Notes on dialing in an espresso
- First keep recipe the same (amount of ground coffee in and amount of extracted coffee out) and tweak grind size to get brew time in the right range (25-30 seconds)
- When numbers are in the right range use taste to tweak extraction: sourness is mostly under-extraction, bitterness is over-extraction.
- Lighter roasts: more work to extract the coffee, which means use less dose or coarser grind. If you start with a big dose, impossible amount of work to do. Sour, weak body as a result. Here underextraction can thus be because of too fine grinds as well!
- Darker roast: easy to extract, soluble get out quickly, is OK to use a higher dose. Can benefit from finer grind.
- Instead of changing grind size you can also tweak dose a bit, add more dose: is more work to extract, slower flow, so longer contact time.
- You can increase extraction with lower dose, also maybe combined with finer grind
- Brew time: 25-30 seconds is a good target, but not so important.
- You can also increase brew time for an extra little bit extraction, you trade this for strength (because you dilute), but can add clarity and sweetness
- Grams out is very important to monitor, to keep the ratio the same.
- Espresso ratio: 1.5-2.5, meaning ratio between grams coffee in and grams of liquid out.
- Source: mainly James Hoffman's fantastic YouTube channel
- Barista Hustle has some good blogs post as well:
- https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/coffee-extraction-and-how-to-taste-it/
- https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/espresso-recipes-analyzing-dose/
- https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/espresso-recipes-strength/
- https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/espresso-recipes-understanding-yield/
- https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/espresso-recipes-time/
- One of their tips: only dose more or less coffee to make more or less coffee.