My Home Espresso Routine

Here's a recent YouTube video showing my complete espresso routine. I'm not usually so slow in my movements, I guess I was moving slower so that my camera person (wife) would know where I was going.

I use a pretty light initial tamp paying alot of attention to the alignment of the tamper piston with the basket. I also follow up with a NSEW side-scraping tamp... personally I find it gives me more even extractions. I acknowledge that this extra step would most certainly not be practical in a real coffee shop.

This shot was 18g of Espresso Aficianado from Counter Culture, pulled in around 28 seconds, resulting in a 1.5 ounce ristretto. Overall, I'd say the shot is typical of what I'm pulling lately.