Breville Barista Express Espresso Machine | Tips and Tricks

Tips and tricks. Yep, that's what it is. Tips and tricks. It's Gail from Seattle Coffee Gear and we get a lot of questions about the Barista Express by Breville and so we thought, well, let's do a video and some of the tips and tricks I'm going to give you will actually apply to other manufacturers and other machines. It's some things that are just things you want to do across the board with a machine like this that is a single boiler machine. So a couple of things right off the bat. This machine is ready very fast but you really want everything hot. Not just the boiler inside that's ready in a few minutes. You want the portafilter, the brew head, and everything hot. So we recommend have the machine on for a good 20 minutes before you're actually going to go do something else, come back to it, and by then everything's going to be hot. If it's not hot and you brew a shot, it's going to make the shot cold, which is going to, it's going to sap the temperature out of the shot. It's going to be sour. So you don't want that. So that's my first tip is preheat this machine for quite a while, for 20 minutes or so before you actually want to use it. The other thing is this machine comes with pressurized and non-pressurized baskets. The pressurized baskets actually, well they look like they're double wall and they look like this versus like this with a bunch of holes in it. This is non-pressurized, this is pressurized. This happens to be a single, this happens to be a double, but it's going to look the same. These pressurized baskets are meant to be user friendly, hence if you don't have the grind of the coffee right on, they're going to compensate and still going to give you a crema on the top. It's not a true crema, it's more like a faux crema, but for the person that doesn't want to be all fussy about the grind of the coffee, they're great. But if you want to up your game, go to these, the non-pressurized, and then dial in that grinder and I'll talk to you about that in a few minutes. What else? I guess one of the other really important things on any machine, keep it clean. Do your cleaning and your descaling on a regular basis. That's something that people neglect, just like changing the oil in your car. If you don't do it, your car doesn't run right after a while. The grinder setting is going to be as important as anything, and I'm going to show you that in a minute about dialing it in. With the non-pressurized basket, you're looking for a double shot, which is 2 ounces, to come out in 20 to 30, 20 to 35 seconds. The grind and the tamp is what makes that happen. The finer the grind, the more restricted it is for the water to go through that ground coffee, so it's going to go through slower. So if it's coming out in 15 seconds, make the grind finer, and then maybe tamp a little bit harder as well, and try that. And it's going to take you a while, and every time you change coffees to a different blend or a single origin, you're going to have to do this dialing in. That's another important tip. Water. Let's talk about water. You want halfway decent water. You don't want water with too many minerals in it, and you don't want water that is void of minerals, like reverse osmosis or distilled. The minerals add a certain amount of flavor. So if you want to actually get it perfect, which not too many people do this, but if you want it perfect, get reverse osmosis or distilled. And on our website, there's a product that adds just the right amount of minerals to a one gallon of water. So that's on our website, and I think, I can't remember the name of it, I think it's Global, but check that out on our website. That's important too. It's going to improve the flavor of your coffee. The other tip is fresh beans. Without beans that are halfway fresh, you're not going to get crema, you're not going to have good flavor. So try to have your beans fresh roasted, and then talk to the person, the roastery, and see how long they recommend that you can use those beans, because every roaster has their own idea. And the Italian blends, they're roasted in a different way with a nitrogen flush. They're good for months and months and months. So check out the coffees and make sure that that's fresh as well. What else? Steaming of the milk. This is just a traditional steam arm, so it's going to take a little more technique, and I can show you that as well. We'll pull a shot, and I'll show you what looks like a good shot, and then we'll also steam some milk. And steaming is very hard. It's not an easy thing to do unless you have a Panarello. So let me get some coffee. We're going to use the Ybora Sumatran Queen Cattiera in this machine today. Now let me talk about this roaster just a little bit. They are owned and operated by veterans, and they still have active military working down there. They sent us some samples, and we were just blown away. Every one of the samples of their coffee turned out to be really good. So check that out on our website as well. So that's what we're going to be using in the grinder today. One other tip with the grinder. Let me just swing over here and show you. On this grinder, the way it comes from the factory, it's going to be good. And use it just the way it is, and this is your adjustment. There is, on the underside here, another adjustment. If this machine just will not grind fine enough, or it's a couple years old and the burgers are seeding themselves a little bit different, there is an adjustment under here that you can get into. And you'll see it in here. I hate to get out of the frame here, but anyway, this comes out. And then in here, you take, it's in, I don't know if it's in the book or not. I would think it would be in the book. You take this out, and you take this out, this little clip, and then you can rotate this to make it finer or coarser. And it says right on here, it'll tell you. That's only if things aren't working right, or a couple of years down the road, things are seem to be changing, that you want to do this. This is not something you want to do typically right out of the box. Just wanted to let you know that. Back in there. Keep the thing clean too, you know. Clean out this bean hopper every now and again. Wash it with sudsy water, and then let it dry, and put it back on. Keep it clean. Vacuum out the burgers. Clean those out as well. Put some grinds through there. With this machine, because it's like a standalone grinder, you can actually put the product made by Urinex in there. It's called Grindz. And you can clean the grinder out, then chase it with some whole beans. All right, let me get some milk, put some coffee in here, and then we'll show you the other tips and tricks. Okay, we got the beans in there, and I have deliberately set this to a grind setting that is going to make it come out too fast. And you'll see that. It just won't even look good. And then we're going to taste it. The other thing is that this gives you an indicator of the ground. When it's brewing, if the grind is the proper consistency, this needle should go up into this dark gray zone. If it doesn't, if it's below, it's not enough pressure. So it's back pressure from the coffee. So it's too coarse. And if it goes way up here, and hardly anything drip, comes out, it's too fine. So the other thing is, this machine does pre-infusion, which is nice. And I think you probably know, if you already own this, that it does it. And what it does, pre-infusion puts a little bit of water on the coffee, sits for a minute, wait time, and then brews. And it saturates the coffee better, makes for a better brew. All right. I'm going to time this too, to show you. All right. Should be two ounces in 20 to 30 seconds. That's the pre-infusion and the wait. Watch this needle. It's not going up high enough. 17 seconds for two ounces. It's a little shy two ounces. Actually, it's programmed for a bit less. But, oh man, that's awful. Awful, awful. It's, it's way sour. That's probably, that's a nasty shot. I haven't had a nasty one like that in a long time. We're going to dump that. Put some water in here. So the other thing is, when you make an adjustment, we're going to take it down. I'm going to, it's on about 14 right now. And I can't really take it down unless it's running. So we're going to make it run. I hate to say it, but this is a conglomeration of the previous grind and everything in between as I was grinding. Dump. Get rid of it. It's not going to reflect the true nature of the, the difference in the different setting that you put it on. So this is all just trial and error, folks. It really is. You know, nobody likes to waste coffee, but it's the only way that you're going to get it dialed in properly either. Hate to say it, but you are going to waste some coffee in the very beginning. Okay. So I took it down from 14 down to about 10, 10 and a half. Let's see. I mean, it was so far off. Typically you would take, if you get close and you just want to dial it in a little bit, you take baby steps, take it down maybe one notch and that's it. Whoops. All right. Let's time this. This is popping way up. Look at that. Way up. And that looks better. That's more of that caramely rich honey tone. It's a little shy on length. That was a 20, about 24. Tastes a lot better. Mucho better. Now what I if I was doing that same grind, I program it to keep it up at the two ounces. But what I'm going to do now, I'm going to make it even finer. I'm going to show you what it looks like if it's choking it. Dump that. Right. And what you'll get if this chokes it and it's all just coming out too slow, it will be bitter. Too slow makes bitter. Too fast is sour. Too hot is bitter. Too cold is sour. Those all those variables. This is a science. Let's get this rinsed out a little bit. Not that it's going to really affect the flavor much because it's not, I can guarantee it's not going to be very good. Start. I'm going to make it come up to two ounces and see how long it takes. I'm programming it. If it comes out. Look at it, going up way high. If I took it even finer, it would choke it. We're already at 22 seconds and it's only at an ounce. Okay, 35 seconds. I mean, it might not be all bad. Some coffees like to be brewed a little bit longer. Actually, that's not bad at all. But imagine if I took it up even higher, it would come out even slower and it would turn into a, it would be very bitter. This is actually not bad. This coffee does very well at about 35 seconds. So I would say that's where I would have the grinder set for this particular blend. It tastes very good. Every bag is going to be different. You'd go to a different blend or a different single origin. It's not going to be the same. You're I can get some techniques here, but let's see what we can do. Blow that out first. It's got to heat up. That tells me it's heating up because I want to wipe this off as soon as we're done. This is another, another tip is keep this clean. Very important. This machine auto fills the boiler. All right. I turned it the wrong way. So start with the tip in the milk and then back it off until you hear more of a hissing noise and you'll see bubbles. You back it off too far, your bubbles are going to be huge. And if you get just right, you actually create a nice foam and a nice swirl going around in a rotation and it'll make it a nice drink. Bury the tip too much. No bubbles. Have it hanging out too far. Big bubbles. You want that happy medium. And then put a thermometer in there in the beginning. You want between 140 and 170 degrees. Above 170 and it's scalded. It doesn't taste good. Then the other thing is you can use your hand and when you can't hold your hand on the bottom, that's a pretty good indicator that you're at about 150 or so. Of course, everybody's hand is different. So I got some foam. Not great. I wasn't paying attention totally. But the other thing is so important. Open this up either down like that or whatever just to get the milk out of that tip. Otherwise, next time you go to use it, it's going to have crusty milk in there and nothing's going to come out. Well, now that I've made a mess, I think I got across all the tips that I can think of. Water, grinder adjustment, preheat the machine, steaming, cleaning it, keep it clean. I think that's basically it. But if you have any other questions, by all means, ask them in the comments down below. And don't forget, you can always call us or email us and we'll respond as fast as possible. And, you know, I think those are all the tips and tricks I can think of for this machine. Thanks a lot for watching. Cheers.