Required Tools/Gadgets
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Most important thing! Great coffee! I used Heavy Weights from my local roaster Un Caffe in Houston for this post
Any espresso cup and a good quality dosing cup for RDT (ross droplet technique)
Breville Barista Express with the 'dimmer mod'
Breville 54mm dosing funnel that is compatible with the onboard grinder or a WDT tool
Kingrinder K6, this makes a much better espresso with much smaller adjustments than the built in grinder, and it is ~$100 so I would consider it the most important upgrade to the BBE
Generic spray bottle ($2-3) for using the RDT (ross droplet technique) before grinding
Breville standard tamper, I prefer this one over many because it stores inside the machine cleanly
Breville 54mm standard OEM portafilter, I am waiting on a good bottomless portafilter but the taste will be the same
53.5mm diameter 1mm thick puck screen and breville 'razor' for levelling and cleaning the puck
Any accurate scale with a timer, I prefer the MiiCoffee nano scale ($40)
WDT (weiss distribution technique) tool for raking and stirring the ground coffee in the portafilter. This Kaffiano one is my favorite and is around $25 on Amazon, it has adjustable needles and can get into the corners of the basket much better than most tools.
Step by step visual guide - Puck prep
1. Measure out ~17.5 grams of beans
2. Do 3 sprays of the mister to evenly spread small droplets of water onto the beans
3. Grind the beans at setting 46 on my Kingrinder K6
Use the WDT tool to remove all clumps and evenly distribute coffee
Tamp the puck with ~25 lbs. of force
Use the 'razor' tool to clean up edges of basket and then place puck screen ontop of the grounds
Pulling the shot
The default way the Breville machine works, is it does a 10 second pre-infusion around 2-4 bars and then ramps up to its full 14 bar pressure. I find this to be very difficult to dial in well and it is easy to get a very sour shot of espresso
The current profile I use looks close to this, I hold down the 2 cup button for 5 seconds to put it into manual mode, then after the 5 second pre-infusion I quickly ramp up to 9 bars. I spend around 4-6 seconds at 9 bars then gradually turn the dimmer down to stay under 1.5 grams per second of flow rate. This makes an incredible shot of espresso and unless your local café has a machine with pressure or flow control it is hard to beat the amazing seperation of flavors.
This is my cup of espresso, I started the timer after the 5 second pre infusion so the true time was 36 seconds, and my goal was 34-36 grams out so it was well within my parameters. With 'slayer style' shots where you can control the pressure they can still taste good almost a minute into the shot with light roasts, so don't be afraid to push the grind size really fine. This is my favorite recipe for this coffee, and I hope one day someone will make a decent style machine for under $1000 to make this style of shot easier to repeat.
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