Home Espresso Tips #1 - Dose
Making espresso at home can be daunting; especially if you have no experience using the equipment or understanding around the processes. Hopefully this series will help improve your espresso extractions and comprehension around why barista’s do what they do and how to make your home coffee, taste better.
“Dose” refers to the amount of dry, ground coffee used when preparing espresso. The “dose” of coffee you use should be relative to the size of your portafilter basket in your machine. Refer or google your machines portafilter basket size and capacity so that you can better approximate the amount of coffee needed for your setup. Some home machines like the Breville Oracle have professionally sized baskets 58mm in diameter and hold up to 22g of coffee. Less expensive models offer only 54mm baskets which can make espresso extraction more difficult.
Ideally, we want to fill our filter basket with the same amount of ground coffee every time. The most accurate way to keep your dose consistent, is to weigh the dose. A set of scales from any good coffee supplies store can help you ensure dose is the same, every time. Why do you want to keep it the same?
Repeatability and troubleshooting. If your espresso is tasting on point and is hitting the key metric of time, then you want to keep it there right? Right. But, if it’s not going to plan, it’s nice to know that it’s not due to a variability in the amount of coffee we are using. An extra 2 grams of coffee can have a slowing affect to an extraction and, conversely, 2 grams less can have our water gushing through. Both of these will have an impact of flavor.
How much coffee should you use? As much coffee as you portafilter can handle according to the manufacturers specifications. We use 20g VST Baskets in our machine for That Coffee Van and we routinely check our dose to be exactly that; 20 grams. This way, of we have an issue with extraction time or taste, we use grind size to modulate and correct these issues by knowing it’s not the amount of coffee that is used, it’s the size of the grounds. But what if I’m using pre-ground coffee?
We always recommend buying whole beans and grinding them as required, however, if you’re just starting out or on a budget, pre-ground coffee may have to do. In this scenario, dose is the only reliable way you have to modulate taste and time of extraction. If you extractions are too fast, add more coffee. Too slow, reduce the size of the dose. But once you find the sweet spot, do what you can to keep it in the zone.
In our next tip, we’ll cover grind size…
