Category: Brewing
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Dialling in espresso at home in five shots
Dialling in means adjusting your grind until a shot tastes balanced. It feels daunting, but with a scale and a timer you can get there in five shots or fewer.
Fix the variables
Keep your dose at 18 g and aim for 36 g of liquid espresso. Only change the grind. Weigh every shot, and start the timer when you press the button.
Read the shot
Under 25 seconds and sour or thin: grind finer. Over 35 seconds and bitter or dry: grind coarser. When it lands between 27 and 32 seconds, taste it before you change anything else.
Then adjust to taste
Once the time is right, small changes in yield tune the flavour. A slightly longer shot, 40 g, softens a bright coffee. A shorter one, 32 g, adds body to a mellow one.
September 28, 2026 -
Why we weigh everything (and you should too)
A scoop of coffee can weigh anywhere from 7 to 12 grams depending on the bean and the roast. That is why two cups brewed with the same scoop can taste completely different.
A kitchen scale that reads to 0.1 g costs about $25 and is the single biggest improvement most people can make to their home coffee. Weigh the beans, weigh the water, and keep the ratio constant: around 1 gram of coffee to 16 grams of water for filter, and 1 to 2 for espresso.
Once the ratio is fixed, you can change one thing at a time, grind, temperature or brew time, and actually learn what each change does.
A simple routine
Put the brewer and cup on the scale, tare it, add your ground coffee and note the weight, then tare again and pour. It adds perhaps twenty seconds to your morning, and it is the reason our baristas can make the same coffee taste the same at 7 am and at 2 pm.
September 10, 2026
Small-batch specialty coffee, roasted in Fitzroy, Melbourne
112 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Mon–Fri 7am–3pm · Sat–Sun 8am–3pm
Coffee
Company
© 2026 Ember & Oak Coffee Roasters. A fictional business: a demonstration site for NORG AI edge routing.
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Dialling in espresso at home in five shots
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Why we weigh everything (and you should too)
