Shake it Real Good

Shake it Real Good

Last month, we wrote about why you might want to shake your grounds before making espresso. Lance Hedrick’s testing showed that shaking was somehow dramatically increasing extraction in his espressos, while simultaneously decreasing shot time. We explored a few...
Shaken or Stirred

Shaken or Stirred

A couple of weeks ago, coffee influencer Lance Hedrick released a pair of videos with the potential to radically shake up the way that we make our espresso. According to Lance’s testing, shaking the coffee grounds for a few seconds before pouring them into the...
RDT vs The AutoComb

RDT vs The AutoComb

Unless you’ve been making your coffee from under a rock lately, you probably heard that scientists recently caught up with something home baristas have known for nearly two decades: that spraying your coffee with water just before grinding can reduce the amount of...
Grinding Bean-by-Bean

Grinding Bean-by-Bean

Grinding coffee bean-by-bean is up there with cryogenic grinding, double grinding and re-processing as a kind of impractical perfection — all of which are generally dismissed as inappropriate for the commercial environment. Wet grinding isn’t a thing — it was just a...
Round Two — Battle of the Baskets

Round Two — Battle of the Baskets

Modern filter baskets have enabled a dramatic leap in the extraction yields possible with espresso. In the process, they have gone from being a fairly hum-drum accessory to becoming perhaps one of the most important pieces of equipment on your bar. In our last post,...
Battle of the Baskets

Battle of the Baskets

While the machines you see in cafes operate in much the same way as they have done for years, a quiet revolution is taking place behind the scenes. This revolution is not being led by the makers of espresso machines. The big leap in espresso technology is something...