How to Get the Most Out of Your Espresso Machine, According to Experts

An espresso machine is a complicated tool with one simple goal: to make great espresso drinks. For our review, we spent days tinkering with numerous home espresso machines across a wide range of price points. It became clear that many of those machines could be nudged to higher levels of performance—if you know how. In some cases, this meant upgrading included parts. In others, it required mastering a "hack" to help achieve more desirable brewing temperatures.

These are the five recommendations we have to improve your espresso quality.

Espresso Upgrade #1: Get a Better Portafilter Basket

An Better 54-millimeter Filter Basket for Breville Machines

IMS Precision NANOTECH Filter Basket 18g

$30 at Amazon

An Upgraded 58-millimeter Filter Basket

VST 25g Precision Filter

View on Vstapps.com

When we tested espresso machines, we also tried a few alternative filter baskets. Espresso filter baskets are designed to hold your tamped espresso puck and have very fine holes on the bottom for the espresso to flow through. However, many of the baskets included with home machines suffer from design limitations that can prevent good flavor extraction, such as a tapered shape and imprecisely drilled holes. VST baskets are much better; they're laser-drilled and flat-walled, meaning they can extract coffee evenly. 

For proper extraction, you want water to flow through the coffee evenly, which is what the VST's straight walls and precise holes encourage. With the tapered baskets, on the other hand, the sides are almost “dead zones” while the bottom becomes over-extracted since water from the sides has to flow through the tapered bottom before exiting.

If you have a machine that can accommodate the VST baskets—like the Diletta Mio, Rancilio Silvia, or Gaggia Classic Pro, we recommend making the $30 upgrade. Before ordering, you should measure the diameter of your portafilter since most VST baskets are designed for 58-millimeter portafilers. If you have a Breville espresso machine, however, we think the IMS 54-millimeter Precision Baskets are worth buying for the same reasons as the VST.

Espresso Upgrade #2: Invest in a Better Tamper

A Combination Distributor and Tamper

Crema Coffee Products Double-sided Distributor/Leveler & Hand Tamper

$44 $27 at Amazon

Many home espresso machines come with plastic tampers. Aside from being lightweight, they also don’t fit the portafilter baskets well, leading to leading to an unevenly compacted espresso puck. This, too, negatively affects extraction (and thus flavor), a difference we could taste when we brewed coffee side-by-side using the same machines, switching back and forth between the provided plastic tamper and a heavyweight option.

A Spring-Loaded Tamper

Normcore Coffee Tamper

$44 $36 at Amazon

Some of the machines we tested came with a well-designed, weighted tamper, but for the ones that had plastic tampers, we recommend upgrading to the Crema Coffee Products Coffee Distributor and Hand Tamper or Normcore Coffee Tamper. The Crema combo has one side that levels your coffee evenly and a flat push tamper on the other, while the Normcore tamper is spring-loaded so you can always tamp with the same pressure. Both come in 54- and 58-millimeter diameters, so check your portafilter basket size first.

Espresso Upgrade #3: Learn to “Temperature Surf”

The Best Espresso Machine for Enthusiasts

Rancilio Silvia Espresso Machine

$1,000 $865 at Amazon $45 at Walmart

Proper water temperature is key to pulling good shots of espresso, but not every machine makes that easy. Most commercial espresso machines and some higher-end home ones, like the Breville Dual Boiler and Lelit Elizabeth, come with double boilers that separate the water-heating functions for brewing coffee and steaming milk. Some even have PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controllers that can predict heating cycles and regulate temperatures to a single degree Fahrenheit. PIDs can be expensive though, so if you’re looking for professional performance under $1,000, the boiler temperature will likely be controlled by a simple thermostat (see: the Gaggia Classic Pro and Rancilio Silvia) unless you go with a model from Breville. Fun fact: All Breville espresso machines have PID. 

Back to the thermostats, though. On machines without PID and with simple thermostats, the boiler turns on until it reaches a set temperature of around 200ºF. The heating element remains hot, however, so the water temperature continues to rise another 10ºF or so before it starts to cool. Once it cools below 200ºF, the boiler kicks back on, but since it takes a few seconds to heat up, the temperature can drop as low as 190ºF. PID controllers were first introduced by home espresso enthusiasts to regulate brew temperatures by predicting their heating cycles, but you can also do that manually by learning how to temperature surf. 

Both the Gaggia and Rancilio have indicator lights that signal when the machine is heating. To temperature surf, you purge water from the boiler into the drip tray until it triggers a heating cycle in the machine. At 30 seconds after the machine starts heating again, the boiler will be at a more predictable brew temp, around 200ºF. It’s a more involved process, but after a little practice, it feels like second nature. Successfully temperature surfing greatly increased our espresso quality on these machines, pulling shots that matched the most expensive models in our lineup.

The Best Espresso Machine

Breville Bambino Plus Espresso Machine

$500 at Amazon $500 at Williams Sonoma $500 at Sur La Table

Many of the home machines we tested (even the Breville models with PIDs) were still single-boiler designs, resulting in one water heater having to do double duty, providing water for espresso brewing and steaming milk. That means the temperature in the boiler fluctuates when you switch between functions. “Brew and steam modes work differently: they use different thermostats, one with a higher temperature threshold for steam,” says Steve Rhinehart, e-commerce manager at Acaia and former brand manager at Prima Coffee Equipment. “Switching into steam mode uses the same heating element in the boiler but now it's on a different electrical circuit that will run until it hits a steam temperature 20 or so degrees higher than brewing.”

When you're steaming milk, the boiler has to get hot enough to produce steam, while the boiler has to drop the temperature to pull shots, usually to between 198-202°F. This creates a bit of a predicament: not only can you not steam milk and pull shots at the same time, but switching from steam mode back to brewing means your espresso shots might be pulling at too high of a temperature. The solution is simple. By purging water out of the grouphead, the machine brings cold water from the reservoir back into the boiler to cool it back down to brewing temperatures. From there, either the PID or temperature surfing will prep the machine for brewing.

Espresso Upgrade #4: Consider Your Water

A Custom Mineral Blend For Water

Third Wave Water Espresso Machine Profile Five Gallon Sticks

$17 at Amazon

“Water quality is extremely important,” says Madeleine Longoria Garcia of Pacific Coffee Research in Hawai'i. “It's a make-or-break kind of situation.” It’s worth getting to know where your municipal water comes from and how hard or soft the water coming out of your tap is. “I completely rebuilt a home espresso machine last year and most of the damage could have been avoided if the proper water was being used and if the owner simply cleaned it on a regular basis.” If you’re using hard water in your espresso machine, calcium carbonate—known better as scale—can build up and prevent your machine from performing at 100%. 

A simple water filter is all you need if your tap water isn’t too hard, but if you live in rural areas with hard water, consider using something like Third Wave Water which formulates the right mineral blend for both taste and machine health. It might seem like a tiresome extra step, but espresso machines are expensive, and good water quality is the best way to protect your investment—and to make sure your shots taste as good as you want them to.

Espresso Upgrade #5: Weigh Your Coffee

The Best Budget-Friendly Coffee Scale

OXO BREW Precision Scale with Timer

$56 $49 at Amazon $56 at Williams Sonoma View on Webstaurant Store

We’re big fans of weighing your coffee, and we think it’s even more important for espresso. Because espresso machines use such a high pressure to pull a shot, any minor variation can have a big impact on your espresso quality. One of the best ways to add consistency to your espresso routine is to buy a coffee scale with a 0.1-gram resolution. In our testing, the speed at which we pulled our espresso shots varied greatly, even if our dose of coffee was off by as little as 0.5 grams. But coffee scales aren’t just for weighing out your ground coffee—espresso shots can vary in volume depending on when they were roasted. Freshly roasted coffee produces more crema, which takes up space in a shot glass. That means it can be hard to judge exactly what two ounces look like by sight, but since crema is a foam, it doesn’t really weigh anything so your scale will give you an accurate reading. 

FAQs

Can you use regular coffee in an espresso machine?

You can use whatever coffee you want to make an espresso—but espresso blends tend to be easier to dial in for beginners. Coffee roasters usually design espresso blends around a flavor profile that excels when pulled as an espresso shot. Because espresso is so highly concentrated, each coffee's flavor profile is highly amplified—a soft, lemony acidity in a drip brew might be a screamingly tart espresso. Most espresso blends are designed to be balanced and sweet, even at high intensities.

Is espresso stronger than coffee?

Well, yes and no. An espresso shot is about eight to 10 times more concentrated than drip coffee, but it's also a much smaller serving size. A double espresso uses 18 grams of coffee, which is around the same amount used for an 8-ounce cup of drip coffee. Here's the kicker: Espresso is less efficient at extracting material than drip coffee, so a double shot of espresso is the caffeine equivalent, usually, of a five- to six-ounce cup of drip coffee. Since most people drink at least 12 ounces of drip coffee as a serving, you're way more likely to get over-caffeinated from drip than espresso.

Why We're the Experts

• Ashley Rodriguez has been in the coffee industry since 2010, having worked as a barista, shop manager, and coffee trainer.
• She's written several of Serious Eats' coffee-related reviews, including milk frothers and coffee makers. We also regularly consult her on coffee content and equipment, harnessing her expertise as much as we can.
• Jesse Raub was Serious Eats' commerce writer and spent over 15 years working in the specialty coffee industry. He was our in-house coffee expert and regularly tested coffee gear for this site.
• For this piece, we consulted Steve Rhinehart (e-commerce manager at Acaia and former brand manager at Prima Coffee Equipment) and Madeleine Longoria Garcia (of Pacific Coffee Research in Hawai'i).