If the grind is too fine, the espresso machine won’t have enough pressure or time to force the hot water through. On my setup, I had to experiment to find the optimal grind to suit my machine.
Whatever you end up doing, it’ll taste much better than 99% of coffee shops.
Espresso does need a fine grind, the hot water is only there for around 15 seconds, and the fine grind is needed to give that a full flavour.
Can I suggest you get some espresso grind and work from there. Fill the head with the ground coffee and compress it quite firmly. After compress it’ll leave a small gap (few mm) at the top of the head. Use more coffee next time if the gap is too big. The double head will give 2 shots at a time. Either combine them into a single cup, or use 2 cups with one shot each.
I never use the milk frother, just splash a dash of oat milk onto the top.
A reset sometimes needs the button held depressed for a while, 10-30 seconds.
Your journey into nice coffee is underway, I don’t think you’ll regret getting a decent espresso machine.
One further step that really did give an improved flavour for us was getting a grinder. We bought a Breville Dose Control during a Briscoes sale. Our coffee maker is not Breville but the control over the grind size and duration makes it very easy and repeatable.
I look forward to reading any updates on this, time to start trying different coffees ☕️
The Spade Toothed Whales are interesting but because of their rarity, very little is known about them, and their habitat preferences.
The oceans, given their extreme depths in some places, must contain many creatures never seen by man before.
That’s great work Dave,
I was using Memmy, but this long post wouldn’t display properly so I went to a browser to read it and found the "which app" question that shows Voyager as most popular, a quick download and that’s what I’m on now, and it works great.
Thanks, very interesting.
I guess the RNZ article was simply saying that turning off, or down, outside lights will prevent insects from being attracted to them and harmed.
In summer with windows open, we pull curtains before turning inside lights on. Not seen insects on the open window side of the curtain even with a low level through glow visible.
I’m not sure about the moonlight theory. As they will head towards a bright artificial light, why aren’t there clouds of insects heading out into space every bright full-moon?
Here’s another article, this from Scientific American.
Seems there are several hypotheses on why insects are attracted to light, but no one really knows the actual reasons.
Given the current ease for anyone to post YouTube or social media content these days, and gaining attention, the quote, originally from around the 1970’s, was quite forward looking to how things have now become.
"15 Minutes of Fame"
Andy Warhol once said, everyone will eventually get their "15 Minutes of Fame".
Still waiting for mine …
Don’t underestimate your power as a barista!!