Summary How I Make Espresso: Tools and Techniques - YouTube (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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Speaker 0 Today, we're gonna talk about espresso puck prep. We're gonna go through the techniques and the tools involved in getting your ground coffee ready for 83% brewing inside an espresso machine. Today, we're gonna talk about techniques that I hope are universal whether you've got a cheapest espresso machine that you've just started with whether you've got a very, you know, expensive high end espresso machine. Everything I talk about today should be applicable to what you do. Now the goal of espresso puck prep is basically to get that little puck of coffee, ready so that when the water flows through it, it flows through as evenly as possible.
Speaker 0 That's it. That's the goal. We 83% it to flow through at a certain kind of time we want to control how much liquid goes through it, but those are kind of outside of the prep piece of this thing. Now I come from the professional coffee world, the Cafe world where liquid There seems to be frightening little puck prep in most places, even good places. They seem to dose the coffee maybe settle it a little bit, maybe be 83%, tap it, brew it and and it's good.
Speaker 0 And we're gonna do a lot more than that. Because I think we can get better espresso. And again, our goals are Kindness" different. Cafes 83% make good espresso as quickly and easily as possible as they can. We wanna make incredible espresso every time we make espresso.
Speaker 0 What I'm gonna do is go through each of the stages of pot prep, and talk through some of the options that you have and some of the techniques that people use, the impact that they have and give you what is ultimately my opinion about how important they are. Is it worth doing. Now as you'll see in front of me, there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff involved in espresso punk prep, and I'm aware maybe I have a reputation of spending other people's money by making them want things. Please, please, please maximize your current setup before you think about upgrading.
Speaker 0 You're definitely gonna have a little bit of of Fo here or or a kind of desire for 1 more new thing. Try and keep that in check until you're sure it's gonna solve a problem that you have. To end this video, I'll share my personal park prep routine. I'll make a kind of real time espresso starting from the beans, ending with the drink, everything in between because I don't do every single thing that I'm gonna talk about today when I make espresso. So first step is Kindness" gonna be bean prep.
Speaker 0 And I'm gonna recommend for many people, especially when they're starting and getting to know their grinder, weighing both the input and output from the grinder up. So you're going weigh your coffee beans and then you're gonna weigh the grounds once they're in the 83% filter as well. Not every grinder is a 0 retention grinder or a low retention grinder. So you wanna make sure that you're getting out what you're putting in. So for me here, I'm gonna dose 18 and a half grams in and I'm gonna grind it and then I'll wait it in the quarter filter to see how we've done.
Speaker 0 Now this is maybe tangent gentle to puck prep, but it's kind of part of the whole routine gonna use what's called the ross droplet technique. You can either... I think the first time I instead of doing this I would get a teaspoon wet, just run it under a tap and stir it into the beans. More commonly now. You can get a little spray bottle and just spray a single spray over those coffee beans.
Speaker 0 If you're doing this once 83% twice a day, Think it's fine to spray every single dose. If you're making a lot of espresso, you'll find that you're weighing vessel gets a little damp you don't need to spray. If your manufacturer of your grinder recommends you don't do this, then maybe just use this sort of teaspoon method. But for most grinder, a little spray of water on beans does absolutely no damage, it reduces static and reduces retention and that makes it a good thing. Last little thing is before I dose coffee into my porta filter, I'm to make sure my basket is completely dry.
Speaker 0 I like to use a little bit of 83% for that. Nice and dry and clean. Dosing into a wet basket can sort of encourage water to flow where water already been and you get a kind of additional flow on the edges of the puck rather of them through it or so goes the theory anyway, to grind. So on the scale, we've got 18 and a half grams out. That's kind of what we wanted and so we can move into the next phase, which is ultimately the most important phase of puck prep and that is distribution.
Speaker 0 Things are 83% get a bit more opinionated here. But first, gonna talk about 1 more tool, which is a dosing funnel. They look like this and they sit on top of your 83% filter. This 1, I particularly like because it has magnets, so it sticks really nicely on there. So a little bit more reassuring, but it's not by any stretch essential.
Speaker 0 This is useful in the next phase with different kinds of distribution, a because it will prevent spill and mess. Because if we take it off and look at the basket right now, we've got this mound of coffee in the middle and around the edges We've got some coffee sort of gaps or or trough, so to speak. If I just compress this now with my temper, I will not have an even bed coffee. The thin parts of the bed will be much easier for water to get through and so more water will flow through less coffee, and that won't taste great. So what we need to do, is distribute the coffee evenly around the basket.
Speaker 0 There's a number of ways to do that. Additionally, you'll see that there's kind of clumps here where as part of the grinding process, the grounds have 83% been slightly squeezed together, and they will stay as clumps after they've been tam, and there'll be a more dense pocket of coffee compared to the pocket around them again. They promote uneven extraction. We want to get rid of the clumps. So as I said, there's kind of 4 approaches to distribution.
Speaker 0 And that brings us back to tools. This 1 here is my favorite Is biochemical sw design. It's a bit more expensive I I confess. You can make these yourself actually quite cheaply. You can get a a cork from a wine bottle and some punch needles and be on your 83% to something very similar to this or you can buy a kind of 83% tool or there's kind of options in between.
Speaker 0 They don't have to be expensive, but I think they are a very good tool. You can get this style, which has the loops on the end here. These for me, I don't really recommend at it particularly like the looped ended tools I prefer a finer needle in a kind of more commercial sense where you might wanna go a bit faster. You do have things like this. So this was a sort of cheap thing from I think Ali Express, This sits on top of the porta filter has a spring inside, and then you twist it to essentially rake the needles around in there.
Speaker 0 This particular 1 I don't recommend because the needles don't go deep enough. The 1 I do recommend of this style is insanely expensive. It's called duo 8 and it has less needles, but its build is very nice. This sort of sits on top. You spin it.
Speaker 0 And it does some distribution 83% breaks up clumps. It comes a little stand that cleans it. And if I was trying to do this in a cafe, this would make sense. At home, I'm just not sure I could recommend you spend this much money back to the job in hand. What we're gonna do is get our needles in there and start deep, start right at the bottom of the basket and essentially stir and move around the coffee inside.
Speaker 0 We're looking to make sure that the coffee is evenly distributed from the base. Any clumps in the bottom section are broken up, then work up a little bit higher until you're just sort of dealing with the top section and you should have afterwards, a very nice even looking bed of coffee. This for me is is sort of prepped and ready to tap and move on with. Now I would recommend it. I like it, but there are other ways to distribute coffee before taping and so let's talk about the next 1, which is wedge distributors.
Speaker 0 So in the world of Wedge distributors, there's a few 83% styles. I think most people are familiar with the 1 from free!"Coffee from 83% that was known I think initially is the Ocd, the owner coffee distributor. There's also something like this from P, which again works in a similar kind of way. And the idea is that this thing is gonna go and do kind of 2 jobs as you move it around, it's gonna smooth the coffee around aside the basket to help distribute it. It's also in that process going apply some pressure to the point that some people recommend just distributing and not tampering.
Speaker 0 So it goes in the you rotate. And you smooth 83% around and you end up with. What looks? Very nice. It looks very even.
Speaker 0 Quite satisfying. It feels like it's well tam. You you've done a good job so to speak. 1 thing you can do to sort of compare them is get something like this. This is a 58 millimeter glass.
Speaker 0 Yes, you do a reasonable job of kind of moving coffee around the top part of the basket. But I think with wedge distributors, they're just not really touching the stuff in the bottom half, or having will impact there. So for me, I'm 83% I'm just not a huge fan of them. I don't think they're necessarily damaging to your espresso or but I'd I just say I just prefer needle distribution for me and the style espresso that I drink. The third style of distribution, we should briefly talk about is 1 that has...
Speaker 0 Pretty much fallen out of fashion but is very much how I learned which is what I would call manual distribution or just using your hands. When I started in coffee, coffee grind technology was pretty pour in some ways and grand did not produce a fixed dose of coffee for you every time you wanted 1. Instead, you had to use your basket as a kind of volumetric fill. That meant you had to be very consistent in the way that you distributed your coffee to make sure that you had an even basket full. And why to this day, I hate volumetric measurements in cooking.
Speaker 0 There were really 2 major techniques around if you bought David Sc book when at camera, you'll seen He kinda did a north southeast distribution where you Kindness" push the coffee around with a flat finger, like so to try and get it to be... All over the bed. If you were into espresso around the... I don't know, early 83% thousands, you 83% see what's called the stock flats distribution method that use the sort of bit of your thumb here and you would smooth it around like that on it'll finish and then 83% duct. You know, okay, It's a really easy technique to mess up and be inconsistent with.
Speaker 0 The last 1 on the distribution front that I wanna talk about is vibration distribution because I think a lot of people are curious if this is a good idea or not. In fact, you can buy a vibration distributor for espresso, this is the nori and this is what it's for. Your put would sit in here, then you run it, and it would vibrate your bed of coffee. And in theory you'd think that would help. That would help so settle it out very evenly I'll show you how it works.
Speaker 0 It's kind fun. You get some distribution for sure. It doesn't really break up clumps in the same way. And the interesting thing about this And I things was tested in Modern cuisine using sort of ultrasonic as well is that you seemingly get some movement of fine particles down to the bottom of the basket. Flow with this is slower than with sort of needle distribution as a kind of comparison point.
Speaker 0 So it seems to be that you get a little sand bag as lots of fines so sit at the bottom of the puck. And that for me isn't a great thing, though it is a fun interesting little toy to play with. Now 1 other piece of poke prep kit that I think is notable and kind of interesting is also from sw design who I mentioned earlier, they make the por press, which is really interesting. This is another collection of sort of needles designed to sit on top of your prepped, but not yet 83% bed, and then you're supposed to press it down. Rotate it a little bit, press it down.
Speaker 0 Rotate it a little bit again, and press it down. And in doing so, you have produced an enormous number of holes across the bed of coffee. Now the idea is that when you tam this now, you'll have kind of seeded pathways for water throughout the puck. It's interesting. It's another expensive tool.
Speaker 0 There is an impact from it. I think Prometheus has did a good video about This particular thing I'll leave a link to that down below, but it is just an interesting thing to see people experimenting with these kind of ideas for what I think are incremental gains, but I'm never gonna be against incremental gains. So next up isn't an interesting 1. And I would say it's the thing that was the biggest surprise in testing, was definitely something that kind of caught me by surprise a little bit despite the fact that I've been aware of this now for a good long while. And that is using a little bit of paper at the bottom of your espresso basket.
Speaker 0 Now this started, I think originally with people concerned about the quantities of some of the lipids in coffee in their espresso there have been some papers linking consumption of kind of unfiltered coffee to blood cholesterol and therefore to heart disease. I'm not saying that's a thing and I don't really 83% to go into that in this video but that's what started this whole thing off. Now, a bit of paper like this, the bottom will filter out any fine pieces from your coffee. That means you'll get no fl no tiger stripes on top of your espresso anymore. It will filter out some of the lipids in coffee, some of the oils, and that will have the small but noticeable impact on texture and mouth, but it's actually not biggest you'd think.
Speaker 0 It does have another super interesting impact. In testing, it caused the flow of the espresso to increase quite dramatically. Shots that were pulling at say 28, 29 seconds we're suddenly pulling, at 23 seconds. And in doing so, it also increased their extraction quite notably. The frustrating thing is that it's actually quite hard to get a food safe bit of paper that fits the bottom of the basket.
Speaker 0 Some people have been using scientific papers, they are not rated as kind of food safe thing I don't think there's a huge risk there, but you should be aware of the risks of kind of non food safe papers. Here, I'm using a plumbing basket because it fits a hole punched chem paper. So you can buy whole punches of 2 and a quarter inches very easily on the internet. I'll leave a link down below, and then you can just punch out for something like a Chem filter paper, a bunch of these little things and they fit some baskets very well. Some people like to wet the paper before they dose just to make sure that there's no kind of impact of the W 83% or the the needle distribution at that point.
Speaker 0 I haven't seen any inconsistency or issues with the dry paper. Obviously, you don't 83% get the size of the basket too damp. You wanna keep those nice and dry. But but, yeah, the bottom, can be a little bit damp. That's okay.
Speaker 0 Now as you can see, it has no negative impact on cr. This plenty of the good 83% stuff on top if that's what you like. That's a tasty clean balanced espresso. I sort of hate the fact that I feel this way. 83% it's more work.
Speaker 0 It's more effort, a bit more waste, but I like what a paper filter at the bottom of the espresso basket does to the shot to the extraction to the whole process. It's a I don't think it's essential, but I do think it's worth experimenting with, though, I wish there was just an easier way to get 83% papers for these things that fit espresso baskets and that fit a Vs s baskets because the vs baskets are a different size. You'll see the aero press is that a little bit bigger, so it absolutely will not fit inside a basket. And some people have been doing a kind of sandwich of these things. So 1 at the bottom and also 1 at the top, though that has become less common with the advent of the next thing to talk about, which are things puck screens.
Speaker 0 These are puck screens. These are sort of thick discs of metal mesh designed to sit exactly on top of your poke, edge to inside your basket and do a couple of things. Firstly, they should act as an additional water distribution aid. They should help the water coming from the share screen, spread more evenly over the puck of coffee. Secondly, the theory is that they prevent sort of excessive expansion of the park, during pre infusion, which helps create a more even extraction afterwards.
Speaker 0 Do they work? Well, in testing, I think they do yes. I saw an increase in extraction using these, it wasn't an enormous increase, but it was consistent and it was consistent across different brands, which was good to know. They are, However, when frustrating and fuss things to use. They're irritating and difficult clean, some people have resorted to ultrasonic cleaning baths, steaming them with some, or Espresso machine cleaner isn't a bad option either, but they are a little bit of fa.
Speaker 0 And so whether they are worth it to speak in terms of the cost of buying 1, the the sort of pain of using 1 really depends how obsessed you are with squeezing every last single drop out of the coffee that you have. All of this leads us to the last stage of espresso poke prep which is tam. Now obviously, you'll temp and then put on, say a puck screen if you're gonna do that, but I figured this was kind of a nice last step to talk about. If you wanna use a traditional tamper then the ergonomic are important in terms of you looking after your body, you wanna hold it kind of like a door. Thumb pointing down the whole 83%.
Speaker 0 And when you tap, you 83% have your elbow right above the coffee, as if you're about to sort of screw in a screw that might be sticking out of the wood surface. You got 83% screwdriver in your hand, you would get right over it, so you could drive down apply pressure. Now here, you don't need to twist. You're just looking to press down as evenly as possible until the coffee stops feeling squishy. That's it.
Speaker 0 You're trying to press as much error of the coffees you can to make sure that the bed is even there's no air pockets left behind. I I like to rotate the tamper very slightly so that with my fingertips, I can feel if I'm level or not. If I'm not level, I'll feel it as my fingers rotate. Twisting polishing back kind of stuff, I learned to do it and no 1 knows why we did it. We've mostly stopped doing it.
Speaker 0 It feels nice. Feel a little bit flashy. Does nothing for your coffee. So don't worry about it. That's a traditional 83%.
Speaker 0 On the temp front, there are obviously other options you can use a wedge distributor you do have things like this, which is the force tamper, which is a very expensive solution to a problem. Now when it comes to tam pressure, it is, it kind of a binary thing. You either pushed hard enough to get rid of the air pockets or or you haven't. Pushing harder than hard enough, makes no difference to extraction off it's flow or anything like that. So it's not a complexity of the espresso brewing process of of puck prep.
Speaker 0 But something like this will sort of stop pressing a certain pressure, you'll hear a kind of click. Like that, where you've crossed the threshold pressure, and you definitely pressed hard enough and it won't press any harder. Additionally, the sort of a design of this means that it sits on the with the basket, it should temp perfectly level every time. These are expensive. They're very nice and they definitely take away a variable that some people worry about and sort of strip some of the pleasure of espresso.
Speaker 0 So for some of it is a good worthwhile investment for others, doesn't really make a good return on their investment. If they're comfortable, safe, and consistent in their manual tam, and they may enjoy using 1 of these things. And you know, there a lot of beautiful temper out there. Made a video about that once. Now I'm aware we've 83% to this point and we've covered a lot of ground.
Speaker 0 And and in in doing it this kind of way, I feel like I've thrown a lot of information at you, which is why at the end of this thing, I I kind of wanna just go through a real time park prep, so you can see what it looks like. And decide for yourself is this seemingly too much faster is too much work or actually, is 83% is it pretty simple and easy and and and probably worth the time and effort involved. But before we do that, we do need to have a quick ad for this video sponsor, which is Surfshark. Surf is a Vpn that is fast, easy to use easy to install and with 1 account, you can install it on unlimited devices. Now you might ask why do you need a Vpn And I think there's a couple of really good use cases in the real world for for using a Vpn having it be part of your life.
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Speaker 0 Over there, is the coffee is an 83% kindness design that we've had actually for a little while now and we've just launched it now. All proceeds or pro 83% from the t shirt and the print will go to 4 different charities all operating and helping with the crisis with war Ukraine being profits I think 83% test waived by Russia. It's horrifying to see and so we wanna to support it in some way. So these are now available. The 83% sheets are a limited run.
Speaker 0 The 83% will be around for a little while. Well, if you like it, click the link down the description below. But now I want turn the questions of course over to you. Tell me about your punk prep. Tell me what you've changed recently, What has made a big impact to the espresso that you drink every day.
Speaker 0