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Brewing coffee at home is an art form in itself, and takes a little practice to get right! These are our top tips in brewing the perfect cup of coffee using your home espresso machine.
The success of your espresso comes down to the beans you use. Understanding the flavour profiles you like best takes some trial and error, but once you find your favourite bean, you’re on your way to creating your best home espresso yet! Prefer a fruity, nutty blend? Try Honduras. Mor of a deep, chocolatey, rich berry flavour lover? PNG is the bean for you!
Fresh beans are important here, and the Coff & Co beans are roasted daily for the ultimate freshness. Unsure how fresh your beans are? Have a look at your coffee bean package for the date they were roasted to make sure they’re not stale!
The consistency of the grind is incredibly important in the success of your home espresso as it is the process that pulls the flavour out of the beans. A fine grind will give the particles a greater surface area, meaning the flavour can be extracted from the grounds faster. Coarsely ground beans will impact the ability of the water to pull the flavour from the beans quickly.
The best and most highly recommended grind for an espresso is fine, while still retaining the appearance of individual grains that stick together when pinched. The consistency should be not quite as fine as icing sugar, but finer than caster sugar! If you grind your beans too finely, you’ll end up with a bitter cup of coffee.
All water is the same right? WRONG. The minerals and level of impurities in the water will directly affect the taste of your espresso, so we recommend using purified water wherever possible.
The temperature of the water is also very important. Boiling water will overhead the coffee and kill the flavour, whereas lukewarm water will give you a flat and tasteless result. A temperature of 94°C is ideal for espresso!
It might be tempting to dump a pile of coffee grounds into your machine every morning, but for a superior result, it’s important to measure the amount of grounds you use! For a single shot, use around 3 tablespoons of grounds. Your coffee grounds should create a small mound above the top of the basket, and should then be leveled across the surface. Leveling ensures that there are no uneven pockets of air caught inside!
The ‘tamp’ is the compacting of the grounds into the filter. This is an important step in the brewing process, and pressing down on the tamper with firm and consistent pressure is the best way to get great results.
To get the proper extraction from the grounds, they must be packed densely enough for water to pull out the flavour when being forced through the grounds. Fluffy or un-tamped grounds will result in an uneven flavour extraction.
Before you brew each new cup, it’s a good idea to flush the head of your machine to clear any old coffee and to ensure fresh water can flow through.
Once the extraction process has begun, you should see a stream that is thin and dark, becoming a little lighter and thicker as it moves through the process. Once your stream becomes close to transparent, your brewing process should be finishing up! It should take around 25 seconds.
If your stream starts off pale and near-transparent, it means that water is forcing a hole through the grinds, meaning your shot will be under-extracted.
There you go! If you follow these tips, you should end up with a perfect espresso, and a great base to build off for other coffee varieties. You can see our blog on the different black coffee options here!
