Espresso at Home

[Mister Moo]

A few words about espresso.

1. It is the ultimate expression of coffee, as a fine cigar may reasonably be considered the ultimate expression of tobacco.



2. Making conventional espresso at home is not a casual occupation for a FNG coffeehead; it makes a mess and demands a longish learning curve, good equipment and absolutely fresh roasted coffee. Except, perhaps, for a trial decision period to figure out if you want to buy into making espresso at home, the process does not work especially long or well with bottom-end equipment. Yes, yes... there are always some folks who really sweat the details and get highly focused on the craft (and the machinery) who can make low end gear really sing but it isn't easy. There are certain laws of physics that low end gear simply cannot address. This is a nasty bit of business to mention but, with espresso hardware, what you pay for is pretty much what you get. No $200 espresso manine will ever do what a $2000 machine will. Does that matter? Maybe yes - maybe no. But it is the way it is.

3. No snob zone? This is the fact of it. Anything less than freshly roasted coffee makes swill from an espresso machine; and anything less than exemplary single origin beans (or well crafted/roasted blends) makes, at best, 2nd rate espresso.

4. Trying to make what the technical people define as "espresso" requires a machine that produces a lot of pressure - min. 9-bar - and can hold brewing water at a steady temperature (198-205f as a rule) over a 20-30 second brewing cycle. You cannot do this with a mokapot or a steam-driven machine.

5. Making GREAT coffee with an AeroPress, mokapot or other steam driven devices is certainly possible - it just isn't espresso. It's strong coffee - maybe even fantastic strong coffee. Maybe even as tasty or better than espresso - but it isn't espresso. This is like the thing about ISOMs vs NCs. There may be a range of great, overlapping taste on both sides, but one is not the other.

6. I love coffee but don't drink much of it; I usually have one or sometimes two espressos in the morning. I'd rather have one good espresso or great mokapot brew than 5-cups of brewed coffee.

7. Badly made espresso tastes like crap. Espresso has a richness of flavor, mouthfeel and aroma that is not comparable to any other straight coffee drink. If you have ever had espresso that was bitter or otherwise unpleasant, it was badly made, produced on a filthy machine or was brewed from stale beans or a rotten roast. Well made espresso is smooth, almost oily or buttery, stays in your mouth for half and hour and ranges somewhere around the word "sweetish" to the experienced palate.

8. Without a superauto machine, well made espresso in the home is more of second job than a means to a morning eye-opener. Espresso produced from pods (pre-roasted, pre-measured, pre-ground, vacuum sealed packages) is faster, cleaner, easier and may produce a very decent shot according the quality of the pod and the brewing machine. Most pod espresso I've tasted was pretty much awful but some was quite good. I suspect the bad-est of it had more to do with cheap equipment or improper machine cleaning than anything else; a dirty machine is the first culprit to finding the source of bad espresso in my experience.

9. Anyone who works her way through the maze of cigars to find nirvana from an evening puff will probably love good espresso. This is not to say you'd necessarily love the process of making good espresso unless, of course, you insist on rolling your own cigars.

10. There are many ways to make really fine coffee. They involve better bean selection, finding a good roasting company to buy from, home roasting, fresh grinding, alternate brewing methods, etc. If you want to learn how to make good coffee, I say explore everything EXCEPT making espresso at home.

11. If you plan to make any kind of good coffee at home over the long haul, get yourself a kick-ass burr grinder before spending a nickel on anything else. The kicker-ass it is, the longer it will last (a lifetime, say) and the more versatile it will be. It will grind for espresso if you ever go there, but will serve you well for everything else coffee no matter what your tastes or budget.

12. I do not qualify as an expert on this subject. I'm merely a post whore with a laptop and a coffee jones, that's all.

13. Like Seinfeld and the menage-a-trois ("Then I'll need orgy clothes and orgy friends. I'll need lotions and I'll have to grow a mustache...") you may find espresso requires a community and many accessories. You would not be the first to wonder, "Where does it end?" Tampers. Pitchers. Skim or whole milk. This grinder. That grinder. Bigger filterbasket. New portafilter... it goes on and on.

Insane thing to do, making espresso at home. I love it. But a mokapot, for a thousand dollars less, ain't too shabby, either.

Are you a home espresso weenie? Are you thinking about becoming one?



Relax.

Explain.

Take plenty of time to decide.