My Go-to Espresso Recipe - An Revised Everyday Brew

Note: This process and recipe is an improvement on my previous post

Equipment

The equipment I use is largely the same.

• Coffee machine: Gaggia Classic Pro, no mods.
• Grinder: Baratza Virtuoso Plus.
• Tamper: A heavier 58 mm stainless steel tamper.
• Standard double shot basket from Gaggia.
• Kitchen scale.

Coffee beans

• Roast type:

  • For espresso, I still prefer medium roast. Light medium is okay-ish.
  • For Moka-pot or cold brew, I sometimes do like to experiment with darker roasts.

• Beans:

  • Indian origin: Kokoro Kensho is my new favourite medium roast.
    • My previous post about coffee beans of India explores different Indian beans in detail.
  • Antigua Guatemala Medium still remains great.
  • Gianyar or Kintamani Bali are still great for darker roasts.

Grinding

• For medium or light medium roasts, I now prefer a size 2 for most beans. As Mr James Hoffmann says “Grind Finer!”.
• Darker roasts have been a bit tricky for me to get a shot of my liking out. I need to adjust a lot for the dark roast beans compared to medium ones. E.g: Indian darker roasts move towards a lot harder beans in most cases, but Malabar monsoon ones are not that hard. This leads to an inconsistency in the grounds even at same ground size. That means I have to adjust between 4 and 6 through trial and error.

The Espresso Recipe

• I still remain the lone espresso consumer in my household, and the below recipe is for a single daily home brew.
• If someone brews multiple shots back to back, this would most definitely be very different.
• The hot water runs and steam preheat stages are mainly needed as Gaggia has a very different pressure curve based on your n-th brew. For a user who brew a double shot only once a day, it is necessary to get to the “sweeter” portion of the pressure curve.

Steps:

1. Switch on your Gaggia Classic Pro machine. Let it heat up while you do the prep.
2. Start by measuring 14g of light-medium or medium roasted coffee beans for a double shot.
3. Grind to size 2.
4. If you are using the machine after a while (i.e. more than a day):
   • Open up the value and let out some hot water from it.
   • You can do this by switching both the steam and brew buttons on the machine.
5. Run two cups of hot water through the portafilter:
   • Attach an empty portafilter to the machine and let it warm up until the first “brew” light illuminates.
   • Activate the brew button to dispense the first cup of hot water. Once the light is off, turn off the button.
   • Allow the machine to heat up again for the second time, and repeat the process to brew out a second cup of water.
6. Add coffee grounds to the portafilter:
   • Remove and dry the portafilter using a kitchen cloth.
   • Add the freshly ground coffee to the portafilter.
   • Use a coffee tamper to compact the grinds. For best results, use a heavy tamper that fits the portafilter size perfectly.
   • Reattach the filled portafilter to the machine.
7. Force preheat:
   • Activate the steam button to preheat the machine for 15 seconds.
   • Turn off the steam button. The brew light will immediately illuminate.
8. Brew (i.e. pull the shot):
   • Turn on the brew button to start brewing.
   • Allow the brew to process for about 20 seconds.
     • This time needs to be adjusted a bit based on the density of your beans, and grind size.
     • Note that the extraction time is for the default 12 bar Gaggia.
     • There is a consensus among machine moders on using a 9 bar, ~30 seconds of pull time gives the best results.
     • But, I do prefer my non-modded version.
   • Ideally, your brew should be a dark brown color, topped with a rich crema.

Happy brewing!