Brewing Eco Coffee For Your Espresso Machine

A guide to achieving the best Espresso shot of Eco Coffee.

Tip #1 - The Dose & The Grind

…Good title for a Smiths album!

For a Light/Medium roast you want to grind 16-17g of relatively fine coffee in to your basket, for a darker & decaf roast you want to grind 19-20g of slightly finer coffee than a light/medium roast. The main reason being the darker the roast the more soluble the coffee, therefor needing more, finer coffee to absorb the same amount of water.

Once you have these 'dialled in' you shouldn't need to play around with it, unless you start grinding a different coffee of course.

Tip #2 - The Extraction

…This sounds more like an Avenged Sevenfold album!

You have some leeway with this... but not too much.

For the light roasts you want to AIM for 27-30 seconds of dispensing time as this will help bring out the sweeter, lighter notes that make light roasts so sweet and delicious. Any more than 30 seconds and you may run the risk of it 'overextracting' becoming too acidic and then too bitter.

For medium roasts you want to aim for 23-27 seconds of dispensing time so you still get the sweeter notes of the coffee but bring in some bitterness to them as well. That's why you tend to see medium roasts used more frequently in cafes and bars.

For dark roasts you want to aim for 20-25 seconds of dispensing time so you bring in much more of the bitterness and acidity that tends to be required with dark roasts. Appealing to the 'morning, pick-me-up shot of italian espresso'. Any less than 20 seconds it can become too sour and weak. We don't do it THAT dark here at Eco Coffee but you get the idea.

"These are purely guidelines... you're the one brewing the coffee, you shouldn't have to BUT you can always adjust it to your taste" – Kieran Mitchell, Head Roaster

Tip #3 - The Yield

Definitely a Coldplay album!

The yield, in simple terms, is the coffee you get in your cup.

This should be, roughly, 1:2 coffee to water. The lighter the roast the more water in the mix though. So... If you had our light roast and you dosed 17g, you'd want to aim for a yield of 42.5g of coffee in your cup. (1:2.5, 17g:42.25g) And with our dark roast, if you dosed 20g, you'd want to aim for a yield of 40g (1:2, 20g:40g). So, the darker the roast, the less overall coffee. (but only a tiny bit, we wouldn't want to short change you!)

Tip #4 - Avoid 'Channeling'

Channeling is where the dose is uneven in your basket. So if you tamp your coffee down unevenly it will mean there is more coffee on one side of the basket, the water will want to go through the quickest way possible. Rather than flowing through the entire basket of coffee it will 'channel' it's way though one part. You'll get a similar result to 'over-extracting' and getting an overly dark and bitter finish. Enough to put you off.

Tip #5 - Clean & Tidy

The album I wish my kids had listened to!

A short but simple tip... Make sure there's no old coffee, milk, limescale or any other residue on your brewing equipment, this can lead to your coffee being affected and you'll be cursing as to why, even though everything is the same as last time, your coffee isn't tasting as good.