Making espresso: Instructions, recipe & grind size | Kaffeemacher

Making good espresso at home is not a question of the machine. It's a question of six steps that always proceed the same way, and an espresso recipe you can rely on.

In this article, we'll go through the espresso preparation process step by step: How much coffee goes into the basket? How do you find the right grind size? And what do you do if the espresso tastes too bitter or too sour?

What I'm summarizing in this guide applies to any espresso machine. We use the DeLonghi Dedica and a single-dosing grinder, the DF54, as examples. In terms of price-to-performance, this is a great starter setup. However, you can apply this procedure to any espresso machine and almost any grinder and will achieve good espresso results.

My name is Benjamin Hohlmann. I was a Swiss and German coffee master in various disciplines and founded a coffee company with a roastery, cafés, and a farm. For many years, I've been sharing everything I've learned about espresso in articles and videos. Welcome to my guide on preparing espresso.

The standard recipe at a glance

This results in 30 to 45 grams of espresso in the cup. The grind is fine—so fine that the ground coffee forms slight clumps. More on that shortly.

This recipe is our starting point. Once you master this recipe framework confidently, you'll break out of the corridor for exceptional coffees again and again. As a basic espresso recipe, it helps you gain confidence and reach your goal quickly. It works with most coffees and almost any espresso machine.

The espresso recipe: Understanding brew ratio

An espresso recipe consists of three numbers: the amount of coffee, that is, the amount of coffee we use. The drink amount, that is, how much weight of espresso lands in the cup. The third factor is the brew time, that is, the time from pressing the button or pulling the lever until the shot ends — we've documented when the brew time really starts here. In coffee language, this is called "in," "out," and extraction time.

The ratio between "in" and "out" is called the brew ratio or drink ratio. It determines the intensity of the espresso. In the mouth, we perceive intensity as texture: the espresso either stands syrupy and thick-bodied in the cup or feels rather light and juicy.

The classic espresso definition for many is 1:2. We prefer to work a bit longer.

There's also a personal reason: these very short, almost ristretto-like espressos are often too intense with complex coffees. They're too strong, too concentrated, and don't come into balance. That's why our standard recipe is 1:2.5.

How much coffee goes in the basket?

Your basket is designed for a specific amount of coffee. Some baskets specify it—it's noted on a 17-gram VST. If not, you can figure it out yourself in two minutes.

These manufacturer specifications are often quite precise. We'd still double-check them because coffees differ in density. There are two simple tests for this.

The impression test. Grind your suspected amount, distribute it evenly, tamp, and slowly lock in the portafilter. Then remove it again. There should be no impression of the shower head visible in the coffee bed. On some machines, there's a screw in the middle. You shouldn't see that imprinted either. If you see an impression, there's too much coffee in.

The coin test. Place a euro coin on the tamped coffee and lock in again. Now a very gentle impression should form. Then you have enough coffee in the basket and still have some room to spare.

You need that space. About 2 to 5 millimeters should remain between the coffee bed and the shower head so the powder can expand when it gets wet.

If you're working with a hand grinder, dose consciously half a gram to one gram below the basket's nominal measure. Hand grinders have fixed click steps, and sometimes the right grind size falls exactly between two clicks. You can then fine-tune via the coffee amount. Michel's rule of thumb: better half a gram too little than too much.

Prepare espresso in six steps

Step 1: Heat machine and portafilter properly

The step most often skipped. An espresso machine isn't ready to brew just because the light is on.

On a Dedica, heating takes a few minutes. Larger machines with boiler or thermoblock need 5, 10, or 15 minutes—in extreme cases 30. The goal is a brew temperature of at least 91 and at most 94 degrees. If you aim for 92 or 93 degrees, you're in good shape.

You should only partially rely on the manufacturer's light signals. The portafilter, in particular, is often not hot yet. It should be around 80 to 85 degrees, hot enough that you can't hold it comfortably for long. You can speed this up by running hot water through the locked-in portafilter once.

A cold portafilter pulls down the brew water temperature. That's why we keep it locked in during operation as a rule.

Step 2: Grind fresh and find the starting grind size

Coffee is ground fresh. Always. The moment coffee is ground, its surface area multiplies, the reaction with oxygen begins immediately, and many of the finest aromas fly away.

The grind size controls how fast water flows through the coffee. Coarse means: little resistance, water rushes through and can't extract the coffee evenly. Too fine means: water barely gets through, coffee and water are in contact too long, and bitterness ends up in the cup. We're looking for the middle ground.

For getting started, there's a trick that works without a single shot: look at the ground coffee.

If it looks like polenta, with recognizable cracked particles, you're in the filter range. If you're so fine that first clumps form, you've entered the espresso range—or already gone too fine. Michel has followed this indicator for years, and it works with practically any grinder.

Small caveat, which we think about differently: Michel starts right where the clumps begin. I think that's often already slightly too fine. In practice, it doesn't matter: you're in a window of plus/minus ten seconds either way, not nine or forty-five.

One more note: if you have a very old grinder that spits out whole chunks well before the espresso range, this method won't work.

We've described this in detail in the article Espresso grind size: How fine must espresso be ground?

Step 3: Dose and weigh

Weigh the coffee. Even if your grinder has a timer.

There are two reasons. First, the portafilter won't be filled properly otherwise. Second—and this is the more important reason—you can't define a recipe without a known coffee amount. If you have a different amount in the basket each time, you never know what made the difference.

How precise this needs to be can be measured: one gram more coffee extends the shot time by about four seconds. Anyone who wants to keep the variation under one second needs a dosing accuracy of about 0.25 grams.

Before the coffee goes in the basket: wipe the portafilter once. With a cloth, not a brush. No old coffee grounds or residual moisture should remain. Old coffee in the basket gets brewed a second time and tastes bitter. Plus, this old coffee creates different resistance than fresh grounds.

A word about the dosing cup if you're doing single dosing: a cup belongs on the portafilter, not in the portafilter. Cups that stick in completely and have a thick rim leave a coffee-free zone at the basket edge. That's one of the most reliable ways to create channeling at the rim.

Step 4: Distribute and tamp

Distribution comes before compression. This sounds obvious but is the point where most shots go wrong.

If there's a hill in one spot and a valley in another, you only compress what's already there when you tamp. From above, everything looks even afterward. But underneath there's still a hole. And that's exactly where water flows faster later.

There are several ways to distribute. By hand, by tapping the portafilter sideways, or with a WDT tool, a so-called needle tool. Personally, I prefer vertical compression: tap the portafilter once or twice on a rubber mat downward so the powder settles. The side karate chops aren't my thing because coffee easily flies off the edge. But the need for distribution also depends a lot on how your grinder distributes the coffee in the portafilter or whether you use a dosing cup.

First circulating into the lower levels, then once more at the surface.

When a WDT tool makes sense: whenever your grinder produces clumps. A small channel forms around each clump during tamping because it's a firmer, more compact unit than the loose grounds. The needle tool breaks them up.

If you use one, work with thin needles, five to eight of them. Guide them into the lower levels first, circulating, and finish slowly in the middle. Then do the same once more at the surface. Not too fast—you don't want a strong impact on the coffee, just gentle distribution. And do it the same way each time, otherwise you won't gain reproducibility.

We mostly advise against levelers. They make the surface look nice, almost tamped, and that's exactly the problem. If the leveler is set too deep, you're already tamping with the outer wings, and not necessarily straight. Clean horizontal and vertical distribution achieves the same result without this risk.

Now for tamping—and here we can ease your worries.

We measured it. Michel, together with a food technologist, pulled 150 double espressos, 50 each at 10, 15, and 20 kilograms of tamp pressure, everything else held as constant as possible: Rancilio Specialty with precise flowmeter, Etzinger etzMax, 18.5 grams with maximum 0.1 gram deviation, 93 degrees, automated tamping with the Puqpress, each shot measured with the VST refractometer.

150 shots, 50 per level. Raw data and ANOVA analysis in detail.

The variance analysis shows no significant difference in either measurement. Marco Wellinger from ZHAW in Wädenswil confirmed this with his own study and went even lower: below about 5 to 6 kilograms things get critical. Above that, it's largely irrelevant.

In practice: press with about 10 kilograms, or a bit more. It doesn't matter going higher. Going lower, you shouldn't go much below 8 kilograms. If you want to get a feel for it, put a bathroom scale on the floor and press on it once. You'll realize that six kilos are surprisingly little.

Michel's conclusion after 150 shots: don't worry about how hard you tamp, but do tamp. A level surface is what counts.

What really matters is tamper size. Baskets labeled 58 mm often have an effective inner diameter of 58.8 to 58.9 mm. A 58-mm tamper leaves a ring standing at the edge that never gets tamped properly. Get one with 58.4 or 58.5 mm. Our own KM tamper sits flush with the rim and still prevents a vacuum from forming when you pull it out and the coffee puck from being lifted.

Two things to finish this step that otherwise ruin everything:

Don't tap the tamper against the portafilter. That was taught practice in the 2010s to make powder fall off the rim. The coffee puck bounces off the basket wall every time. The result is channeling.

Make sure your work surface is dry. A single drop of coffee on the tamping mat is enough for the tamper to stick to it and tear open the tamped surface again.

Then wipe once across the bayonet mount so the portafilter is clean in the upper area. Otherwise your shower head gets dirty over time, and then water flows past the portafilter on the sides.

Step 5: Rinse, lock in, start immediately

Rinse once between every espresso. Either right after the last shot or immediately before the next one.

This has two reasons. First: the shower head is cleaned of old coffee. To test it, pull an espresso, remove the portafilter, put a glass underneath, and let water run. You'll see how much residue was still hanging up there. The second reason is temperature: with some machines, like classic dual boilers, a longer rinse brings the too-hot brew group back to the target value. This is called a cooling flush.

With other machines, temperature drops too much from rinsing. There you're better off rinsing right after the shot. You need to get to know your machine at this point.

After rinsing, wipe once with the cloth over the drip tray.

And then comes the point where Michel is uncompromising: start immediately.

Once the portafilter is locked in, it sits under a warm, moist shower. The coffee doesn't care where the water comes from: it starts to swell and extract. From five seconds on, we measure differences in extraction behavior. From ten seconds on, we taste them clearly. After that, it goes downhill fast: instead of a thick-bodied espresso, eventually just water runs out.

So prepare everything beforehand. Scale on the drip tray, cups on top, tared. When locking in, your hand is already on the button or lever.

Anyone who wedges the portafilter into the brew group with gusto and bumps something in the process dislodges the coffee puck from the rim. A crater forms there, water flows away faster, and it's missing somewhere else. At world championships and also at our homebarista championship, this gets penalized by the way.

Step 6: Extract and measure

Now the espresso is running. You keep two things in sight: the amount on the scale and the time.

Stop just before you reach the target amount: with 18 grams of coffee and a 1:2.5 ratio, just before 45 grams in the cup. The run-off brings you the last grams.

Watch the first drops. If they come clear like water instead of thick-bodied, you have channeling. You don't need to drink this cup.

The time you measure is your most important diagnostic variable. It tells you which direction your grind size needs to go.

Adjusting the espresso: the three-shot principle

The first espresso rarely sits right. That's normal and happens to us too.

Michel demonstrated this for us under difficult conditions: three unfamiliar grinders, the grind-size scale covered with tape, with no reference to numbers. He dialed in all three with a total of seven extractions to the standard recipe.

The logic behind it:

Shot 1 tells you where you stand. Start at the clump point from step 2. Dose, tamp, pull, and stop the time.

Shot 2 tells you how much an adjustment makes. Correct in small steps, not whole numbers. On many grinders, there's a lot of space between two digits. Important: after each adjustment, first empty the retention. With a Eureka Mignon, that's about three grams you throw away. Otherwise you're grinding a mix of old and new grind size and the whole process doesn't work.

Shot 3 is the conclusion. Now you know roughly how many clicks correspond to how many seconds, and you can correct deliberately.

The direction is simple:

Espresso runs too fast → grind finer. More resistance, water gets held up longer. On most grinders, finer means: smaller numbers.

Espresso runs too slow → grind coarser. Less resistance. Larger numbers.

One note for anyone watching the seconds closely: the shot time is strictly speaking a consequence of other parameters, not the control itself. For home use, it's still the best tool you have: it's simple to measure and correlates well with what ends up in the cup. Just don't fixate on an exact number. A shot at 34 seconds can taste better than one at 26.

And: always change only one variable. If you adjust grind size, amount, and ratio at the same time, you won't know at the end what made the difference.

Two situations where you need to dial in without having done anything wrong: with every new bag of coffee—even the same coffee, because the roast differs—and with high humidity, because the powder swells and creates more resistance. On muggy summer days, one step coarser helps.

Troubleshooting: Symptom, cause, correction

This table is the part you can print out or leave open on your phone.

Sour or bitter? Learn to recognize them first

Before you correct, you need to know what you're tasting. And that's exactly where a well-documented trap sits: untrained tasters in Western coffee cultures regularly describe sour espressos as "bitter." Anyone who then grinds coarser makes it worse.

Two clues to tell them apart:

Sourness hits you immediately, front of your tongue, in the first moment. It can be sharp and biting or lively and interesting. That's a difference worth practicing. Testing against lemon (sour) and artichoke (bitter) helps with practice and recognition.

Bitterness comes at the back, in the finish, and often comes with a dry, dull mouth feel.

A balanced espresso tastes sweet by itself. If you taste sweetness, you're right.

And one more thing that often gets overlooked: Sourness belongs in coffee. With complex luxury products, it's what keeps the taste alive. An espresso with no sourness at all is rather flat. Imagine a wine with no acidity.

If the espresso stays too sour despite correct time and ratio, it's usually one of three things:

We've written this in detail in Espresso is sour? 6 tips for less sourness.

What you really need

Surprisingly little. But you shouldn't scrimp at one point.

A grinder. It's the biggest lever and more important than the espresso machine. What matters is how the particles are cut and how uniform the distribution is. A decent electric espresso grinder starts at about 200 euros. In the lower price range, a solid hand grinder from about 100 euros is the better choice. It makes exactly as good espresso as grinders costing much more and has practically no retention. We've included a selection of very good hand grinders in our shop. Which electric grinders we recommend is in the big espresso grinder test.

A scale. Any kitchen or letter scale works. Good if it responds quickly to weight changes. Models with a timer save you from counting. Some models even show you how many milliliters per second are coming into the cup during brewing. You'll find our selection at the scales.

A matching tamper. 58.4 or 58.5 mm for a 58-mm basket. An air channel in the base prevents a vacuum from forming when you pull it out, which would lift the coffee puck—like with our KM tamper.

Optional: a WDT tool. Five to eight thin needles. Useful if your grinder produces clumps, with dark roasts, and in dry rooms. Our needle tool is designed exactly for that.

A good basket. Cylindrical, cleanly stamped holes, no double bottom. We have a selection in the baskets.

Soft water. For espresso, we recommend a total hardness in the range of 3 to maximum 6 German degrees of hardness. Anything over 15 °dH is hard. That not only scales up the machine but also buffers away the sourness in the coffee. More on that in the coffee water article.

What you don't need: a double-wall basket. It simulates pressure that the coffee puck itself doesn't build and delivers bubble crema instead of real crema. As long as you don't grind yourself, it's a useful crutch. The moment you grind fresh and dial in the grind, it hides exactly the feedback you need. Why that's the case, we explain in the Double-wall basket article.

Frequently asked questions

How many grams of coffee for a double espresso?
Depending on the basket, 14 to 18 grams. With an E61 brew group, 17 to 18 grams is a good start; with a DeLonghi Dedica, 14 to 16 grams. Check it with the impression or coin test.

How long should an espresso run?
25 to 30 seconds from button press. Under 20 seconds gets sour, well over 35 seconds gets bitter.

Why do we always brew double?
Because the taste result is better. The geometry of the single basket doesn't fit well with the espresso machine and prevents even extraction of all the powder. More coffee allows more uniform extraction.

When does extraction time start?
From button press or lever movement. Sometimes the first drop comes only after 10 to 15 seconds of extraction time. Anyone who relies on that doesn't have a constant measuring variable.

How hard should I tamp?
About 10 kilograms. Going higher doesn't matter, going lower, don't go much below 8 kilograms. More important than the pressure is that you tamp straight.

How fresh does the coffee need to be?
For espresso, one and a half to two weeks after roasting. After that, about two to four weeks. Coffee too fresh still contains too much CO₂ and extracts unevenly.

Do I need to dial in the grind size with every bag?
Usually yes, at least slightly. Even with the same coffee, the roast differs. Switching from light to dark, it's often several steps.

My espresso tastes sour and bitter at the same time. What is that?
Channeling. Water found a channel, extracts too much there (bitter) and leaves the rest of the puck under-extracted (sour). Check distribution, tamping, and whether you bump when locking in.

Do I really need a scale?
Yes. Without a known coffee amount, you can't define a recipe, and without a known drink amount, you don't know what brew ratio you're in.

Is a leveler worth it?
Usually not. Clean horizontal and vertical distribution achieves the same. A leveler set too deep already tamps with the wings—and rarely straight.

Further reading

• Espresso grind size: How fine must espresso be ground?
• 20 mistakes when preparing espresso
• Channeling – avoiding channel formation in the espresso puck
• What influence does tamp pressure have?
• Espresso extraction time: When does the brew time really start?
• Double espresso: amount, preparation, and difference from the single
• Pre-infusion with espresso: What does pre-infusion really deliver?
• Espresso temperature
• The right coffee water
• Double-wall basket: What's behind it?