Making espresso at home requires a little effort and the right recipe, but you’ll be rewarded with a taste you’ll come back to all day. Let’s find out what it takes!
What will we measure?
The three main parameters of an espresso recipe are the amount of coffee beans we will use (dose), the amount of beverage we will prepare and the time we will make it.
Dose
The dose or amount of coffee we will use is measured in grams and is the first variable we need to fix in our recipe. This is easy to do and depends largely on the strainer you have. In most cases it will be between 14 and 20 grams. When determining the amount of coffee, make sure that it will not touch the siphon of the coffee machine.
Quantity of drink
The amount of drink is measured in millilitres or, when we want more precision, in grams. It is often expressed as a ratio to the dose, e.g. a 1:2 ratio means that a 16g dose will yield a 32g drink.
Use the ratio to adjust the „strength“ of the coffee. We recommend starting with a fixed dose 1:2 which gives a balanced taste that is neither too strong nor too dilute and adjust the taste by the extraction time.
Choose a ratio and stick to it, except in cases where adjusting the timing is not enough to get the desired taste.
Choose a ratio and stick to it…
Time
This is the contact time between the water and the coffee. It is adjusted by changing the grinding coarseness of the coffee. Longer contact time means more extraction and vice versa. More extraction means the coffee will have more natural sweetness, but also more bitterness. This requires us to match the time with the coffee we use and look for the balance.
The extraction time we recommend for our coffees is between 22 and 35 seconds and depends on the characteristics of the coffee and the roasting. The lower limit will be natural (dry process) and darker roast coffees. They have a softer and more porous structure that aids extraction and does not require long contact. On the other hand, lighter roast coffees processed by wet process , have a hard and dense structure which is a prerequisite for more difficult extraction and takes longer.
The extraction time we recommend for our coffees is between 22 and 35 seconds
To adjust the timing follow these rules- if the coffee is too bitter, the extraction is probably too intense, more bitter components are being extracted, you need to reduce the timing within the recommended interval. If it is too sour, tasteless and lacks sweetness, the extraction is probably not enough, you need to increase the time.