Top 3 Must-Have Espresso Tools
Let's start out with the dosing funnel.
The dosing funnel is just a super, simple piece of equipment that saves you time cleaning up and saves you money for lost coffee.
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As you can see in the image above, when you’re grinding, it’s bouncing off the sides.
There’s static. All that coffee you don’t want to lose.
So what you can do is pick up a dosing funnel. They are available on Amazon HERE.
Basically, it’s, set up to be fifty-four millimetre, which is my Portafilter diameter as I am using my Barista Express.
You drop it right on top and bam you’re saving coffee, you’re saving time it’s, and its just a nice piece of equipment. When I’m grinding into the Portafilter, I’m, not losing any coffee over the sides.
All those pieces that are sticking to it are like little chaff pieces that aren’t making a mess all over my table.
It’s a win-win really. Just a simple, inexpensive piece of equipment that’s worth having on any bar home or cafe.
The next piece of equipment is a distribution tool.
These are kind of being debated throughout the industry.
Some people love them. Some people hate them, but I find they’re much cleaner and consistent than using my hand to do the stock flip or the other popular method is tapping to flatten the grounds in your portafilter again.
You want to make sure that you have a nice consistent result. Every time you’re, not wasting shots using this tool. Make sure that I do it the same way—every time I do the same amount of spins. I can set the depth.
Everything is very consistent from shot to shot if there is a debate, whether this helps with extraction or vice versa, but in the end, it does help keep things cleaner, keep things faster and overall, creates a nice bed for tamping.
It´s super easy to use to set the depth that fits into pretty much any basket, that’s 54 millimetres, give it a few spins and bam. You have a nice flat surface for some nice flat tamping and speaking of tamping.
Let’s talk about the next piece.
A comfortable tamper
Everyone got a tamper if they have an espresso machine. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to use it.
They come in many different shapes sizes.
The one thing that I find that’s most important is that it’s comfortable.
It fits in your hand, and you can use it consistently. I have quite a few, and my favourite is the push tamper, as it is super consistent. You can get yours on Amazon right HERE.
It definitely will work for everyone. It’ll be the same every time, but I really like the old fashioned style of handling tamping on my own.
You have to be careful when you pull it out, as some, like with the Pullman Big Step Tamper, you don’t want to suction your puck out of the portafilter itself, but it just works very well.
Every time it creates a nice flat tamp. As long as you’re, paying attention to it, it’s, pretty much impossible to pull it out crooked because it’ll just get jammed in there, and it comes out with this nice consistent shots every time, and that’s, really what we’re all going for right.
We want great tasting, and consistent espresso, every time we pull a shot.
So these three espresso tools are the keys to that lock.
You want to unlock your awesome espresso.
You want to make sure you’re wasting as little as possible.
You will be pulling consistent great shots if you check these items out. They will come in handy for sure.
It depend on your personal preference. Personally I prefer to have an integrated grinder, as it makes life a lot easier. There are several great options, and you can read about them here in this helpful article.
There are a few options, that I think is good. You can read more in this article, where I go over the options for the coffee grinders for home use.