast date for the coffee you’re using, you may have a bad time trying to dial in your shots.
Troubleshooting tips
There is lots of guidance out there for how you should make your espresso. Some bags even come with recipes, calling for the ideal temperature, pressure, grind amount, grind size, extraction time, and final yield / weight.
What’s most important is that you’re happy with your espresso. Play around with it to get it how you like it.
You’ll probably be able to tell what tastes bad to you— too bitter, too acidic, too strong, too weak, etc. Keep adjusting the settings until you can determine cause and effect.
But it is helpful to have a starting place (maybe to help prevent a mess or spraying grinds all over your countertop), so here are a few measurements you can use to get started:
- Take notes. Writing down all of the measurements, settings, or parameters you change as you get things dialed in will help you remember what you changed and determine how it affects the shot. Change one thing at a time, and don’t make large adjustments! I would create a little table on a sheet of paper for yourself to take note of the Grind Size, Dose, Yield, Extraction Time, and your rating for those settings. Better yet, use this Espresso Log!
- Start with the middle espresso Grind Size on your grinder and adjust as necessary. You’re probably not going to nail the perfect grind size the first time, or maybe even during the first ten shots you pull. Grind size needs to be adjusted for many different factors including how fresh the coffee is and the roast parameters.
- Measure Dose and Yield to get in the ballpark. Your filter basket will likely be rated for a dose range (for instance, 18–22g for your double shot portafilter basket). This is the amount of coffee you should start with in your portafilter, or the “dose”. Use your scale under the vessel / espresso cup to measure how much espresso comes out, or your “yield”. Target an espresso shot yield of roughly 2x that amount to pull a regular double shot. For example, if you start with 19g of coffee in your portafilter, you’ll want to stop the extraction once 38g of espresso is measured on the scale.
Conclusion
I hope this was a helpful overview of how to get started with making espresso at home. Please leave comments or questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.
I’m super excited to start this journey and will continue to post as I learn more. Be sure to follow my publication for more coffee and espresso updates, and leave some claps if this was helpful!
— Joe
[1] I’ll admit that having more than a single way to make coffee at home is probably excessive by most measures. One is entirely enough. I also feel somewhat obligated to note here that coffee can be (and often is) an approachable hobby for almost anyone, as exploring coffee is available at many different price points. If you’d like an inexpensive way to get into coffee tasting, I’d recommend picking up a different bag of whole-bean coffee each time at the grocery store. Choose a bag with a “roasted on” date if available, use the store’s grinder, and pick up a plastic coffee dripper online or in certain grocery stores. And if you have a scale at home, you’ve got all the basics to get started!
