Dialling in your espresso at home can be daunting, with grind size, portafilter, coffee grounds distribution and your area’s water hardness all playing a role. It feels like a lot at first, but our guide to improving your coffee will point you in the right direction. Once you have this down, repeating it is simple!
Start with the portafilter
The portafilter is the handled holder that the metal coffee basket sits in, and the machine pushes hot water through the basket under pressure. The quality of a shot is largely down to how you prepare the coffee in the basket.
Baskets come in single and double sizes and they hold different doses, so a single basket filled with a double espresso’s dose will overflow and channel. Pre-heating your portafilter is also really important: a stone-cold portafilter brings down the temperature of the whole machine. Make sure to attach the portafilter to the machine whilst the whole thing warms up. This gives you a pre-heated portafilter already matching the temperature of the machine.
Mastering grind size
Grind size controls how fast water moves through the coffee. Too coarse and the water rushes through, giving you a pale, thin, sour shot. Too fine and it struggles through, giving you something dark, bitter and sludgy.
If you are using pre-ground coffee, buy one labelled for espresso rather than filter or cafetière. Filter grind is far too coarse, and no amount of tamping will fix it.
If you have a grinder, including the burr grinder built into our Bean-to-Cup machine, you can adjust the grind size in small steps. Slowly testing in increments helps you dial in your perfect shot. Doing this in huge jumps will just waste your coffee, as usually only very small adjustments are needed to notice a difference. Aim for a shot that weighs double the grounds you put in, pulled in about 30 seconds. So, for an 18g dose, you’re aiming for about 36g of espresso (a double shot) taking 30 seconds.
Distribution and tamping technique
Grounds come out of a grinder in a mound in your portafilter. If you used it as it is, the water would take the easy route through the loose edges, which results in a shot that tastes sour and bitter at once. So, level the coffee grounds first. There are lots of different methods around for this, so give a few a go until you find one you feel comfortable with.
A few common methods to try out are:
- Tap the portafilter gently on the counter.
- Sweep a finger across the surface. This is the old-school barista method from before all the fancy tools came about.
- Invest in a needle tool to distribute the whole depth of the grounds evenly.
- Use a wedge distribution tool. This gives a very smooth top but doesn’t break up any clumps at the bottom of the basket.
Once you’ve got your grounds levelled out, it is time to tamp. Don’t worry too much about applying lots of pressure; being level and consistent matters far more. Rest the portafilter on a flat surface or a silicone tamping mat, keep your wrist straight and press straight down until the grounds stop compressing. No twist needed. If your machine came with a light plastic tamper, a heavier flat-based one is a simple upgrade that makes a noticeable difference. Our Bean-to-Cup machine ships with a weighted tamper for that luxury barista experience.
Reading the shot
Watch the coffee as it comes out. You are looking for it to start after a short pause, then run in a steady, slightly thick stream the colour of dark honey, turning paler towards the end.
If it spurts out fast and pale, the grind is too coarse or the dose too low. If it drips very slowly and comes out dark, the grind is too fine or you have overfilled the basket. If it runs fast on one side and slowly on the other, that is channelling, and you may need to review your distribution and tamping method.
Water hardness
Espresso is mostly water, so what comes out of your tap affects the taste of the shot. Hard water carries dissolved calcium and magnesium. A little of that helps pull flavour out of the coffee, but too much leaves limescale in the boiler, pipes and group head, slowing the flow and dulling the taste over time.
In a hard water area, running your water through a jug filter is an easy improvement for both flavour and scale. Whatever your water, descale your machine as directed in the manual, bearing in mind that hard water areas will need it more often.
Ready to upgrade your coffee setup?
Whether you’re after your first machine or replacing an old one, shop our range of espresso machines. And to finish off your setup, browse our coffee accessories for knock boxes and milk jugs.