Brewing the perfect espresso
To brew an impeccable espresso, choose your desired bean roast level (medium or dark roast are ideal for espresso), then follow these steps:
1. Grind your coffee beans – Add your beans to the coffee grinder and grind them to your desired coarseness.
2. Tamp your espresso grounds – Use the tamper to apply pressure evenly across the grounds. Or, use the self-tamping feature if your machine has one.
3. Extract the shot – For machines without timers, begin counting when the water first hits the grounds and aim for 25-30 seconds of extraction.
Troubleshooting flavour issues
Proper extraction brews great espresso for a cappuccino, latte, or whatever your drink of choice is.
If your espresso tastes too bitter, this means your brew process is extracting too much flavour from the grounds. To fix this, try using coarser grounds. Larger particles create additional channels for water flow.
On the other hand, if your coffee emerges with a sour taste, you’re likely under-extracting (leaving behind too much flavour). To correct under-extracted espresso, try to:
● Use finer grounds – Excessively large espresso grounds lead to insufficient contact between the water and coffee.
● Use more water – Too little water equals too little time to pull the desired flavours.
● Raise water temperature – Coffee compounds require sufficient heat to extract.
