There are four main areas that must be properly managed by your Barista. (In Italian this means Bartender).

A brief overview of these key tasks is described in this topic.

Grinding

• This step is very specific to the coffee used and ambient temperature and humidity, and grinder type.


• A key thing to remember is that a good Barista should consider is: do not grind the coffee until it is needed, i.e. just before shot is pulled.


• Look at the coffee shop grinder bin, you should not see ground coffee already in bin unless they are moving a lot of coffee i.e. 100+ per hour.The whole beans in the upper bin of the grinder should not look like there is condensation or that there are a ton of oils from days and days of beans being stored in bin.

Dosing of the porta filter

• You need to fully dose the portafilter. You tap on counter (preferably a padded area) one time to shake out any air pockets that may have formed when the grinder dosed the portafilter


• Use your finger to level coffee so that it is even with the top of the portafilter. Initially you don't want to rush this process. A sweep south the north of the portafilter should typically do the trick. One thing I found my self doing, ( I was using my index finger to level off the portafilter and I was holding my finger more rigid, thus it my finger was more bowed and as I leveled off the portafilter) I was creating a slight concave depression into to coffee in the portafilter.. Why is this important, well to begin with I measured the loss of coffee in the portafilter and I was losing close to 2 -3 grams of coffee from this concave depression. Secondly if the portafilter dosed prior to being tamped is not level, then once it is tamped all imperfections assuming you tamp correctly will be exaggerated.


• It is really important to realize that the grind, dose, and tamping are all equally important steps. Which is why one could argue that automatic, and semi automatic machines are although appearing to be convenient especially to shops not focused on coffee, but none of these machines can automate all 4 steps. So if you need to train an employee even on only 2 of the 4 steps, the attention and awareness to the steps they are responsible for are equally important. People think that an automatic machine will remove some of that responsibility, although technically this is true, you need to impress upon your employee that they can still ruin the coffee that so many people before them worked hard to produce. Sorry I'm off on a slight tangent back to dosing...


• Look and ensure there are no divets, or depressions, or ridges throughout entitire space in the portafilter. You want a fully dosed portafiler between 15 and 19 grams of coffee for a double shot portafilter.

Tamping

• Use a scale to initially practice tamp pressure. Each person will arrive at their own consistent formula. but the rule of thumb is between 30 and 50 pounds. I typically was producing decent shot at 40 Pounds.


• LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL... I can't say more about the importance that you need to get the ground coffee tamped in the portafilter really level. If it is not level then that means that if the coffee is more compressed on one side and less in the other. Since the water sent through the portafilter is at 9 (bars) or 9 atmospheres. One atmosphere is 14.7 pounds per square inch or 132 psi at 9 (bars). That means that if the coffee is not evenly compressed or tamped, then the water will travel through the portafiler with coffee in a less evenly distributed fashion. see figure 1.2 This typically means that the weakest portion in the tamped portafilter will submit to this pressure and less coffee will get exposed to the water in the areas in the portafilter that are more compressed . This means that the coffee will not be extracted to its optimum amount. I am not exaggerating when I say even a slight uneven tamp will result is a poor shot. I should know it took me like ten shots before I got a good one. (Before this class I never used a commercial grade machine).


• To keep the tamp level, it is best that you use you thumb and index finger at the 12 and 6 O-Clock position on the tamp, by d, part of you finger is overlapping so that it can feel the edge of the portafilter. Naturally you will be able to sense that as you depress the tamp, that once the top of the tamp is level with the top edge of the portaflter, that both the 12 and 6 O-clock positions should be equal in in depth in reference to the top edge of the portafilter. You need to also make sure the 3 and 9 O-Clock position are lvel to each other as well. When training don't be afraid to look at what is happening.


• Coffee as in all food related areas I believe we get a chance to use all out senses. So don't be afraid to get as much input as you can when you train.


• Use a scale to measure the tamp pressure. Also ensure that your posture and arm position are optimal to allowing for smooth non awkward access to tamping a straight downward movement. I will add photos at a later date to better demonstate what this should look like, but you need to keep the following things straight.


• Maintain the portafilter in a level position


• The tamp handle, your wrist and your forearm should be on contiguous extension to the tamper. All aligned and straight as if all 3 parts are ONE


• your forearm should be at a 90 degree angle to your upper arm


• your body should be perpendicular to the portafilter
  
  


• You should experiment with the counter height and body position in order to help you gain good control over the tamp.

TIP

Often you will see a Barista tapping the side of the portafilter with the tamp handle. The reason is that the tamper diameter will be slightly smaller than the portafilter diameter. So as you compress the ground coffee there will be a slight amount of grounds along the top edge of the portafilter that was not underneath the tamper. Slight is the operative word here. Upon initially seeing some grounds on the upeer side wall of the portafilter, it is the desire by most people to want the sides to be clear of any coffee. It is more a visual desire as opposed to offering any real value to improving the shot of espresso. Thus the barista lightly taps the portafilter and knocks the grounds off the side into the tamped area. Then the Barista does an additional polish, a slight 1/8 turn just to smooth off the top of the tamped grounds.

This tap is doing 3 things that in the end proves to be pointless. 1) you are risking disrupting the compressed tamped grounds from being ever so slightly displaced from the outer edge of the portafilter. After all you just spent countless time training to compress the coffee at 40 pounds, you have finally gotten the feel on holding the tamper and portafilter perfectly level. So now we are risking everything to a visual desire? The thought of disrupting the outer edge even a little bit will result in an fast shot. 2) the added tap is adding just one more physical impact to the Barista's wrist, 100-200 taps every day when it isn't serving any added value is another area where wasted motion can be prevented as well as injury to your employee. 3) potential damage to portafiter over prolonged tapping as well as damage to the tamper is unlikely but the potential is there. Especially when you propogate bad practices among you staff where everyone do things differently. Some may tap on the portafilter flanges area and over time damaging the portafilter from making a tight seal. Unlikely but then why allow something that really offers no added value to the final product. So in summary no extra tapping! You customers will hear enough noise generated from the area as it is.

Pulling the shot (extraction)

• the extraction process should yield close to exactly 1 oz of espresso. the extraction time is between 20 and 30 seconds.


• Fast (under) extraction: if the 1 oz of espresso is extracted faster than 20 seconds. This means that the coffee has been exposed to the hat water for less than optimum time period, thus less of the coffee by weight has been extracted into the cup. for each extraction approx. 20% of the weight in coffee prior to extraction is actually transferred into the cup after extraction. It also means that there is some coffee in the portafilter that was over extracted and some coffee that was under extracted. Bottom line a waste of 15-19 grams of good coffee.


• Slow (Over) extraction usually within 4 5 seconds after the switch or lever has been actuated to turn on the water, you should see the initial portion of espresso flowing from the portafilter. If this time is longer then it means that you MAY have over tamped the portafilter. Once the water does manage to pass through the portafilter, by the time 30 seconds has been reached, you will most likely will not have yielded the 1 oz .per shot. And if you wait for 1 oz. you will notice that the espresso is over extracted. A very bitter flavor will be evident.

In the class we pulled a lot of bad shots and you can certainly see and taste what a bad shot is. TIP experiment a lot. Compare results to intentional mistakes.

• Look for white spots in the crema, this is usually a sign that there was a point where you over exposed the coffee to the hot high pressure water.


• Good extraction, coffee will flow through the porta filter within 4-5 seconds after you have water pumping.


• The coffee will look like honey flowing.


• You want to see in a double shot portafilter that both sides start pouring at the same time.


• You will look for a thick crema ( we will go over this in more detail later on)


• within 20-30 seconds you will see a yield of 1 oz.
  
  


• You will see a rust colored marbleized crema which contains most of the espresso flavor which is comprised of the emulsified oils that are extracted from the coffee bean.
  
  


• You will look to see that the crema does not dissolve within a minute. even after 1 minute there should be a layer on top of the espresso that still contains the oils and flavor.

You will before beginning your day want to pull a few shots into glass shot glasses. The shot glass is a good tool allowing you to see the layers of the crema and get the visual needed to ensure you are pulling optimal espresso shots.



* What to do if a shot comes out bad Follow in this order.

Check the Dose

Check the Tamp

Check the Grind

Most importantly all the individual tasks when training take a lot of time. Clearing the group head, Cleaning portafilter, Grinding, Dosing Tamping, Cleaning top edge and handle of portafilter.

Question Meanwhile what is happening during this time?

Short answer: The Coffee is Cooking in the portafilter

Long answer: Well to begin with it is important to state that only new loaded portafilters with coffee or clean portafilters should be attached to the espresso machines group head. Why, because you do not want the portafilter to ever cool down. A portafilter, unless it is being cleaned, dosed or tamped should always be attached to the group head. You never want the customer to see your Barista fishing around in a drawer or counter looking for the portafilter. That being said, If you have a nice hot portafilter ready to pour a new shot, the second you start dosing the portafilter with coffee, the coffee is beginning to cook. The general rule is you have 10 seconds to get the dose leveled and tamped, before returned back to the group head. One TIP... you can hit the switch or pull the lever to start the water pump prior to attaching the portafilter to the group head. You typically have 3-4 seconds before water starts to flow. So the minute you are ready to attach the portafilter, hit the water first. This will shave off a few extra seconds that the coffee is exposed to heat before the actual extraction begins.

As you can see the weakest link in this process will become the reason for the quality level attained for a particular shot. Every step counts and they should all be weighed almost equal to each other in regard to importance.

fatboy