First Time Espresso at Home: Everything that can go wrong will go wrong
I was lucky enough to have been gifted espresso machine for my birthday - a Breville Barista Express. Yes, I know. Insane!
Truthfully, I was not ready for it. My basic coffee skills did me no favours. I had never made an espresso with a manual espresso machine before this and even though I watched enough YouTube tutorials to think I knew what I was doing, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
I was however failing consistently, so I assumed that at some point I would get it right. I decided to document my issues and lessons and mishaps so that would you have an idea of what to expect, and realise that you are not alone in your espresso disasters.
A word of encouragement… while it may start off seemingly like a disaster, it gets better. And don’t let YouTubers fool you, they are not showing the disasters, just to good stuff.
Here is a quick list of accessories that are must haves, or good to haves to improve the experience early on:
Must have:
Grinder suitable for espresso grind
Tamper
Various cleaning clothes and brushes
Digital scale (waterproof)
Tamping mat
Suitable cups
Good to have:
Distributor tool
Knock out box
Dosing funnel
Timer
Here, in some particular order, the things I’ve had to grips with.
Do you have the right beans?
Beans:
Yes, beans. Not pre-ground coffee. I didn’t ever worry about beans when brewing in my French press but freshly ground coffee makes a difference here. If you aren’t using beans then you will need use the double-walled pressurised basket to help extract the espresso, check out this article for a take on this - Can you use ground coffee in an espresso machine by HomeyComfort.
Buy a bag of reasonably priced beans to start:
Don’t use your high-priced specialty beans when starting off. You will not be pulling good espresso, you will drop a lot of grounds, you will forget to grind at the right setting. You will make mistakes and the grounds will be wasted. Rather get a bag of affordable espresso beans to start (a big bag if you’re like me because I screwed up a lot and needed a lot of beans to figure things out). There is a lot to learn such as grinding, distributing, tamping, pressure, extraction yield and more and learning and practicing will result in some waste.
Buy espresso roast, for now:
Espresso roasts are specifically roasted for the espresso process: There are so many unknowns at the start, don’t let the roast of your bean be one of those unknown variables. Check out Roasting for Espresso by Ikawa Coffee.
Go dark, at the start:
I made this mistake. I went medium roast. I eventually learnt that under extraction is going to be the constant problem at the start. Conventional espresso wisdom states that dark roasts have a wider bandwidth for success. They simply extract more easily for espresso and will taste good over a range of extraction times. Lighter roasts need more fine tuning. If you go lighter, you’ll be pulling a lot of sour espressos and decoding a light roast as a beginner is really challenging.
Cleaning cloths and brushes
Grounds, water, and drips of coffee go everywhere all the time. Or it could be just that I’m clumsy.
Baristas keep at least 4 cloths for different uses:
Cleaning the portable filter (portafilter)
Cleaning the drip tray
Cleaning the steam wand
Cleaning the counter
I’ve found that I’ve needed multiple towels, and a thicker one for the steam wand would be preferable because the steam can burn you while cleaning.
The brush can be used to sweep up loose grounds and help keep the station clean. I bought a natural bristle pastry brush and it does the trick.
Always sour, until it’s not sour (I hope)
At the start (a period of several weeks) every single shot I pulled was sour. You will have no problem identifying your shot as sour. It hits your tongue hard.
I made a range of mistakes, repeatedly until I realised the tweak I needed to make. These are some of my beginner mistakes.
Medium roast coffee beans (I had a big bag of it to finish so I persevered until I could replace it).
Grinding too course.
Under dosing the basket.
Using the pre-set espresso volume on the machine rather than weighing my shot.
Focussing on time alone and not considering weight of the shot.
Overdosing while on the wrong grind.
Not tamping correctly.
Read the manual
Things I missed:
The recommended espresso grind size for the (built-in) grinder.
Optimal dosing for the single and double baskets.
Automatic features and manual overrides.
Temperature adjustments.
I played around with grind for far too long before learning that the manual had some guidance on it. The internet is not always a good source sometimes and it led me far astray from the recommendation in the manual. Once I figured out the manual’s recommended starting point, I made significant improvements.
I was also under dosing the baskets and I couldn’t get the pull into the correct pressure zone.
Understand the basket dose and ratio
I watched a really good series by James Hoffman that really clarified many things for me.
The first major breakthrough was learning the espresso ratio of 1:2 or 1:2,2. Then he mentioned the basket volume, based on the brand. That’s what sent me to the manual.
I realised another mistake I was making was using the machines pre-programmed espresso settings, and also that I was under dosing.
Once I dosed the basket correctly, I was finally pulling in the espresso pressure range, every time after that.
Learning these things led me to maximising the dose (18g in this case), to stay consistent for every pull. I also then decided to override the auto-extraction settings and went into manual mode. I also used a scale under the cup and tried to hit the 1:2 ratio. The results remained sour, but I now had a sound approach that I could replicate and improve on.
Adjust temperature
I made a small adjustment to my water temperature. I took it up by 2 degrees C because I realised my mistake with the medium roast beans.
I’ve also returned the temperature to the factory settings. I think the significant improvements I’ve made have more to do with my process than the temperature. This may be too subtle to perceive.
Pre-infusion
Pre-infusion is the time from starting the shot to the time the first drop happens. Some machines are designed with pre-infusion in the extraction process. It’s a stage where the grounds are “pre-wet” and with the machine I have, they recommend an optimal timing window. My extractions always exceed that window and the results conflict with the extraction times and taste of the espresso (i.e. pre-infusion too long, shot pull too short, coffee too sour). So, I’ve stopped trying to troubleshoot the pre-infusion and I’m focussing on the shot instead. But I will come back around to it at some point.
Here’s a good article - What is Pre-Infusion by Clive Coffee - that covers the topic.
Measure weight and time
My early mistakes included using the pre-programmed settings for extraction, and not timing or weighing the shot. I did not know how to relate my sour shot to the extraction process.
When I eventually started weighing and timing, I realised the extraction it was too quick, and the weight was wrong. I didn’t hit the ratio.
I moved to manual mode to take control. I got to the right espresso weight but too quickly, more than 10 seconds too quickly. From there I started working on my grind settings, distributing and tamping and I slowly saw improvements in the extraction time and taste of the espresso.
Weight and time requirements
For an Espresso:
Espresso is defined in a range of ratios. The range is 1 : 1.5 to 1 : 2.5.
I’ve been sticking with 1 : 2 during my learning process. The 1 : 2 ratio is where the weight of the final shot is the coffee dose weight x 2
For example: 18g of coffee should yield 36g of espresso.
The timing to reach that weight, starting from the first drop, should be in the window of 20 to 32 seconds.
Other options include:
Ristretto at a ratio of 1 : 1 to 1 : 1.5
Lungo at a ratio of 1 : 2.5 to 1 : 4
Bad shots are still worth it
As long as you are not wasting premium specialty coffee, you can give-in to the learning period and don’t sweat it. I’m finding that I’m getting better at prep, process, diagnostics, visual assessments, tasting and keeping things clean.
Problems and Solutions
Here are the specific issues I’ve had and the changes I made while troubleshooting. It’s best to try each major change on its own to understand the result.
Problem: No pressure build up during the extraction
Identified by the pressure gauge needle barely moving and not getting into the espresso pressure zone (refer to the gauge on your machine, or in the 9 Bar+ range).
Solutions:
Check dose i.e. the amount of grounds in the basket. Under-dosing will prevent the pressure development. Determine the minimum dose of the basket and dose within the recommended range.
Change grind setting, go finer. Determine the recommended grind setting for espresso as per the manual and adjust from there.
Always distribute and tamp correctly.
Manually distributing by tapping to reduce empty spaces.
Tamping with suitable pressure.
Other possible issues – freshness of the beans, stale beans affect the extraction pressure.
Problem: Changing grind size but having to purge the grinder
All the good teachers on YouTube will tell you that changing the grind is not the first step to dialling in the espresso, but when you’re new to a machine (or when you skip reading the manual like I did) you will be several grind steps away from the correct setting for that grinder and the bean. So, you are going to change this a lot at the start.
My mistake was that I initially dumped a bunch of beans in, like how baristas do, and it felt really cool. I realised my mistake when needing to change the grind setting and having to purge the grinder and waste some grounds.
Solutions:
Single dose. Pre-weigh the coffee beans and grind only what is needed for each pull.
Purge anyway. There are some beans or parts of beans that may get stick in the burrs so purge anyway, before adding your next round of beans.
Problem: Sour and thin extraction
Solution:
Reduce grind size if you started too coarse.
Reduce dose in basket (so that the grinds would have more contact with the water).
One thing I did was run shots longer, up to 1:4 to taste the longer extraction in order to trouble shoot the espresso shot (1:2). It was still sour pointing me back to the roast, the grind and the dose.
Problem: Pulling too fast
The outcome will be sour coffee, so the solutions are the same. But too fast is a range, and you have to figure out where you are in that range, or how far you are from the correct time range.
Here’s a good article from Barista Hustle
Aim for anywhere from 20 seconds to 32 seconds, from the first drop. But monitor the shot weight at the same time. Stop timing when you reach the target weight and determine if your shot time was short. Taste the shot and also consider the taste then adjust.
Solutions:
Increase dose.
Finer grind size.
Distribute the grounds more evenly.
Tamp at the correct pressure.
Monitor the pressure and if it is too high, make some changes to reduce the pressure… see points above.
Problem: Grounds falling out of the basket and poor distribution before tamping
Without a dosing funnel, I found that small amounts of the ground coffee would spill out of the basket.
Without a distribution tool, I found that the tapping method that is commonly applied did not work well, and l also lost some grounds out of the basket.
The result was a lower dose that I’d planned and an uneven distribution of grounds leading to an uneven tamp. Sometimes I’d also see channelling as a result.
I could solve these problems with a dosing funnel and distributor (correctly sized for my basket) but I couldn’t commit to the cost at this point.
I’ve been taking a more controlled approach to filling the basket. I stop the grind process twice to evenly spread the grounds in the basket using a small spoon handle (not tamping, kinda distributing) and I also tap a little to even it out.
By doing this twice in the grind process, it helps distribute the grounds at the bottom of the basket and leaves a nice flat bed for the last bit of grounds to fall onto. This has help reduce the coffee lost out of the basket during grinding.
I use the spoon one last time to neaten up the top of the bed. I’m not pushing down with the spoon or compacting the grounds in any way, just moving things around to even it out. I then tap the portafilter for the last attempt at distribution. Then I tamp.
I may not have covered all the challenges when starting off at espresso at home, but these are going to be at the top of the list for all beginners. And by the time you experience new challenges, you’ll already be experienced and skilled enough to understand them and deal with them.
For now, I’m slowly edging toward a less sour extraction and into the extraction window.
It may be slow for me, but I have enjoyed the entire experience so far. I hope breaking down my experience helps you enjoy your homemade espresso experience as well.