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STEP 1 Espresso

Start with your typical espresso recipe – it’s probably delicious and balanced 1 Grind, weigh, distribute
so it will be the middle of the road for the experiment. If you’re familiar with and tamp your usual dose
espresso recipes, that’s great! If not, you’ll need to measure your dose and yield. into the basket. Be as accurate as
Dose = The weight of coffee in the portafilter in grams. possible with the dose weight.
make your usual recipe taste great, grind size and time don’t matter for our 2 Tare your cup on a small
Yield = The weight of liquid espresso in grams.
Don’t worry about the shot times. As long as your grinder is calibrated to

purposes here. set of scales.
Once you know these variables, you can type your typical espresso yield 3 Start the espresso shot
into the calculator ①. It will figure everything out for you. You can use this and place the cup and
calculator right now and run the experiment, but I highly recommend under- scales beneath the spouts.
standing what’s going on first.
You’ll be making 7 espressos with the same dose and different yields. Those 4 As the espresso progresses,
yields will sit above and below your usual recipe in intervals of 4 grams. For ex- the weight will increase.
ample my typical espresso yield is 40g, so the the 7 espressos will look like this: Stop the shot when the scale
reads 2-6g less than your target
Espresso Yields yield to allow for some drips to
exit the portafilter.
5 Once again, don’t worry

about changing grind
size, dose, or monitoring shot
times. They’re not important
Less Extraction More Extraction
right this minute.
More Strength More Strength

Follow this process for all 7 espressos, aiming to be within 1-2 grams of
the target yield (weight) each time.
At this point, you have 7 espressos with different extractions and strengths.
The next step will dilute those espressos so that they all have a very similar strength.

STEP 2 Dilution

The longest espresso shot will also be the weakest, so we need to dilute
all of the other espressos down to the same concentration. Unfortunately we
can’t make espresso any stronger, so this is the only way to achieve parity.
The shortest shot will be the strongest, so it will need the most water. The
amount of water needed will reduce as the yield of each espresso increases. The
calculator below will tell you exactly how much water to add. Here’s the amount
of water needed with my example recipe.

Dilution Amounts

Less Extraction More Extraction
Same Strength ① https://baristahustle.com/blogs/baris-
ta-hustle/strength-calculators

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