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.

Burr-ly a Grinder

My first coffee grinder was a Braun KMM-30 that I bought back in '97 for around $40. I used it for a few years, but was always annoyed with the static and mess it produced.

I was convinced though that it rocked as a grinder because it was a burr grinder, not a lame whirly blade chopper. Eventually the static, noise and mess were too much to bother with and the grinder ended up in the back of a cabinet with no use at all. I went through a several year period of buying decent coffee from Ellwood Thompson's (but grinding it there) or just stopping for drip from Starbucks.

Now that I have quite a bit of experience with a "real" grinder, I thought it would be interesting to crack open the old Braun and take a look at how it works. The results revealed alot about why department store burr grinders are just a bad as a whirly blade grinder. Both of which simply should not be used.

Here's a look at the upper burr assembly. The burrs are about 40mm across and are clearly made out of cheap stamped metal. Notice how dull the cutting edges are.


Next is a look down the throat of the grinder at the lower burr. The motor is very small and turns at a very high RPM, which contributes to the static problem and also heats the ground coffee up resulting in flavor loss.


Here's a shot of the Braun burr assembly next to the burr out of my MACAP M4 for a comparative point of view:


And a close up of the MACAP's burrs...