Fresh Cup Magazine

The Whole Cup
The Crema Sutra of Espresso
By Sherri Johns

Perfect espresso doesn't come easily. It's a careful combination of technique and timing, with a little artistic flair thrown in for good measure. When perfected, it's a process that can produce an unparalleled specialty beverage. When botched, it yields little more than a bitter, muddy brew. Unfortunately, well-made espresso remains scarce in American coffeehouses, but often because of a simple, very correctable mistake. So this month, I'm offering my top tips for helping every café operator ensure not just a good shot, but a god shot.

Buy the Best-Quality Coffee Beans Available
You will ruin a cup of coffee before you even brew it if the beans are stale or of inferior quality. This is easy to avoid, however-simply buy the best and roast the best. Purchase beans from quality-minded importers or roasters, and be willing to pay for that distinction. Remember, the final cup character relies on the proper execution of a series of critical steps, but it all begins-and sometimes ends-with the quality and freshness of the green coffee.

Clean the Hopper
Even the best beans can go bad when placed in a tainted grinder hopper. I have often seen a plastic hopper with a ring of tainted oils deep enough to scratch "wash me" in it. All bean oils go bad eventually, and quality beans placed in a hopper coated with a thick oily film of tainted oils will spoil. At least once a week, clean the hopper with a mild, unscented cleansing solution, and dry with paper towels (a cloth will leave fibers). Side note: I've seen many baristi use the hopper lid to catch grounds when dosing, only to insert them into the bean hopper when replacing the large lid. Use the smaller dosing chamber lid only. The large hopper lid will retain grounds because of the bean oil, and the grounds can eventually mix with the beans and dull your grinder burrs.

Always House the Portafilter in the Group Head
Customer rule number one: Switch to bottled water if you order an espresso and the barista has to rummage through drawers for a portafilter. Portafilters must always be stored in the group head when not in use. The temperature maintained in the group head helps preheat portafilters prior to their use. When not preheated prior to actual brewing, portafilters can absorb up to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, which means your espresso will brew at a lower temperature. Portafilters stored on top of an espresso machine-even on the warming tray-will not suffice. Don't believe me? Try touching them to see which is hotter-drawer storage, warming tray or group head.

Use Proper Barware
Never serve me an espresso in a paper cup the size of Texas. Use proper barware as it relates to your beverage and always preheat the cup if it is being prepared for in-house consumption. Even the best espresso served in a 12-ounce paper cup loses all of its precious crema and heat when consumed from an over-sized cup. The inner walls of the cup are coated with a viscous substance that smells pretty good, but there is nothing left to enter your mouth. Serve espresso in a four-ounce paper cup or, better yet, a two- to three-ounce preheated demitasse. Can't meet the minimum order for a paper cup with logo? Buy a few sleeves of blank stock or one case from your local supplier. You should have these on hand anyway for sampling.

Preheat the Demitasse
It's a good idea to run hot water from the Americano valve into the demitasse to preheat the cup. Make sure to discard the water before brewing directly into the cup. If you're worried about splashes and drips, balance the demitasse on a shot glass. The portafilter spouts land directly in the cup without touching the pooling espresso, keeping any droplets from escaping. Of course, the pour should be slow and steady anyway.

Watch the Grind
The grinder is probably the most misunderstood component of espresso-making. Either too coarse or too fine a grind will adversely impact extraction, so you must know how and when to adjust. I worry when I see a barista wildly swinging the grinder settings an inch or more to the right or left depending on the adjustment needed. The basic rule of thumb is that espresso extraction should be between 20 and 30 seconds (25 is perfect). If a barista has the proper dose of coffee (seven to nine grams per shot) in the portafilter and if he applies the correct tamping pressure (30 to 50 pounds), the coffee should run to an ounce and a quarter per shot within 20 to 30 seconds. Each notch or click on the grinding burr adjustment collar will adjust the grind by approximately two seconds, either up or down.

Use Enough Coffee in the Portafilter
A dose of 14 to 18 grams of coffee for a double shot is ideal. Too light a dose allows water to race around the basket and not achieve maximum flavor extraction. You'll notice a soupy puck of grounds in the portafilter basket after brewing with too little coffee. Too much creates excess spillage and waste.

Perfect Your Tamping
Improper tamping will result in either overextraction or underextraction. Strive for 30 to 50 pounds of pressure. Not sure how to figure this out? Buy a scale, place it on the counter and tamp into the portafilter directly on the scale. Practice consistently until you achieve a tamp pressure in this range. And whatever you do, never use the built-in tamper on a grinder. It is impossible to achieve a 30-pound tamp this way. Simply remove the built-in tamper and discard-you'll never use it.

Use a Quality Hand Tamper
If you knock the portafilter rim with a tamper, the rim gets dinged and forms divots. Once under pressure, this allows coffee to escape into a customer's cup via the portafilter rim. The same holds true with a hand tamper. If its rim is damaged, it will not create a firm coffee surface pack or tamp. The divots will allow water to penetrate the espresso grounds faster than the coffee in the filter basket that is evenly and firmly tamped. Yes, it is true, you can have an overextracted and underextracted espresso from the same portafilter. A good tamper should be durable, it should fit comfortably in the palm of the hand and it should perfectly fit the diameter of the portafilter.

Lose the Grounds
Grounds in the bottom of a cup will be your customers' last impression. A quick wipe of the portafilter rim and side flanges with a towel or your finger will remove excess grounds that have not been tamped into the portafilter. If you still see grounds in the bottom of the cup, it's a good bet that the filter baskets or inserts need to be replaced. Those tiny holes eventually stretch from all the pressure applied to them every day. Once they stretch, even correctly ground coffee particles will slip through the holes and into the cup. As a test, take a new filter basket and one from your machine. Compare the two inserts, side by side, holding them up with a light in the background.

Clean Your Baskets
Brewing on top of old coffee? Sadly, I see this time and again. Portafilters are removed from the group head, the spent coffee is haphazardly discarded and new coffee is dosed directly over the residue. I have no qualms about how spent grounds are removed from the filter basket, as long as they are removed completely. It doesn't matter if they're rinsed by the group, run under the Americano valve or wiped clean with a dry bar towel-just make sure all of the old stuff is gone before replacing it with fresh coffee. This is a simple task that should become a habit. In a past life at a rather voluminous coffee retailer of around 1800 to 2000 customers a day, I'm proud to say we did this each and every time we pulled a shot.

Less Is More
In the case of espresso, uninformed baristi and customers often think bigger is better. I've seen too many baristi take a four-ounce demitasse (and sometimes a larger cup) and extract the espresso until it filled the cup. Always make an espresso shot, whether or not it is enveloped by milk, between one and one-and-a-quarter ounces. And unless the espresso is a double or ristretto, use a shot glass to measure properly until you know the correct shot size by sight. Remember: Less is more-taste, that is.

Taste Your Espresso
Be familiar with how your espresso tastes. Know the basic flavor components-how the espresso should feel in your mouth, how it should smell, how it should look, the depth of the crema, the recovery of the crema, and the color of the crema. What makes your espresso special? Truly know it-all the likes, dislikes, quirks, and qualities that make it worthy of the name, espresso.

Sherri Johns is president of WholeCup Coffee Consulting, a Training Committee member for the Specialty Coffee Association of America and a World Barista Championship organizer. She can be reached via e-mail at sjohnswholecup@aol.com.