MP random writings

Making Espresso

So after spending more than a few hours and more than a few coffee beans trying to find the right espresso I have learned something about making espresso: you have to have a good tamper. The one that comes with the Rancilio Silvia is quite bad. Despite reviews on how bad it was I didn't think it would change the quality of the coffee. It does.

So yesterday, after going to three different places in Tyson's Corner, bought one online. This should get the coffee to finally taste right. My next challenge is getting it to take 24 seconds to come out. My coffee still finishes in about 15 seconds. Any longer than that and it gets bitter.

A new cup of joy

Last week we purchased an espresso maker. This is no simple ordinary machine. In fact, we deliberated a lot over whether we should get this at all, but ultimately we thought it would be fun to learn and get a great drink out of it. After spending some time trying to figure out why our coffee tasted like plastic, then spending more time running water thru the machine over and over, we are now trying to figure out what settings we need to make a good espresso.

Currently, we are using Lavazza Super Crema which seems to be a good brand. I have the grinder set to 5, use 15-16 g of espresso, tamped to 30 lbs (I think). The coffee is supposed to come out in 20-22 seconds. Ours is coming out in about 10 seconds. The puck is hard and seems ok, but the coffee seems a bit weak. Tonight, I will use a finer setting like 4 and see if that helps.

For cappuccino, there's the whole other issue of heating the milk. Not easy to get the foam correct. In case you may not be familiar with a real cappuccino, there should only be coffee and finely foamed milk. Not coffee and heated milk. Not coffee, milk, and foamy meringue. Getting the right froth is really difficult. We're getting closer, but not good enough for any type of latte art (not that it really matters), but that consistency tastes best.

More to come after tonight's experiments.