Some fanatical coffee lovers are lucky enough to be able to taste their best-loved expresso drinks made by professional baristas. More often than not, the espresso will have been made using a cool, quality commercial-grade espresso machine. In addition, the barista themselves will often have been trained professionally.
Often an attempt to recreate that fantastic expresso flavour at home will not live up to expectations.
However, with a little diligence, patience and the proper equipment, it’s viable to get very near to that perfect expresso shot even in your own home.
Let’s look at the six main ingredients in extracting a decent espresso at home.
1) Ensure good storage of your coffee beans. The best place to store your coffeee is in a dark, dry cupboard at around 37 degrees celcius, room temperature. A china jar is a better container than a plastic or metal one. To keep the flavor intact, avoid putting coffee in the Deepfreeze or even the fridge just to make it last longer.
2) Avoid the urge to extend the life of your coffee. If you can, use up the coffee after 7 or 8 days. It’s smart to go for smaller packages of coffee rather than large bags. 10 days or more in storage will leave your coffee less flavorsome.
3) Invest in a decent home espresso machine. There are hundreds of good quality machines available the days. From top of the range machines for thousands of dollars like the Saeco 21103 Royal professional espresso machine to the slightly less flamboyant Briel ES35AFB buyers have a great choice of excellent machines for executing the best expresso extraction possible.
If in doubt, try reading some expresso machine reviews or get some advice from a quality sales assistant.
4) Know what your machine can and can’t do. In reality, most home machines will not have sufficent water pressure to extract espresso properly. You’re looking ideally for pressure of between 120 to 130 pounds per square inch. Check your expresso machine’s manual for it’s pressure capabilities. You’re machine will probably only have one water heater. This means that the hot water is mixed with the steam resulting in a bitter expresso.
5) Take your time over your bean grinding. A two-bladed grinder will provide the best reults. A single blade machine will work ok but won’t be nearly as satisfactory. Additionaly make sure the blades are always sharp. After every 20 kgs of beans, replace the blades.
6) Use espresso extraction methods suitable for the household, not for a commercial expresso device. A coarser coffee grind is more suited to the home machine. Also, it’s better not to pack the coffee in as tightly as a master barista would. Your home machine will probably provide less pressured steam in less time than a commercial machine. Take this into account when steaming.
master espresso extraction is ideally something to leave to the experts. It’s a much better experience to enjoy an expresso from a commercial machine, made by a trained barists. However, if you’re willing to make a little effort, and invest in a decent machine, a good home espresso is well within your reach.