Hello Shop Owners, When I was on the circuit lecturing at every Coffee Fest in the mid ’90’s one of my most popular seminar topics was how we hired, trained, and inspired baristi to make artisan espresso. Broadly, creating a Culture of Excellence is an infinitely complex affair, but it starts with a resume. In […]

Hello Espresso Geeks, By far the most common misconception I see with folks making espresso outside of Italy is passing too much water, too quickly, through the packed coffee. It seems to be a cultural phenomenon where the people are used to drip coffee or French press, they want to reproduce that with an espresso […]

Hello Espresso Lovers During the covid era we have had lots of requests for espresso training, both from pros and home baristi. Due to our desire not to be a super spreader we have discontinued this service. I have recorded a solution on Vimeo. My online seminar is entitled “Espresso Perfection Online Seminar”. It is […]

Hello Espresso Geeks, During Covid restrictions we have suspended hands-on espresso training at Vivace. To keep my staff sharp I have made several DIY videos on technique. I would like to share a few of these with you. First up dosing and distribution, updated Second up let’s look at a Vivace extraction using the Niche […]

Hello Espresso Geeks, During ‘corona daze” we have been refining our espresso techniques. Earlier this year, in the Before Time we added the settling technique to our classical dosing and distribution techniques. It is as simple as tapping the side of the PF (porta filter) to arrange the powder before distribution and dosing using our […]

Hello Faithful Reader, If your reading my blog your probably pretty well dialed in on making artisan espresso. You have fresh coffee, sharp grinder burrs, clean PID machine with proper settings on temperature, pre-infusion, and brewing pressure. You have clean, filtered water and perfect barista technique. So you are able to make pillowy ristretto shots […]

Hello Readers, Although I am struggling to find a commercial grinder that doses well, and makes great coffee, I am very happy to report that at home I do not have that problem. The Monolith by Kafatek is a perfect home grinder. Denis Basaric is the engineer that has designed and built this machine. Although […]

Dear Reader, I want to take a moment to completely explain why ground coffee, trapped in the grinder between shots, makes it very difficult to control the flow-rate of the espresso shot. Let’s start with the roasted coffee. The roasted bean will contain it’s own internal moisture after roasting. The higher the internal moisture in […]

Dear Reader, What Christian Etzinger has accomplished with his grinder designs is to transport the powder out of the machine into the porta-filter with perfect particle-distribution integrity. In other words, no micro-particle drift and no clumping. In addition there is no ground coffee trapped in the body of the grinder. (Only the unavoidable gram or […]

Dear Reader,   I have been using the grinder daily for over a year.  The grinders ability to transport ground coffee into the PF without any disturbance of the particle distribution in the powder is the best I have ever seen.  (See original posts). A true on-demand design that works. However the small burr, 21mm, […]