Making coffee is hard
It looks easy when you go into a cafe and order a flat white, but learning enough to make decent espresso at home is time consuming. The issue is the number of variables you have to deal with. You need the correct amount of coffee, water temperature, grind size, pressure and you need to understand how these variables apply to different beans. There are a dizzying number of blogs and youtube videos explaining how to improve your coffee and, to be honest with you, I am still learning.
New toys
With some scepticism I am trying new tools in this ongoing quest for excellent espresso. First up I picked up a dosing funnel to make less of a mess filling up my portafilter. Next up I found a Weiss Distribution Technique (WDT) tool which in theory should help to reduce channelling in my espresso shots by breaking down the clumps of coffee before tamping. My initial testing seems to show some benefit from the WDT in terms of a longer extraction time (keeping all other variables constant). I need a few more data points to confirm this effect, but it is quite promising.
