Grind Size Calculator
The trouble is that many different combinations of espresso machines, grinders, zero points, burr sets, and basket sizes make it almost impossible to provide a Grind Size. That’s not to say knowing the density can’t help with grind size. If you start recording your ideal grind settings at varying densities, you will find you can […]
Nine bar espresso
What you need to know about pressure to make the best-tasting espresso In a commercial context, Espresso is all about making coffee fast—30 seconds per cup, compared to 4 minutes for filter coffee. That’s a big difference when you have 30 people waiting for service. It’s all achieved by pressure-speeding-up extraction. When scaling your pressure […]
How to Choose an Espresso Basket
How to Choose an Espresso Basket Updated October 2026 The best espresso basket is a ridgeless precision basket that matches your dose to within 1 g, in a 58 mm portafilter. Get that right and you can use the full range of doses and ratios, grind a little coarser, and extract more evenly. These nine […]
espresso to water ratio
What is Espresso Ratio The term ratio refers to how much ground coffee you use, also known as the ‘dose’, to how much the weight of the coffee you make, known as the ‘yield’. For example, using an 18g dose, stopping the shot at 36g yield produces a dose:yield ratio of 1:2. If you have […]
Computational Coffee
It blows my mind how everyone is trying to extract coffee without first measuring how hard it’s going to be, and then not using the full range of all their tools. Avoid bitter over extraction, and sour under extraction, by measuring the density.
WHISKY FLAVOURS TO DISTILLERY
Whisky Flavours to Distillery Coffee Recipe Series blog This post has nothing to do with coffee. It is here after I read a wonderful article on How Coffee Varietals and Processing Affect Taste. It reminded me of a similar, somewhat simpler piece of work I did on Whisky Flavours to Distilleries. Flavour to Whisky Distillery […]
Coffee Seed Size AND EXTRACTION
Coffee Seed Size and Extraction Coffee Recipe Series blog The size of the roasted coffee bean can affect extraction, learn how. Small, medium and large roasted coffee seeds Effect of roasted coffee seed sizes on extraction Coffee seeds increase in size throughout the roast, expanding to about 1.5 times the size of the original green […]
Grind Settings by Density
Grind Settings by Density Coffee Recipe Series blog There have been several requests for the Coffee Recipe Series to include grind settings for each density. There are several problems with this. 1. Different espresso basket diameters have different coffee bed depths, which requires different grind settings. For example a standard 58mm basket will require a […]
Ground breaking research
Ground Breaking Research Coffee Recipe Series blog Excuse the terrible pun. I want to thank Logan Collinge of Mojo The Beanery for spending several weekends roasting to order for me, and being such a mine of information. The first experiment was to take one single origin green bean, and have Logan roast it to common […]
Value proposition for Roasters
I caught up with my original Coffee Sensai one day and enquired what great Single Origin coffee he was currently drinking. I was shocked when he sheepishly confessed, he had ‘given up’ trying Single Origins, because it took him most of the bag to dial it in. Whereas with his preferred routine Blend, at least […]
