What’s on your coffee bench?

[Matt92037]

The only real things the machine can influence are driven by pressure and brew temp. For tempurature, too hot=bitter, too cool=sour.

If you are pulling 10 second shots the grind needs to be tightened up a lot.

Originally Posted by d_douglas

Well, I blew half a bag of espresso yesterday pulling undrinkable shots .

I was expecting this as I’ve only used an espresso machine a dozen times, so there’s a learning curve, what I think learned was that the grinder is no good, as the extraction was quick (immediate?) and watery, so the coffee wasn’t ground fine enough.

My neighbour came over and we played around using his grinder and it started looking like espresso, though still extracting too fast (10sec) and it was bitter.

My tamping skills need to come up, but I also need a finer grind for sure.

Are there other things that make this happen? Is there anything with the machine itself that would result in terrible coffee?