A late Saturday post. Reaching the limits of home brewed espresso w...

This week my post is a little bit late, but so far today is a very dynamic day. We celebrated the third birthday of my big boy and there was a party. It’s over now, so I can take a little bit of rest while the dishwasher takes care of the first batch of dirty plates.

Our boy was really happy because he had some friends attending the party and one pet of the celebration was an improvised pool party on our balcony. All the kids are happy when there’s some water around.

Meanwhile, I managed to reach a pretty good quality for my homemade espresso. Of course, the limiting factor is always the available coffee gear and now, with my grinder I can grind my beans perfectly, at least for my espresso machine. It’s not professional, nor is the grinder, but the quality of the shots has increased dramatically recently.

The biggest downside of the cheap grinder is that it has some ground coffee retention. This means that some of the ground coffee sticks to some internal parts and you cannot be very consistent with the ground coffee outflow. When I put, for instance, 10 grams of coffee beans, I can end with 12 grams of coffee in the portafilter, and vice versa. I can put 12 grams in, and get 10-11 grams out. And that’s all due to the coffee grinder holding some coffee on the internal parts.

A little hack is that you can use some water, sprayed on the beans before grinding. This measure reduces the static electricity so the particles stick to the materials that they are touching. And this helps you to get more consistent with your grinding results. The best home grinders can be consistent to about 0.1-0.2 grams in/out quantity ant this is more than perfect. Well, they come with a higher price, higher price too. The Niche Zero grinder costs about $500-5$0, while my grinder cost only $150, which is quite some difference.

I noticed another problem, that I think I solved already. If I don’t tamper the coffee in the portafilter enough, my espresso machine chokes and coffee doesn’t come out at all. I thought it would be the exact opposite, but these are the facts. If you press the coffee more, it runs better.

My best shots were about 35 seconds of extraction and I have ratio of 1:3-1:3,5 which makes the coffee in the normal espresso shot. I put in 11 grams of ground beans and get 35-38 grams in the cup. The best extraction times may vary, but everything about 30-35 seconds is relatively well extracted. How can you tell a coffee shot is not properly extracted? Well, the under extracted shot flows very quickly and in the end you have coffee that tasted sour. The over extracted coffee, on the other side becomes bitter. You need to have very balanced coffee in your cup, that has both sweetness and sourness. But sourness is the pleasant, refreshing one.

My shots are very thick, expressive and very intensive in their flavors. I’m extremely happy with my home setup now and don’t think the espresso can taste much better on my home setup.

I continue to drink my Kenyan coffees and, I think next week they will be over. This means that I have to buy new coffees soon. After I finished the #3 firstly, this weeks I was enjoying the #4 and #5 coffees, which correspond to Kenya Gatuyaini and Kenya Mahiga. The first comes with flavors which remind of chocolate, honey and some blueberry notes. The second is honey, red apple and sugar toffee finish. They both are very similar in their flavors and although they were not my favorite, they are still extremely pleasurable.

This means that I have only 100grams of the best two coffees from the Kenyan box. I decided to leave the best coffees and enjoy them last of the 5, which were in the box.

Lately, I think I’m brewing a lot more espresso shots than V60 coffee and after mastering the filet technique and the grounding size, the espresso feels a lot more challenging. I think that the best two coffees of the set, that are remaining, will taste better in V60 and these days the brewing methods will change turns.