In Italy it is the quintessential extraction: "un caffè" means "one espresso." And you only get coffee at the bar. Or is it?What is needed?
A professional espresso bar machine costs several thousand euros. A good "double group" (i.e., with two dispensers) ranges from 6,000 euros and up. But the key ingredient, in the end, is the coffee.
If you buy coffee like that from Café 124, or many others from Italy and elsewhere, the real goal is to have an espresso kit that does not ruin the aroma. Starting with a high quality of the main ingredient, you may go down due to inexperience and not having professional equipment-but we assure you that you will have a better espresso than many coffee shops.
First, a good coffee...
Better to buy coffee beans.
Although espresso is traditionally made with a darker roast, it is not necessary to choose a coffee bean marketed as "espresso." "Espresso roasts" often means "dark roast," and in our humble opinion, the roast should never go to cover the true flavors of the coffee. Dark roasting bad beans is fine. Dark roasting a coffee that is hand-picked in the Ethiopian mountains is less okay.
Another thing: roasted coffee starts to lose its most distinctive aromas after 3 months. You may find good coffee roasted 6 months earlier, but not a year earlier. It has nothing to do with how you store it: roasted coffee degrades.
Don't make the mistake of putting it in the refrigerator. Think a little about wine: would you put a barolo in the refrigerator?
The grinding
Depending on the filter you have, a double espresso (the one that gives the best result because of the perfectly cylindrical filter) needs no less than 15 grams of coffee. If you take into account that a Nespresso capsule contains 5 grams of coffee you understand why the result is a bit bland.
Coffee should be ground fine, but not powdered: water should pass through smoothly. The factors are:
- Quantity: the more powder, the stronger the coffee will be-but be careful not to overdo it, otherwise the water will stay in contact with the powder too long and the result will be an over-extracted, bitter espresso
- Fineness: essential to find the right one. Start with a coarse grind and then go finer and finer. At first the espresso will be a bit acidic (under-extraction). When you start to perceive bitter notes you have overdone the fineness (over-extraction). Yes, coffee is not bitter.
A word of advice: ground coffee becomes rancid after a few hours if exposed to air (yes, it does...). So always "clean" the grinder in the morning with a few ounces of coffee that you will then throw away.
Pictured is one of our favorite home coffee grinders. Steel grinds, easily disassembled for cleaning, sturdy (has been grinding at least once a day for a year), and costs just over €60 (click the image to go to Amazon).
Pressing
You have seen thousands of baristas casually pressing coffee into the filter as if it were an unimportant step. Wrong. Pressing is critical.
- If it is not always done in the same way all the talk above is worthless. Grind fine and don't press or grind coarse and press hard, and the result will be similar...
- If you don't press evenly, but for example press more on one side, the water will only funnel into certain areas, giving you ... an over-extracted (bitter) espresso with little body.
Then you give a few taps to the filter so as to distribute the powder, and then you press it down hard (around 15 kg)... still the same!
Ça va sans dire that the filter must be perfectly cleaned of the old dust before accommodating the new!
The disbursement
Have you ever seen a bartender engage the filter holder under the dispenser without "purging" first? If yes, ask them to put a glass cup under the hand shower, without a filter, and let some water out to empty: you will understand why it is important to purge.
For first espressos we recommend glass-it's great to see how the espresso layers!
With dispensing we add two more parameters that we have to take into account (in addition to grind, quantity, pressing... and that makes 5!):
- Amount of water. Typically, for 15 grams of coffee you should get about 50-70 milliliters of espresso.
- Time. The water should not stay too long in contact with the powder, say 60 milliliters should come out in about 25 seconds.
Pictured is the Breville/Sage espresso machine. We will add more, but this one offers a good compromise for those who do not want a separate coffee grinder.
The tasting
These folks at Café 124 are absurd: they are not content to tell us who should grow the coffee, how we should roast it, how we should grind it, store it, extract it--even how we should drink it???
Whatever, it's a suggestion. Try it once, just to make us happy.
With a teaspoon lightly shake off the "crema" and take a sniff. If you are drinking our coffee-but really, there are many others just as good and even better!-you will smell the aroma of that coffee. Different coffees have different aromas, and the nose is the first judge.
Then swirl to let the different layers mix (a little sour the first, a little bitter the last) and take a small sip--making noise if you're not alone (the liquid thus mists as it enters the mouth and releases all the aroma). However, sip gently. In very small sips, letting the liquid wet your whole mouth and swallowing only after you have also tasted with your nose.
After each sip, focus on the aftertaste: it should be lingering, but pleasant. Not bitter. The best compliment to an espresso was given to us by smokers: "I don't smoke it right away, I don't want this flavor to disappear....."
Good coffee!
PS Other coffee grinders
We have received requests for other, less bulky and less expensive coffee grinders. Here are brief reviews:
- Hosome blades, €20-25. It does not grind but chops with rotating blades. We can't help but remember that Atlas Ufo Robot used the rotating blades to slice up enemies, not to grind coffee. However if you need space and/or don't want to spend too much, this is occasionally on offer on Amazon and uses 200 watts, it is worth it.
- Sboly steel millstones, $65. Good but has one major flaw: the millstones do not come apart easily, so it is difficult to clean.
- Cozyselect blades, €18. Not recommended. The oval shape causes dust to accumulate in the parts with the most pronounced curvature. If nature chose symmetry as a principle there is a reason, and a circle is infinitely more symmetrical than an ellipse...
- A ceramic grinder DeLonghi KG79, €51. Not highly recommended. Ceramic grinds are never the best, after a year of daily use it has broken down, and finally it is annoying in wanting every bit in place to start. Lose the drawer lid and your coffee grinder is useless....
