Making espresso
In this article: Making espresso, espresso at home, espresso maker
When making your first espresso, you naturally need an espresso machine. Many of the espresso machine brands are Italian and come in many sizes and prizes ranging from a few hundred dollars and up several thousands. Fortunately there are many good espresso machines in the lover price range.
Before starting making your espresso, the espresso machine needs to be turned on and properly heated before used. This is most easily achieved by turning the machine on a good while before you use it. If you plan to make several cups of espresso during the day, leave the espresso machine on between uses.
The next step is to prepare the espresso coffee. You may buy coffee that is already grinded, or you can by whole roasted beans and grind them on your own. Both ways comes with advantages - Already grinded coffee in a jar or bag is easy and fast to use but becomes old fast and tends to not provide that perfect result you get with beans grinded just before you brew your espresso.
Whole beans often give you a slightly better espresso, and you can also choose how fine you want to grind your coffee. But you have to grind your beans each time you want to make an espresso and you have to invest in a grinder, which may cost you about as much as the espresso machine itself.
If you choose to grind your own espresso coffee, don't grind more beans than you will use within the nearest hours, or the positive effect will get lost.
Once you have your grinded coffee set up, it's time to make some espresso! For information on how to use your particular espresso machine you should reefer to the manual. However, in general you pack the grinded coffee in a filter that in fixed to a handle. The handle is placed in the espresso machine and water is pressed thru the filter with high pressure.
The exact amount of coffee to use is again found in the manual, but the coffee should be evenly placed in the filter and pressed hard (also called tamping, read more here). If the coffee is not properly packed in the filter, water will flow thru the filter to fast and your espresso will become to week.
The brewing time should be 20-25 seconds. Shorter or longer time indicates that you did not tamp the coffee properly in the filter, or that that you put to much coffee in.
Once done, your espresso should have a thin (2-4 mm) of "créma", with a light brown, somewhat milky colour. None or very little créma might be a indication of that the machine was not properly headed, pressure in the espresso machine was to low, that the ground was not properly tamped.