After a hectic day at office, with an unimaginable load of work and your boss finding a thousand faults in your work, do you come back home and find the relaxation of a day in a cup of espresso? Well, then you are not the only one. Like you, there are millions around the globe who greedily lay their hands on a cup of espresso after a hard day’s work. Espresso or caffè espresso is a very concentrated form of coffee that has been prepared by forcing boiling water through roasted coffee bean powder (of a consistency which is neither too big nor too fine) under very high pressure. Generally, about an ounce and a half of dark coffee is used for this particular preparation. It is also important to mention that only sweet-bitter coffee powder is used for preparing espresso.
Do you often wonder as to how the coffee shops offer espresso with that top layer of aromatic oil?! And have you often tried to make an espresso similar to that but invariably came up with your own version that was in no way at par with the coffee shops? Your version probably, despite your 100% efficiency, lacked that oily top part. Well, then let us tell you are not alone. You are one of those numerous people who in vain try to imitate the coffee shops only to fail miserably. But then there is a reason behind this universal failure and that is- the layer of crema (aromatic oil layer) that you get as the topping of your espresso is a trick that only the espresso machine is equipped to perform. This is due to the high pressure at which the boiling water is made to pass through the fine, rich coffee powder.
Talking of the coffee powder, the more fine coffee powder you use the more time the coffee machine will take to force the boiling water through the powder. It is the expert opinion that espresso tastes best when the coffee machine prepares it in exactly 25 seconds. Keep in mind that your coffee powder is not over-extracted. This is a very important thing to remember if you want the perfect espresso. It is also equally important for you to buy the very best of the coffee beans. These coffee beans then need to be roasted until they become dark and the texture becomes oily, only then shall these coffee beans be roasted.
Keep in mind that the only points which distinguish your regular coffee and your espresso is the powder’s fineness and the time for which it gets brewed, and so you must be very careful about these two features, lest you turn your espresso into your regular coffee. An important requirement is that the powder is uniform in fineness, this is very easy to achieve if you are using a burr grinder, since it used discs in rotation motion.
So now you know all the secrets to a perfect espresso. Remember that fineness of coffee powder, the coffee machine, time of brewing; pressure the machine is using, the roasting of the coffee beans, etc. - everything is equally important when it comes to making that perfect shop-like espresso.
JoBeth Levina
http://www.articlesbase.com/food-and-beverage-articles/how-to-make-perfect-espresso-723885.html
