I've been thinking a lot about the espresso brewing process the last two days. It strikes me that it is very educational to buy say a kilo of coffee and brew lots of shots in a session to really get the chance to experiment with the dose, grind and tamp (and temperature if you are able to). Most of the time people find a process that seems to work ok and proceeds to brew a shot or two during each session. This is all good, but if they took the time to really experiment (and throw away some shots for the sake of getting better espresso) they could take their espresso to the next level. The last two days I've seen how much grind and dose matters. I've been for example purposefully dosing more and grinding coarser, grinding finer and dosing less etc, just to see the effect. The same goes with milk. Buy several liters and make up your mind to use it all for the sake of science and future milk drinks. An even better way to learn is to bring your machine to work and brew lots of drinks for your colleagues. There are lots of ways to learn and improve if you keep an open mind. 6/11/2004 09:11:00 AM
