- Today, we are doing a deep dive into the world of expresso. What's that? It's espresso, like with an S? I don't think that's right. (lighthearted music) I dug into the science of
tea in a recent episode. And while it's certainly complex, I have to admit that coffee,
the other hot beverage, always leaves my head spinning. The different brewing methods, drip, pour over, French
press, espresso, cold brew, there's a lot to know. But even diving to just one, like say espresso, can
be really intimidating. I love espresso, that
intensity is just so nice. I get it at my favorite coffee shops, I even brew it at home, but it's hard. Today, I'm incredibly
excited to get some help from James Hoffmann, author of "The World Atlas of Coffee," co-founder of Square Mile
Coffee Roasters in London, and all around coffee expert. We're going to cover the core variables when it comes to brewing espresso. And if you aren't an espresso brewer, stay tuned to the end for
James' game-changing tips on better espresso drinking. But first, what is espresso? An espresso can be many
things, but at its heart, it is a brewing method
where hot pressurized water is forced over ground coffee to produce a really intense, concentrated cup. While many of us can't imagine
a world without espresso, there was a dark, dark
time before it existed. But in the 19th century, some creative Italian
started playing around with using steam pressure
to brew coffee more quickly. And that addition of
pressure was the spark, giving the world a brand
new kind of coffee, and many, many happy
caffeinated espresso drinkers. Brewing espresso is a lot
like cooking and baking, in that there are clear variables
that you can tinker with to get your ideal results. Let's look at the primary variables and the influence they have
on what ends up in your cup. We'll talk dose, ratio,
grind size, temperature, pressure, and brew time. First up is dose. Now this is the amount of ground coffee that you put in the basket. For a long time, I was
in the more is more camp when it came to espresso dose. But it's not my fault, this is America. We love big trucks, big
gulps, and big espresso doses. Well, it turns out there's
more to the story than that. Welcome, James. I'm so glad you're here. I've learned so much
from you over the years from all of your videos about coffee. But today we're digging in on espresso. I have a lot of questions, but we're gonna start
things off with dose. What is the deal with dose? - I don't wanna over-exaggerate, but I would say that dose
is kind of everything. Getting your dose right
sets you up for success in what is quite a difficult process. Now, a lot of people probably don't think too much about dose. They kind of use a habitual amount or they think that more is better. That isn't the case. It's gonna be a lot like baking today, where it's gonna be
about ratios and recipes and that kind of stuff. And if you're baking something, you can't just add more of the
one thing that you might like and hope everything
just works out that way. So picking the right dose is really key. - Okay, so that makes
a lot of sense to me, that it is super important. And I love that baking analogy, where you're actually, you can't just add more of what you want. But I'm also curious about, if
more isn't more necessarily, what benefits do you get with going less? - Okay, so a lot of
what you're focusing on when you're making espresso
is getting a good extraction of the coffee that you have. And I think the thing to
think about right at the start is the more coffee I have, the more work I have to
do to extract it properly. So if you put a really
big dose in the basket, you can still make it taste good, but you're gonna have to work harder than working with a smaller dose. So in many cases, the machine you're using will kind of dictate the
dose you wanna work with. And it's not just the machine,
but the basket inside. In some cases, those are built
around specific gram dosages, and you shouldn't really use
more than a gram more or less than what that basket might recommend. In some cases, there is no guidance. And you just wanna make
sure that the puck, when you finished, isn't sloppy, because that's just a
mess and frustrating. And then it's not too difficult to actually load the
handle into the machine. Somewhere in between those two things is a good place to start. - So, James, in one of your videos, I heard you talk about
the lopsided bell curve of deliciousness versus extraction, which is one of the best things
I've ever read in a line. But I don't really
understand what it means. I was hoping you could give
a little more context to it. - Okay, so I'm gonna to talk
a lot about extraction today. And, really, we're talking about how much of the sort of soluble
stuff in ground coffee that we got out into the cup. If you don't do a good job brewing and you don't get enough, we would call that under-extraction. Essentially, there's good flavors in the leftover grounds that you knock out when you're finished. The more you take, the better. And it gets better and better and better until it suddenly gets very bad. And that's the bit where things
kind of fall off a cliff, and we talk about maybe over-extraction. Under-extraction tends
to taste more acidic. Unsurprisingly, it tastes
a little bit weak often. Over-extraction tends to
emphasize the very bitter, harsher taste within coffee. In the middle, this kind
of sweet, delicious, complex coffee that feels balanced, that's really what we're shooting for. - Okay, next up is ratio. The espresso ratio shows
the weight of ground coffee next to the weight of the brewed espresso. So, for example, let's say you start with 18 grams of ground coffee. And you pull a shot until your cup has 18 grams of espresso in it. That would be a 1:1 ratio. If you use that same 18 grams, but pulled a shot that
clocked in at 36 grams, you'd have a 1:2 ratio. Pretty simple, right? So your espresso ratio will put you into one of three categories. These are ristretto, espresso, and lungo. Okay, so that's the basics of ratio, but what does it actually mean in terms of brewing and drinking? - Okay, so ratio is really important, and it's a really helpful
way to think about coffee and espresso brewing in particular. So ratio talks about how much
ground coffee did you use in the basket at the start of the process compared to how much
liquid espresso you brewed on the other side. Now, the more liquid you
produce from a fixed amount, the weaker that drink will be. Now, there's no right and wrong here. This is really about preference, what kind of drink do you wanna make. A ristretto will be kind of
like a cask strength whiskey, overwhelmingly intense. Add a little water, bring
it back to an espresso, you still have tons of
texture, tons of flavor, but not quite as overwhelming. And then go again, up to a lungo, and you'll find it very balanced, but not that kind of
very textured experience. But one isn't better than the other. A ristretto isn't somehow a
better drink than a lungo. You're just trying to
do the best job you can with those drinks, with those categories. - Okay, so the big takeaway I got there is if I go to my local shop
and I asked for a ristretto, I'm not cooler than the next guy who just wants a regular espresso. - Absolutely not, there's too
much of that around coffee, and it's just nonsense. Enjoy what you enjoy. - I love that. That's a great sentiment there. Okay, grind size. No matter the method of brewing, the particle size of your ground coffee is incredibly important. But with espresso, even
tiny changes in grind size can have a massive impact. And if you ask James, it might just be the
most important variable. - The grinder for espresso brewing is the most important thing. It's the most important
piece of equipment. I would rather have an expensive grinder and a very cheap espresso machine
than the other way around. It's also probably the most
frustrating part of the process, because how you cut the coffee
open determines two things. Firstly, the finer you grind coffee, essentially, the more surface
area you're opening up. It's a bit like dicing
something finer in the kitchen, it makes sense. This though is complicated by the fact that when you pack it
together into a machine, the finer the pieces, the harder it is for the water to get through it. Generally, you'd think finer the better, because I want as much flavor
out of my coffee as possible as long as I'm not getting too much. But espresso has this really big issue, and it's called channeling,
or uneven extraction. When you have this really
high pressure water, if it can't easily get
through all of the coffee, sort of evenly, as in terms of flow, it'll eventually crack
open these little channels. And more water will flow
through these channels, kind of skipping the rest of the coffee. That means you get this
taste of over-extraction, where the water has flowed
through these little beds, so you get this harsh bitterness. But generally, most of the
coffee hasn't seen enough water, that's under-extraction, and the two combined are very unpleasant. So what you're trying to
do is grind fine enough to expose enough surface area, getting a flavor out of the coffee, but still have the water flow evenly through that puck, through
that cake of coffee. Now a good grinder helps
you in a couple of ways. Firstly, it gives you loads of control. A small movement on a grinder should give you a very small change. Secondly, you want a grinder that's gonna give you evenly cut pieces. So that's why we use what
are called burr grinders. You'll have two cutting disks, or sometimes a conical-shaped disc, that will move further
apart or closer together to determine the size of the
pieces that you're cutting. The pieces can only get out of the burrs once they're a certain size. So better, more expensive
grinders generally produce more even and more
controllable coffee grounds. - So one unfortunate takeaway
from what you just said is that you can't have under
extraction and over extraction, and they somehow like meet in the middle for like a perfect extraction. The channeling is a really big problem because you get kind of
the worst of both worlds. - Exactly right. - Okay, now the variable that
you've all been waiting for, water temperature. As we all know in the kitchen, hotter water can extract a lot more stuff from whatever it is in contact with. Think about making chicken
stock in lukewarm water versus in simmering water. You are gonna get a lot more flavor from the simmering water. And you won't get food poisoning. And it's the same with espresso. I guess not the food poisoning part. If you go hotter, you will extract more. Going hotter can be a really
good thing for lighter roast, but with darker roast,
it's a potential issue. Here are some good
ballpark temperature ranges for darker roasts, medium
roasts, and lighter roasts. So, James, if the temperature ranges for these different roasts aren't all that different
from one another, how much does water
temperature really matter? - It does make a difference. It is important, but it's not as important as espresso machine manufacturers
would have you believe. There's a lot of hype, a lot of sales around brew temperature. If other aspects of the brew are wrong, temperature won't fix it. Temperature is a nice tweak for flavors, where you might pull a shot and think, oh, it just needs like a little bit more. It's just a touch acidic. That's a great time to
increase the temperature. What's frustrating, if you
have a machine at home, is a machine that
doesn't do the same thing two times in a row, right? Whatever profile your machine produces, I'm kind of okay with
it as long as it does it every single time you use the machine. And that's where cheaper
machines tend to be worse. - So consistency is really
the name of the game, predictability and consistency when it comes to water temperature. - Yes, that's basically
it, be aware of it. You can use it as a little variable, but do not obsess over it unnecessarily. - Next up, pressure. Now, as we all learned at
the top of this episode, pressure is what differentiates espresso from all other brewing methods. It allows us to push hot water through a puck of ground coffee in about 30 seconds and
make a delicious drink. It is also the reason
that we can achieve crema, that lovely, dense, foamy creamy layer on top of the espresso. Carbon dioxide gas that is
trapped within the beans, and therefore within the ground coffee, is forced into the brew
water under pressure. When the brewed coffee exits the machine and that high pressure environment, the carbon dioxide gas
expands as tiny bubbles. James has a whole video on crema, and I've linked to it below this video. You have to check it out. But I'm getting off topic. What is the deal with the pressure and different pressures for brewing? - What we're trying to do with espresso is use a very small amount of water through very finely ground coffee. And the only way you can get
the water through the coffee is with some force. And so we talk about the
pressure that we brew with. Historically, they tried using
steam pressure early days, then they switched to
compressed springs with levers. And now we use sort of modern pumps, that might be a vibration
pump or a rotary pump, to generate a lot of force. We talk in bars of pressure typically. So nine bars of pressure at the pump, about 130 PSI, converting
it that way around. So a good amount of force is required to get this hot water through
this very finely ground, packed-in puck of coffee. So the funny thing about
brew pressure though is that we tend to use nine bars because it's the peak of a
bell curve in many cases. Lower pressures aren't as
good at getting the water through the finely ground coffee. It takes a little bit longer to do so. But go above nine bars,
and actually that force compresses the cake of coffee so much that the water can't get through, and the flow slows down again. So this seems to be why the industry settled on around nine bars of pressure. That doesn't necessarily
mean it's the best though. For many starter baristas, I think using lower pressures
can be really helpful. What again is confused by manufacturers is that you'll see
claims of a cheap machine with 15 bars of pressure,
18 bars of pressure, as if that's desirable, it's really not. Essentially, the way
that those machines work is they generate too much pressure, and what they should have is
a little valve that opened, that leaks out any excess
above your desired pressure. It's called an over pressure valve. Most of them are set horribly wrong. They're generating too much pressure. They're flowing too slow. They encourage you to grind too coarsely. They don't help you make great coffee. So be cautious of getting
obsessed with pressure. If you're starting out, then I would say six to eight bars is a really good place to start. The machine will be a
little bit more tolerant. It's a little easier to use. But nine bars is a good industry standard, set and forget and kind
of don't worry about it setting point. - And finally, brew time. Now I'm putting brew time
in here as a variable even though James and a
lot of other coffee pros don't really think of it as one. Meaning that it's not a variable
that you control directly, but rather one that you track to see how all of your other
variables are working out. The goal is to pull a
shot in 25 to 30 seconds. If you end up with a
ratio that you were after, and you did it in that timeframe, you're doing a lot of things right. That doesn't necessarily mean
that you'll love the taste of that cup of coffee, but
you pulled a successful shot. Then by tinkering with all of these other variables we talked about, you can get to the cup that you love. Okay, so we've made it
through all of our variables. I'm really excited. And I wanna celebrate by
pulling a shot of espresso. But before I do that, and
before we let James go, he has offered to tell us his top tips for how to drink espresso. - First one is always, always, always stir your espresso
fully before taking a sip. When you brew espresso, it
kind of accidentally layers. The first liquid out of your
portafilter is really dense, and that sits right at
the bottom of the cup. If you just sip your
espresso without stirring it, then you just get the
last stuff you brewed. It'll taste a little thinner,
a little less enjoyable. Stir it all up, taste that,
that's what you've made, and that's what you're gonna use to maybe make an adjustment. - I see people swirl espresso, and I've done that a lot myself. You're saying don't swirl
it, like actually stir it, even if you're not adding anything to it. - Swirling looks good, feels kind of cool, doesn't really do a great job. - Okay, awesome. - Second tip, don't worry
about the espresso going cold. Essentially, the way your body works is that you're better at tasting stuff the closer it is to body temperature. If your espresso cools
down and tastes bad, it always tasted bad. It didn't die or fall apart. Nothing changed really, except that you could actually
taste what you'd made. So a lot of cafes will encourage
espresso to be drunk hot to kind of hide any potential flaws that there might be there. Letting it cool down really
lets you taste what you've made, and again, make better decisions around how you might tweak that, change your recipe to improve the espresso that you wanna make next. - Oh, I love that. Okay, so yeah, so if you've
walked away from your espresso, you come back, don't dump
it and brew another one. Like it's actually really good. You get to taste everything
you have in there. - I'll give you one more that I just think is really super fun. Now, crema, on top of
espresso, I think is beautiful. It's the kind of defining
characteristic for the drink. But interestingly, contained within it is quite a lot of bitterness. So if you, just once, just once, scoop the crema off your espresso, get rid of it and drink
the espresso underneath. It's really interesting. It's that much sweeter, cleaner, brighter, juicier, more complex, but kind of less fun in
a different kind of way. But a kind of fun little exercise to understand the espresso
you make a little bit more. - I love that so much because
you both will understand your espresso more. And if anyone else is around,
you'll totally confuse them. Might actually make them angry just by doing that. - (laughs) I will say it's
maybe not practical day to day to do on your espresso, but
if you like an Americano, but wished it had just a
fraction less bitterness, 100% recommended as a daily
routine for Americano-making, I think you get a really delicious drink if you skim the crema off an Americano before stirring it up. - That's cool, that's a great tip. All right, You've given
us like four or five tips, that's awesome. James, thank you so much for this. I learned so much here and
I know all of our viewers have as well. I'm gonna take all of
what you talked about, head into the kitchen, and see if I can improve my espresso game. - Please let me know how that goes. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real delight to chat. - So now without further ado, let's go to the kitchen
and do some brewing. I'm using my personal machine, which is this lovely funky, quirky, Italian guy named La Pavoni. It's one of the earliest
designs for an espresso machine and is entirely manual. It's also pretty steampunk,
if that's something you like. Anyway, I really like it and it's been fun to learn how to brew espresso with. If you're interested in getting
an espresso machine at home, check out the link below
to our big review on them. There's tons of options,
lots of bells and whistles and stuff to figure out
so you can find the one that is perfect for you. Now let's put everything
together and brew a shot. I'm using a medium roast
that I love called Gold, from a Massachusetts roaster called Barrington Coffee Roasting Company. But you should use
whatever you really love. I'm using one of the finest
settings on my burr grinder. And for the first half of my ratio, I have 13 grams of coffee. I'll get it into my basket, and if there are any small clumps, I use a cake tester or
anything fine like that to break them up before using a leveler to give me a nice smooth surface. And then finally, the tamp, to get a consistent puck of coffee. I then lock it into my preheated machine. When I raised the bar to the top, water floods from the
boiler into the group head. After just a few seconds of infusing, I lower the handle and push the water through the ground coffee, into my non-preheated
cup that is waiting below on a digital scale. I'm using an open portafilter so we can actually get underneath and watch the espresso come out. Now, to be honest, I mostly
use this open portafilter because it just looked so cool coming out. But you can actually
diagnose espresso problems by watching what comes out. One such issue is channeling, which leads to that
awful uneven extraction that James talked about. I'm looking for 26 grams, which will give me a 1:2 ratio. And of course I want it all
to happen in 25 to 30 seconds. Just look at this beauty. And that thick layer of
crema is thanks to the fact that my coffee is fresh enough that it still contained lots of CO2. Okay, it's time for a taste. But first, gotta give it that stir. Mmm, this cup has a lovely sweetness balanced by just the right
amount of acidity for me. It is, however, a touch too bitter. But now we know that
there are lots of options to address that. I can grind a little coarser, I could go down on my dose a little bit, I could decrease the water temperature, I could scoop out that crema, I guess. Well, sorry about that. I kind of lost in that variables dream. Whether you are brand new to espresso, or you buy it all the time
at your local coffee shop, or you pull pro-level shots at home, we can all take comfort in knowing that we're enjoying
one of the most complex and frustrating culinary
endeavors in the whole world. And if you ever get frustrated
dealing with espresso, just remember what they always say, the best espresso is the one
that you have in your hand. Do they say that? This is how to drink espresso. Now, if any of this has
piqued your interest in brewing espresso, great. James has done a wonderful deep dive on all of these variables
on his YouTube channel, as well as tons of other
videos around coffee. You'll learn so much. There's a link to it below this video. Can't recommend it enough. I'd love to hear from all
of you in the comments. Do you love espresso? Do you brew it at home? Do you like when I cover beverages? Are you over caffeinated? I need to know!
