Home Espresso – The Slippery Slope

Don’t do it. You’ve got so much to live for. Don’t listen to the chorus of coffee geeks chanting “one of us, one of us”. Note the skeptical look on the face of your significant other: you’ll be seeing it again many more times before you get within reach of your quixotic goal. Home espresso sounds like an innocent idea but its really the hobbyist equivalent of the Iraq war – it will cost way more than you expect, and in spite of repeated failures you’ll resist cutting and running.

But if you really feel compelled to invade the realms of espresso, a bit of intel and planning can help you dodge the quagmire.

First lets talk about what espresso really is. Andrea Illy in the coffee nerd bible Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality defines it thus:

Espresso is a brew obtained by percolation of hot water under pressure through tamped/compacted roasted ground coffee, where the energy of the water pressure is spent within the cake.

Beyond that, defining espresso can get complicated with different factions proposing conflicting orthodoxies about exact volumes, shot times, and ratios of ground coffee to final brew. But the general consensus is that you want between 45-75ml of reddish-brown crema laden brew between 20-30 seconds of total extraction. Crema is the hallmark of espresso, the dense, persistent foam that only appears when all the right preconditions have been met.

There are three hurdles to overcome to get true espresso at home that I’ll lay out for you after the jump:

The right gear
You need a machine that can deliver water at the right temperature, a pressure near 9 bars and can do so reliably and consistently. You need a burr grinder that produces fine grinds of relatively uniform size, on demand, and allows for very small adjustments. None of this gear is cheap, and no cheap gear will do anything close to the proper job. There are devices that can produce an espresso-like, low-pressure steam extraction such as stovetop moka pots and many cheaper so-called espresso machines. But this is in fact a different beverage. In my next post I’ll show you a range of devices and point you to some online resources.

The right skill
Assuming your machine does its job well, there are still many variables that are in your hands and require some precision and skill. From dosing, distributing, and tamping techniques to troubleshooting your shots and knowing what grind adjustments to make, a number of seemingly simple but potentially frustrating variables mean the difference between garbage and the mythical “god shot”. Even the most fancy commercial superautomatic machines can’t replace a skilled operator (try ordering a straight shot from Star*ucks if you’re in doubt). Gaining true barista skills without the benefit of a trainer, commercial gear, and infinite quantities of coffee is really frigging hard. The best place to start is David Schomer’s essential Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques.

The bean conundrum
On a good day you’ll step up to your machine, fire up your grinder and within a shot or two with small adjustments be in the “zone”. The next day perhaps you’ll roll through a half pound of beans before getting even close to a drinkable shot. This wreaks havoc on trying to keep a suitable inventory of fresh roasted beans which can run dry quickly on a bad day or lose their oomph when you’ve overstocked and the days tick by.

Why would anyone take on these challenges? Because espresso done well is like nothing else in the world, and there are very few outlets to have that experience. Taking matters into your own hands requires some fortitude but online forums like home-barista.com are peopled with lunatics who’ve blazed the trail ahead of you and can offer advice and moral support.