Day 2 with our machine. Today we experimented with making small, measurable changes.
See the holes on top? Channeling, sheesh.
For starters we worked on our channeling problems. In coffee speak, “channeling” is when water pours through the coffee unevenly. This over-extracts certain parts and under-extracts others. Simply said, channeling is bad and makes our mouths unhappy. Sour shots can be a result of the extraction being too fast (water pouring through). Bitter coffee can be the result of a too slow extraction (dripping slowly instead of a flow). After the shot, you can take the portafilter out and look at it to diagnose channeling. You will see little holes or lines through sections of your puck. To battle this little devil you have to make the top of the coffee very even before sticking it in the machine. You also need to try to de-clump the coffee if possible.
Yogurt cup genius
You can de-clump by using the WDT method (Weiss Distribution Technique). Fancy pants name, not-so-fancy pants method. The short version is:
Buy some tasty yogurt. Eat it.
Cut the bottom off the cup.
Shove it in your portafilter and add grounds.
Go to town stirring it around.
Remove cup and then tamp.
49?!? Blech. This was a 38% shot.
We now have a blueberry yogurt cup for this purpose. Cheapest espresso accessory EVER. We also bought a cool tool to help us see channeling as it is happening. It is a bottomless portafilter. It is just a regular PF with the spouts removed. This way you can see it coming directly through the filter and can diagnose if it is pouring out unevenly. I had several today that sprayed at weird angles (see photos below).
When we met with our friend Ryan last week, who is also the owner of the local coffee shop Frothy Monkey, he talked to us about brewing ratios. The standard for quality espresso is a 60-75% difference between the dry ground coffee and the espresso. For example, 18 grams of dry ground coffee coming out of the machine at a final 30 gram shot is 60% (18/30 = 0.60). Don’t you feel science-y after reading that? So I spent some time today trying to get my shots to come out correctly, but I was more often too low.
More experiments tomorrow! And, in case you’re wondering, no we don’t drink all these shots. We just sip then toss. If it’s a great shot we will split it. Hopefully we will perfect our technique and then won’t waste all this coffee! Although I must say I am enjoying the process immensely. And I am very, very awake.

We have embarked on a new journey into the world of espresso. Today our LeLit espresso machine arrived from Italy (via New Jersey). It’s so shiny!


I think I’m a fairly low maintenance individual. I buy generic everything. I like to begin sentences with “And”. But there are a few things about which I am a snob. Here are a few: