If you have spent much time in cafes or around coffee you have probably heard someone use the term “dialling in”.
Today I’m going to run though a super simple technique to dial in your coffee. The art of dialling in can become very technical and advanced the deeper you delve into coffee, however this simple process will have you drinking a tasty coffee in no time, ensuring you are getting the most from that precious resource that is coffee.
So a few prerequisites are required for this, a decent quality burr grinder, espresso machine, coffee scales, quality water (more on water quality in future posts) and good quality fresh coffee.
The first thing you need to know is your dose of coffee, you will need to stay within 1-2g +/- of the size that your basket is designed to hold. To keep things simple once you have determined your basket size (feel free to message me or leave a comment below if you are having trouble working this out) we are going to stick to a fixed dose & yield (aka our brew ratio) and the variable we will be changing is grind size, which will either reduce or speed up the extraction time.
For today’s example I’m using a 20g basket, so we will be working off 20g of coffee and extracting at a 1:2 ratio. In simpler words 20g of coffee in and our yield (coffee in the cup) will be 40g, aiming to land somewhere around 26 seconds to start, and we can move up or down from there after tasting.
I am currently running a Columbia Excelso for this exercise with a medium roast profile, that has been a hit with everyone both milk and black alike. Our first extraction has hit 20g in, 40.5g out in 27 seconds, after tasting the espresso there is no bitterness in the cup, but lacking a touch of sweetness and body. This tells us that we want to increase the extraction time by grinding finer (only very slight adjustments, this will vary grinder to grinder though). After making a small adjustment and purging some coffee in the grinder to ensure we are putting out the new grind size. We now have an extraction of 20g in 41g out (still aiming for 40g, +\- 1g) in 33 seconds. This shot is much sweeter and full bodied, however there is some bitterness and a dry mouth feel in the finish, telling us we have just started to over extract the beans slightly. So now we adjust our grind size to slightly courser (somewhere between our first and second grinds), purge a little coffee again and try one more time. This time we have 20g/40.3g/30 seconds, sweet and tasty, lingering mouth feel, and a balanced acidity! That’s it this is the sweet spot for this coffee.
I know it might seem like a lot now, but once you have your mind around it, it’s super simple. We are going to explain what has happened here and how to achieve this yourself.
Firstly let’s touch on extraction and what we want to achieve.
We are looking to create a tasty cup of coffee right? To do this we need to create a balanced extraction of sweet, acidic & bitterness, where all flavours work in harmony. As mentioned above the simple way to manipulate this extraction is fix the variables of dose and yield, then just manipulate time by changing grind size.
Finer the grind the longer the extraction, courser the grind the faster the extraction. I always use the example of a sieve with rocks and a sieve with sand. If you took two identical sieves, fill one with rocks and pack it down and one with sand and pack it down, then pour a watering can of water through, the water will take far longer to flow through the sand because the gaps between the particles are much smaller. The coffee in your basket works exactly the same just on a smaller scale.
Now we know how to slow down and speed up the extraction, you may ask how do I know when to speed it up or slow it down? Well this is the easy part, we taste! 👅 (yes to really do this well, you need to be tasting the espresso and not the final milk beverage).
I’m not going to go into the why coffee tastes bitter or sour ect in this post (I definitely will be in future posts. Understanding the why’s will make you a much better barista and help you troubleshoot problems with your coffee, but today we are just focusing on the how’s, so we can make a delicious no fuss coffee).
So to keep it simple. Coffee that has a thin body, short underwhelming finish and tastes sour and acidic is under extracted.
Coffee that has a dry gritty mouth feel, overwhelming, bitter and makes you feel like you need a glass of water to wash away that yuck after taste is over extracted.
In between both of those points is the sweet spot, where the sugars and acids in the coffee work together to provide a sweet shot with some complexities from the acids and a smooth body leaving you wanting more.
In other words, it’s a balancing act, finding the right spot means tasting and adjusting the grind size until you find that preferred taste. Now let me just say when you first have a go at this it can get a little frustrating, going too far one way or the other, but with a little practice your pallet and sense of how far to adjust will improve and so will how quickly you hit that sweet spot.
Now you have the know how to make adjustments to perfect that espresso, it’s time to practice, practice, practice.
I would love to know how you guys go with this. Was this post helpful? Did you need more information? Has it improved your coffee experience? Are there areas of this you need more help with? Is this something you already do?
Please leave some feedback or get in touch with me by leaving a comment below, DM on Instagram or the contact us form on my homepage.
Thanks for reading and I hope this has helped you all to make a better cup of coffee.
Cheers all,
Lars xx
Coffee talk is dangerous, always ends up costing me money. I just started chatting about siphon brewer, now I’m tempted to buy one. If you need any advice on equipment or some suggestions, feel free to hit me up. It’s always more fun when you control the complete brewing process.
Yes I have noticed that if the been hopper is full, it can make a difference. Whilst this machine has a lot of convenience, it takes the challenge and satisfaction of dosing and tamping your own shot. I do miss the hands on approach and flexibility of a machine and separate grinder. All this chat about coffee has sparked my interest again. I might even explore the possibility of upgrading my equipment next year.
Hey mate, thanks for the feedback. Also you are totally right, temperature of the beans can effect extraction. I always prefer a seperate grinder, but you can always work with what you have. While the bean temp could be a problem. Providing the machine is on for a while they should remain at a pretty constant temp so shot times should vary too much from this, unless you dial it in cold then let them heat. Do you keep your bean hopper topped up, as it empties the different downward pressure will change your grind size quite a lot. Maybe try keeping it topped up to help consistency.
Well explained Lars. I was experiencing some extraction issues with my machine and took a while to work out exactly why. My machine has the grinder built into the machine, so while it’s convenient, when the machine is left on for a while or I’m pulling a lot of shots the whole machine including the grinder and beans are progressively passively warmed by the boilers. Even though There is an internal fan there has to be some expansion caused by the heat therefore giving some (albeit small) variations to the way the shot is extracted. I could be wrong, but that’s the only thing I can put it down to.