Five Tips For A Breville Espresso Machine Any Model

Hey, it's Marco from Craft Coffee Spot. I've done a lot of Breville reviews on this channel, including comparisons of the full lineup, comparisons of individual machines, and even a dedicated dialing in video. Today, I want to give five more advanced tips to get the most out of your Breville espresso machine. This is not for complete beginners. I'm assuming you already know how to dial in your espresso and are using non-pressurized baskets. But I think if you've been using your machine for a while, these tips will actually help you really level up your espresso. I have a Barista Express and a Barista Pro here, but these will apply to really any Breville model. Okay, so the first tip. Adjust your inner burr. So the most common complaint I've gotten from viewers is people say that they've gone to the finest grind setting on their dial, and yet their espresso is still flying too fast. If that's you, you need to adjust the burr inside of your hopper. To do that, you can actually take out the hopper and untwist this burr here. And then what you can do is you can actually turn this a little finer. Take off this outer ring, and then you can actually just twist this. Let's see, there's numbers in there. Twist it a little finer. That will be a macro adjustment. That will actually push your burrs closer together, and it'll turn what was a one grind size into more like five grind size previously. This just allows you to grind finer, and I think it's really important. Even if you've been using your espresso machine for a while and are comfortable with your grind size, I would encourage you to consider changing your inner burr and actually just try grinding finer. Just keep in mind, your burrs will season. Those edges will actually wear down, and your grind size will naturally get coarser after a few pounds of beans. So you should try grinding finer, and you'll notice the biggest difference as you get close to that choke point. So I encourage everyone to find that choke point and just see how fine you can grind. Do this first. Tip number two, make sure you preheat your brew head and your portafilter. So Breville's are great because they start really quickly. The problem though is when they're ready to go, that just means the internal heating system is hot enough. It does not mean your brew head and your portafilter are heated. And you need those two heated because otherwise the cold now will sap your energy. You're gonna get a dull and sour espresso. And this is especially true if you're using a newer thermojet machine like the Bursta Pro or the Bursta Touch, which start in three seconds, but the thermojet heating system does not get hot enough just by passively waiting for it to heat up. What you need to do is you should lock in an empty portafilter and just run water through it, and that will heat up your brew head and your portafilter. One way I like to do this is I reprogram my one cup button to run for about 15 seconds. And I find that's enough to get it to an adequate temperature. Because if we're pretty much always using a two cup basket anyway, you could just reprogram that one cup to be your essentially your preheat slash flush button that you can use inside. By the way, this is a good chance to plug a bottomless portafilter because after you preheat this, you do want to make sure you dry it out. And a bottomless portafilter is a lot easier to clean while the spouted portafilters tend to collect water inside the spouts. They're just more of a pain. So I will link this in the description below if you're interested. Tip number three, use a WDT. If you've watched any videos on this channel, you've seen me using needles to stir up the coffee grounds. And that is the Weiss Distribution Technique, or the WDT, with the tool being those needles. The idea here is these Breville espresso machines tend to produce really clumpy grounds. The heat and static electricity on a fine grind size produce those clumps, and when you tamp that down, water goes around those clumps, you tend to get an uneven extraction and just a sharp, unbalanced flavor. One of the easiest things you can do to radically improve your espresso is to use the WDT tool and stir up your coffee grounds before you tamp. This will just make the coffee bed a lot more even, and it'll get a much more smooth and balanced taste. I have one WDT right here, and the nice thing about this is they're probably the cheapest tool you can get. This is very inexpensive, and you could even go and spend less money and make a homemade WDT just using a wine cork and some needles. I will link this one in the description below as well. Tip number four, extend your pre-infusion time. So the pre-infusion is the start of the espresso shot, where you'll notice the machine runs a little slower and the water rises a little slower, and that's running at about two bars pressure. The idea here is that low pressure saturates the coffee pot, so the coffee gets more even, it allows carbon dioxide to escape, so when it goes to the full pressure, the coffee just flows a lot more evenly, and you get a more balanced shot. All Brevilles have a low pressure pre-infusion, which is awesome. Now, the problem is that pre-infusion time is about three to seven seconds, which is a little too short. I think it's better if you run it at 10 seconds. Now, you can actually extend your pre-infusion machines pretty simply just by running a manual shot. All you need to do is pull down the button, and that'll start a manual shot, and as long as you are holding the button, it will run at low pressure. Then when you let it go, it will go to full pressure, and then you can just press it again to stop. If you have a Barista Pro, you can run 10 seconds max, while if you have a Barista Express or Express Impress, you can actually run the pre-infusion as long as you want. I've heard of some really interesting results happening if you've done like a 20-second pre-infusion, and I love this tip because it requires no extra tools and no extra work aside from just holding a button, so I recommend extending that pre-infusion. All right, tip number five. Tweak your water temperature. So I think water temperature is a really underappreciated way to dial in your espresso. If you feel like your espresso is just a little too bitter, you should go a little cooler on your water temperature, and if you feel like it's a little too sour, you should go hotter and increase the extraction. Actually, almost every Breville machine, you can actually change the water temperature. The hard part is it's not as obvious how to do that. If you are in a Breville or a Barista Express, you actually have to turn the machine off, then hold the program button, then push power, and then choose one of the buttons for the water temperature with left being the coolest and right being the hottest. Takes a little bit of effort. Now, if you have a Barista Pro, it's a lot easier. You can just hit the menu button, go over to the side, and change the water temperature pretty easily. If you want to change it on another machine, well, I'll put the instructions on Craft Coffee Spot, so you can just go on our site and find the details there. The truth is you can change it for pretty much every model except for the Bambinos. Now, to be clear, water temperature is not a silver bullet, and you should change your water temperature after you've adjusted your grind size and after you've adjusted your dose. But I think for a lot of people who've been using their machines for a while, maybe you're already comfortable using the same bag of beans every week, then I think making a tweak to your water temperature will make a noticeable difference. All right, I'm going to give one last bonus tip, and I thought about putting this up to the front, but that bonus tip is dial in to taste. So, there are a lot of suggestions out there, including ones that I just gave you, and I think these can help, but what's most important is that you adjust your espresso based on what you like. I don't give specific recipes here, and I don't tell you exactly what grind size to use, because I realize that what beans you're using, what water you're using, and just your own palate is going to be really unique to you. Now, the hard part about dialing in to taste is that I'll mention an espresso being bitter or sour, and frankly, all coffee has some elements of bitterness and sourness, which is what makes coffee so interesting, frankly. But one thing I think you can do to just help train your palate a little bit is try and pull two different shots. Pull one that actually runs shorter than normal, maybe only 20 seconds, stop it there, and then pull a second shot with the same amount of coffee, same grind size, but run it for about 40 seconds this time. If you try those side by side, the first one's going to taste sour and heavy, second one's going to taste bitter, stringent, and probably a little thin, too. That'll just help you know the two extremes that you can get in terms of flavor profile. Also, I recommend everyone just track your shots. There's a reason that I always recommend using a scale, even a basic apex stone or Time Warp Black Mirror, because they just help you know what you like and what you brewed to get to what you like. If you know that you brewed something that was 18 grams in, 36 grams of espresso out, and it took 25 seconds, and you felt like it tasted a little sour, well then you know you should either maybe run 40 grams out, or maybe grind a little finer and try and get a 30-second shot. So I think just by tracking what you're doing and changing things step-by-step with some of these tips that I gave you today, you'll just keep improving the espresso you can get from a Breville. I think you're going to be surprised just how much better it can get with more practice and some of these tips, so I hope these really help. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below. I try and respond to every comment that I get, so I'm happy to answer any other small questions here. Anything that can help you. And if this did help you, consider hitting the like button, as that really supports the channel. And as always, try and subscribe to see our future videos.