Trying it for myself

I will never complain again when someone makes me a coffee: it's hard work to prepare a good espresso! That's my conclusion after two weeks of getting to grips with my Christmas present. Who knew that the freshness of your beans impacts the efficiency of the grinder? And that the accuracy of the coarseness of the grind depends on what type of beans are used. Or that tampering the freshly ground coffee should feel like a firm handshake in order for the pressure to be optimal for the perfectly pulled espresso?

I must admit, my relationship with this coffee machine started as a disaster and within the first two days progressed from bad to worse. I ended up calling an engineer as the grinder built in the machine was making horrendous noises and no ground coffee was coming out. The solution turned out to be simple: use fresher beans and your grinder will be happy: it cannot cope with the beans that are dry and deprived of natural oils.

Now point of clarification: if any of you have ever read my blog or Twitter feed, you will know that I am obsessed with new blends and trying different roasters. You can then imagine that I get through my samples quite quickly and the beans I use are usually very fresh. However, I have been away for the last month travelling around South Africa (read about my discoveries here) and Spain and didn't manage to get through all of the coffees before I left. But I digress...

After establishing that the machine is not faulty and filling it with new beans, the hard work began. Below are my tried and tested steps required to make a decent double shot espresso:

1. Set the grinder to the appropriate setting to achieve the right coarseness and quantity: too fine and the pressure will be too high and the coffee will be over extracting, too coarse and the water will pass through it too quickly.

 

2. Tamper the coffee: not too hard and not too light - this, again can affect the extraction.

         

3. Pray that the pressure stays within the espresso range.

Impatiently watching the pressure dial...

 And after two weeks of training, that's the result!

I'm no expert but that's not a bad effort, eh?

I will not reveal how many coffees I had to discard as undrinkable. I haven't moved on to the next step of making a flat white yet. And latte art remains a black magic to me. I've learned a lot (it's true: you can make a bad espresso from good beans), hats off to all of you talented baristas out there!