A cup of coffee a day - How does a Developer play with Espresso?

The Problem

Since focusing on OpenNotas, I've noticed that it's thanks to the daily cups of coffee that I have the strength to work so hard. It's been quite a while since I've had this feeling of working day and night without feeling too tired.

I've done a lot of work, written a lot, but the only thing I haven't talked much about is my coffee hobby. Despite being a programming blog, I still add many of my everyday stories. Suddenly, I remember the origin of the name 2coffee.dev - a name that took me a lot of time to come up with.

Initially, the purpose of creating this playground for my writing was not clear. At that time, I was just imagining writing about something that is my specialty. Thinking realistically, I have knowledge about JavaScript/Node.js so I could focus on these topics.

Indeed, the predecessor of 2coffee.dev was named ecmastacks, a very technical name, specializing in JavaScript topics. Later, my thinking changed gradually, I realized that I not only want to write about technology anymore, but the core is to convey my own experience or inspiration to the reader. Especially for young people with full of enthusiasm when they first start their career. Only by doing so can you create attraction, or at least make a difference from many blogs that existed before.

"2" is a pun for "Hi", "dev" refers to a programmer. "Hello, a cup of coffee for all programmers here!" - That seems to be what I want to convey to everyone in a name. Simply that made me think for a whole week. Even when I finally decided, I was still unsure whether the choice was right, because the name was quite strange. Few domain names start with a number.

After talking for a long time, let's return to the topic of coffee. If you need a drink that is "extremely" strong, just one sip is enough to triggeran earthquake in your body, then what could be better than Espresso?

The taste of Italy

Espresso is a method of roasting and brewing coffee originating from Italy, in which a small amount of nearly boiling water is forced under pressure through ground coffee beans, also known as water pressure passing through the coffee layer, usually reaching up to 9bar.

Therefore, to play with Espresso, we must have specialized tools to create enough pressure. When we talk about Espresso, we often think of bulky brewing machines placed in cafes, restaurants, with continuous baristas, looking very professional. They scoop coffee, pour it into a large-capacity grinder, let the coffee run down a basket with a handle, then use something to press "pop" down, at this point the coffee layer is flat in the basket and looks like a stuck cake, attach it to the machine and the coffee slowly flows out, looking very beautiful. Perhaps that's why I thought playing Espresso was quite expensive, because where's the money to buy a mechanical machine.

But the story continued because playing Espresso doesn't necessarily require money to buy expensive brewing machines, but can be played manually through "mechanical" tools. One of the tools I'm playing with is called Picopresso from Wacaco.

Playing Espresso with Wacaco's hand-held coffee machine

Wacaco Picopresso is the most compact and professional Espresso brewing tool of Wacaco. It's compact, just the size of a daily drinking cup, operating on a mechanism using a piston to press continuously to create pressure passing through the coffee layer.

The coffee produced from Pico still ensures the 3 characteristic layers of Espresso. The creamy crema layer, the middle layer with tiny particles sinking down to create a solid bottom layer. When drinking, initially you get a distinctive aroma of the type of brewing beans, then you will quickly feel the bitterness and slight sourness in the mouth. And when you swallow, it leaves a sweet aftertaste that you will immediately want to take another sip.

There are a lot of emotions when I first touched this machine. In reality, my first time playing with Picopresso was not very smooth. If you have a professional machine, the only thing you need to worry about is whether you have enough coffee to play or not, but with Picopresso, you need to be patient and control more than that.

Specifically, we need to control which type of beans we are using, the size of the ground beans, the degree of coffee compression, the water temperature, and the force/frequency of squeezing.

There is no standard formula for Wacaco, so you need to learn from your own experience after many failures. As a Picopresso player many years ago, I have a few tips for beginners as follows.

First, Wacaco is quite sensitive to the grind size and compression level. Because if the grind size or compression level is not achieved, you may squeeze out a cup of coffee too quickly or too slowly, which greatly affects the quality of the finished product. Pico requires a fairly fine grind size, requiring a fairly good grinder. A good grinder will grind many sizes of beans and maintain stability throughout. For example, I am using the 1Zpresso K+ grinder - a line specialized for Espresso. And if using K+, the grind size for Pico will vary from 2.9 -> 3.1.

The variation is because it depends on the type of coffee you are using. For example, the recommended roast level for Espresso is Medium, then Robusta will be ground "coarser" than Arabica a bit. Typically, I will use size 3.0 for Arabica and 3.1 -> 3.2 for Robusta. The reason for the increase is because Robusta often creates a lot of pressure, if it is too fine, you cannot squeeze Pico.

There are still many people playing Espresso on beans with a light roast level. Honestly, controlling the quality with this play on Pico is very difficult. Honestly, I have never been able to create a successful shot with this roast level on Pico. So no experience can be mentioned. If you are a successful player, I hope you will leave your experience in the comment section below.

By default, Pico's coffee basket is recommended to hold 18g of coffee. Start with that number. Just compress the coffee as instructed, through the brewing times, you will gain a lot of experience for yourself. For example, if you feel the compression force is not enough, increase the weight, and vice versa. Because the darker the roast, the lower the weight of the bean, while their volumes are similar to each other.

Rinse the Pico bowl with boiling water before brewing. Pour boiling water in and perform a few initial squeezes to get the hot water through the machine and heat the inside, limiting heat loss during extraction. Squeeze evenly with a frequency of every 1s.

If during the squeezing process, you feel the coffee is coming out too quickly, it means the compression is not enough, there is not enough coffee or the water is not hot enough. Conversely, if you can't squeeze or have to use a lot of force, it means the compression is too tight, you need to grind coarser or reduce the amount of coffee.

I've been drinking Espresso like this for a long time, to the point where I can't drink coffee outside. Saying this is not to criticize anything, but simply because I'm too used to the daily taste. When switching to enjoying coffee elsewhere, the body will generate an unnecessary comparison. But whatever the coffee, as long as it suits your taste, why not drink it!

Conclusion

Picopresso is a great tool for you to quickly enjoy a cup of Espresso at home. It's also great to carry with you when you need to move or travel. As a plus, Pico still has quite a few weaknesses, the most critical is the difficulty in controlling the quality of the output coffee - that is, making every shot the same. Nearly a year ago, I switched to a more "high-end" machine and hope to share it with readers in upcoming posts.