For Mary.
First of all, if you don't have your copy of the Delonghi manual for your machine, you can download it here
Overview: Finely ground coffee is placed in a basket with even finer holes on the bottom. This is placed in a handle and sealed tightly underneath a hot water 'shower'. Almost boiling water is run over the coffee grounds at fairly high pressure for a certain amount of time, dissolving aromatic compounds into the water and draining it into a cup below.
Afterwards, milk is heated with steam and frothed up with the steam vapour. Then it is mixed with the coffee to make a delicious tasting beverage with luscious mouth-feel. Optionally a pretty picture is drawn on top using the foamy part of the steamed milk.
Details:
Portafilter – The portafilter is the device used to seal up the coffee grounds below the 'shower screen' in such a way as to contain the high pressure of the incoming water. It may be flat on the bottom or have one or two little spouts.
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| Two portafilter handles, one with two spouts, the other with none. Three different filter baskets are also shown. |
Filter baskets – As I understand it from the PDF users' guide, you received two filter baskets with your machine. One for a single shot and one for a double. Unless you are going to drink just a single shot of espresso, or are going to make a very small espresso/milk drink like a Cortado for example, you probably want (at least) two shots. I always use a 20 g basket with 18 g of coffee, but I only have one per day!
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| Coffee beans being weighed out on a scale. There is 18 g of coffee. |
Note that I am using whole beans here, most 'normal' people would simply buy pre-ground coffee. Make sure when you do though, that your coffee is marked as being ground for espresso. This will be a lot finer than coffee ground for other methods of coffee extraction like drip filter, siphon, V60, AeroPress etc. If you use too coarse a grind in your espresso machine, you will not be able to tamp it compact enough to resist the high pressure at which espresso machines operate. As a result the hot water will run through far too quickly and won't have time to dissolve the compounds which result in delicious coffee. Speaking of which…
Tamping – the users' guide says you also have a tamper. Indeed Delonghi is quite renowned for the quality of the metal tampers they provide with their espresso machines. So insert your chosen basket into the portafilter and measure out the amount of coffee you require.
There is an intermediary step here that almost every coffee nut does these days so I'll point it out. Sometimes the ground coffee can be a bit 'clumpy' and if you tamp it in that state the clumps and the non-clumps will end up at different densities giving an easier route for the water to travel through the puck leading to uneven extraction. I use a WDT (Weiss Distribution Technique) tool which is a number of acupuncture needles in a handle, to break up any clumps before proceeding with the tamping. If you feel it would help, you can emulate that with a toothpick or cake testing skewer.
A few notes on tamping. You can only get ground coffee compressed so much, after that you're not making any further difference. Push as hard as is comfortable, no more. If using a spouted portafilter handle, be sure not to rest on the spouts while tamping. You could deform or even break them. Most spouted handles will have an obvious place where you are intended to rest the base on the edge of your bench. See the front of the double spouted version in the first photograph.
And the most important rule of tamping is, tamp level. If the surface of the coffee puck has a slope from one side to the other, more water will pool in that side and there will also be less depth of coffee at that side. This will result in uneven extraction.
After tamping you can 'polish' the top of the puck by removing pressure and gently turning the tamper a half to one full turn.
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| Tamp firmly and evenly. Polish afterwards with no weight. |
So that is all the puck preparation. It runs to a few paragraphs but after a couple of times it will only be the work of a minute or two. Now it's time to extract some espresso.
Coffee extraction – Moving carefully so as not to knock the basket and disturb the carefully prepared bed of ground coffee, insert the portafilter into the group head aligning its handle with “INSERT”, then turning it to the right until it is aligned in the “CLOSE” position.
Position a receptacle under the portafilter output, probably just as easy to use the cup you intend to drink out of, if it fits. I believe the cup tray is adjustable. You should warm the cup with hot tap water before starting.
Press the appropriate 1- or 2-cup button and behold the magic!
Frothing the milk – More words have been written and spoken on video on this topic than any of the rest of the specialty coffee subject. I don't intend to add many more. Practice is your friend here. There are a gazillion videos on YouTube under froth (or foam) milk for latte/cappuccino/flat white, and they all say pretty much the same thing.
Put milk into a small stainless steel steaming jug up to the bottom of the spout. Press the 'Steam' button and the light will flash for a moment. Once the light is solid pull the wand out at 45° and right at 45° and put the tip just under the surface of the milk and turn the steam dial to 'Steam'.
Keep the tip of the wand just under the surface to inject air for 6-10 seconds then lower the tip and use the angles to create a vortex which will smash down the big, but not too big, bubbles you've created into a luscious micro-foam.
Once the side of the jug is too hot to hold, when the milk is between 60°C and an absolute maximum, I'm not kidding, go no higher, 65°C turn the steam off and put the jug down somewhere safe.
Immediately wipe down the outside of the wand tip and scoosh a couple of blasts of steam through. You really do not want old dried milk up in there.
Now pour the milk into the espresso, swirling as you go.
Latte art can wait.
