Image by Adi Goldstein

A richer, shorter, slightly sweeter espresso.

🔑 If you’re unsure of how much coffee to blend, look to your portafilter. The size of it determines how much coffee you grind. For example, a 20-gram portafilter basket requires 20 grams of coffee.

Ingredients

  • Great quality espresso beans
  • Filtered water

Equipment

Recipe

  1. Heat up the coffee machine. Depending on your machine, that could take 30 seconds to 20 minutes.
  2. Grind coffee, if needed, and dry wipe the inside of your portafilter with a teacloth
  3. Pour your ground coffee into the portafilter and distribute the coffee and tamp it firmly and evenly.
  4. Flush out your coffee machine for a couple of seconds.
  5. Lock the portafilter into the espresso machine and brew away! Here’s where the ristretto takes place. You want to pour the coffee for around 15 seconds, basically you want 1/2 the liquid you would expect from an espresso, which is 1/2 an ounce.
  6. Wait around a minute, if you’re a purist, or just shot away.

Keep notes on what works and what doesn’t, and enjoy getting to know your machine and yourself a little bit better with each coffee.