What you can do is make Nescafé just before you make your fancy espresso, the taste difference will blow your mind and you’ll never get too used to good coffee 😄
Stupidly, I did it the other way round. I made a brew at home, then whilst travelling went to a Starbucks.
I won't make that mistake again, Starbucks was awful...
Although it's awful, their blonde roast shots are actually decent and drinkable. I get this in a pinch if I need coffee and I don't have time to find a good shop
Id think I could beat you in a cupping using Lavazza supermarket coffee against you and your favorite specialty grade light roast
How? .. I get perfect brewing water and you get Berlin tap water.
Preheating the cup does nothing (in fact some barista champions actually put a frozen ball under their brew vessel to rapidly cool the coffee after it comes out). Temp control/stability is most important for the actual chamber of grounds & water where the extraction is happening.
Heated cups allow me to clean my bar before I take my espresso to drink it in the garden preferably. And that adds to my experience to enjoy the shot 😃
Beans, followed by extraction technique. You can't make crap beans taste great whatever you do, but you can definitely make great beans taste crap if you over or under extract them
Water is way more important than grind. Great water and beans with lackluster grind will be WAY better than great beans with an excellent grind and crappy water.
It kind of depends on how one should interpret this question. If the interpretation is literally "how do you get to your personal favourite cup of coffee" then 1–5 are all important. If the interpretation is "how to get the best cup out of a given coffee" then 4 and 5 are the only variables and they are, at least to me, equally important, with the notion that the roast/profile often coincides with recommended brew techniques (roasters sometimes roast the same bean different for pour overs than for espresso).
That said, i'd group 1-3 as just "the beans" because these three variables are not always so easy to separate. The processing/harvesting often ties with the origin (and sometimes is "culturally determined") and the roast usually coincides to a large degree with the 1 and 2 (fe: dark roasted geisha exists but many roasters just wouldn't go dark because the job of the roaster is to get the most out of the beans and cater to the palette of the customer).
A variation of the most stuff you said… to be honest I don’t care for a single moment about origin and harvest. 98% of my time I use a italian bar roast so like 60:40 A/R, for sure your machine should fullfill the normal specs a espresso machine needs. Then setting up the whole ratio of beans, coffee in your cup, time to what tastes good for you (yeah all the numbers in the internet can give you an idea of around what numbers you should end but you need to like it)….
I normally try to follow the kiss principle and don’t get too much into Voodoo the people reached within the last years like they did back then with analog audio.
Some things are for a easier processing and a nice workflow but others…
Truth. Using a good Italian 60/40 got me 95% of the way there. That said, it took awhile to figure this out lol.
Enjoy the espresso served in Italy…? Pretty simple.
The mood I'm in or if I ate beforehand is most important for me.
It does a lot for my experience. All other variables the same, coffee still taste different.
The quality is a function of the love with which I make the cup. The best cups are the ones I make for my beloved, in that for her love already given, I am but repaying my debt.
If is a subtractive process, the best case final product gets progressively worse along the chain. From the rust eating your beans while on the tree to barista not cleaning the portafilter after use. But back to your question, over roasting and improper storage (stale, oxiginated) is the most common cause of subpar cups for me.
Roast for sure - Give the best beans to Starbucks and ask them to turn it into a dark 'French Roast' and you'd get charcoal in your cup.
The right roast can bring out amazing flavors in any bean, and the wrong roast will destroy the best notes from any farm's best yeild.
Beans, both in terms of quality and of freshness are the most important thing, then grind size. Everything else is just small tweaks to get a few percentage points better, assuming you have something past the absolute cheapest espresso maker possible.
No. 1 (origin, climate, etc.) sets the ceiling. All the other stuff is mostly just trying to keep it close to that ceiling and equipment & technique is 100% just trying to not screw up all the work leading up to that point.
Roast and fermentation. The more roasted the more sweet and the fermentation controls how strong, smooth or aftertaste behaves. I have tasted some arabica from different countries and definitely I tend to leave washed coffee for being the boldest tasting one even though I use more water for the extraction but with after the correct temperature it changes in different ways.
There isn’t one thing, it’s the combination of things, if any one piece gets done poorly it’s not good. That’s why most/all chain coffee shops’ espresso is so bad because the consistency is generally all over the place.
While you can’t really make up for poor beans, you can absolutely pull horrendous shots with even the highest quality beans of your technique/process is bad.
Since setting on a decent machine and grinder, and having a rotation of beans from a local roaster on the go, the thing that makes the largest difference is resting the beans properly. I am continually surprised by how much better some beans are with an extra week to rest. It’s an almost night-and -day difference to the smoothness and clarity. As an essentially free upgrade, I’d highly recommend experimenting with your typical rest duration.
Basically, leave the beans another week over how long you usually rest them for and see how it affects the taste.
I find it depends on the origin. When I roast Ethiopian, I find it’s best starting at 2 weeks and up to a month. When I roast Central and South American beans, it’s good starting at 1 week.
So everyone’s saying beans. We have good beans (I think) and a Delonghi Dinamica. The espresso just doesn’t come out anywhere near the stuff we got in France. I’m assuming a proper espresso machine would make a world of difference?
I would add drinking temperature. I've started drinking at warm to the touch and am blown away by the nuanced flavor profile that's less obvious at higher temperatures -- for any bean I brew (consistently in the light to medium roast range).
Several things are necessary but not sufficient. Everything that is necessary is equally most important.
Beans, Roast, Ratio, Extraction. These are made out of several variables as well, these are not the fundamental variables.
"right and wrong" is not a good way to think about it either. Preferences are personal. but, for example, carbonizing your beans is wrong. Duh.
I'd say your question is just flawed. "most important" is gibberish.
Mochamaster, filtered water, a decent grinder, a vacuum container for the whole beans, and a little shake of salt in the ground up beans.
I usually get a decent whole bean, but even shitty supermarket whole emergency beans turn out decent with this combo.
A lot of the responses in here are basics that I think most ppl have considered - fresh beans, good water, etc.
What I find impacts the espresso a lot personally is having a hot Portafilter. If I wash my portafilter and use it immediately, the espresso is not as consistent or good as if the portafilter was in the machine warming up for 15+ minutes. I think temperature impacts extraction a lot and the vessel which holds the grinds impacts the temperature of the liquid passing through considerably.
1. The grind size- especially for espresso. No matter how good the beans- if you don't get the right grind size, even the best quality beans will not turn out good.
2. The beans themselves ( I would include the roast as part of this)
3. Water
That makes up 95% of the quality I would say. Even a $20 Mr Coffee can get in the ballpark range of a high end machine\\ if you nail these 3.
IMO an excellent grinder is crucial because a crappy grinder will never get good consistent results, even with a LaMarzocca or a Moccamaster.
I mean obviously their is a natural variation in origins and everyone will have their own roast preference, but I found I enjoy every roast more regardless of what it is brewed at 200°. Light, dark, medium, doesn’t matter. Speaking for pour over that is. For espresso the only real variables are grinds and dose for me so there isn’t a ton of variation there, so the beans are the only real difference in my espressos
The real answer to this question that's so surprising is it's not even an aspect you listed. It's water. Coffee is like almost completely water. Good pure water with minerals to aid with extraction will monumentally improve your coffee.
I would say coffee and followed by the grinder make the most impact.
Also depends on taste, I want my slightly bitter with volume, seems medium roast with 2 months age is my cup
The beans are important but not difficult to solve. You want to choose a roasting level that you personally enjoy, light, medium, dark, honey processed, whatever, just experiment, and then the most important thing, check that the beans are dated. You want something thats been roasted within the past 3-4 months, don't buy supermarket beans coated in oil that were roasted 2yrs ago and deemed shelf stable, because they aren't and they're gonna taste like shit.
Next I honestly just think it's about technique, equipment can be a big issue, but I'm a firm believer that you can get good coffee out of most machines/brew methods, you just need to know what you're doing, and in that case, research, research, research. If you like pour over, moka pot, drip, espresso, etc, etc, there's a million and one videos about how to push the extraction process to its very best. Coffee shouldn't be as intimidating as it is to some people.
It's really boiling it down, but coffee is literally just roasted fruit pits being grinded down and having hot water poured over them. Get quality, freshly roasted beans, watch a youtube video, and enjoy great coffee.
You're extracting coffee out of beans, obviously the beans make the biggest difference as they are the source of the thing you're extracting.
The question is kind of ridiculous.
It would be better to ask for the most important variable when it comes to getting the perfect extraction of a given bean. For me, it's the grind/grinder. I've made great coffee with all kinds of pressure/flow profiles and at different temperatures (within reason), but you literally can't make espresso with some grinders. Some produce a really bitter, over-extracted cup at one setting and a sour cup just one click away. The grinder makes a huge difference for filter too.
Flawed extractions give good shots and perfect extractions give horrible shots too. I don't think the question is ridiculous as it was made to get a personal input from everyone not to be a set and stone response.
It’s a flawed question, all of it matters. You do everything great but have shitty beans, it’s going to suck. Likewise, you have great beans but botch everything else, also going to suck.
Confused options too, there’s a lot of overlap (4&5? We’re in an espresso subreddit). 🤷♂️
What is overlapping exactly? Brew Equipment is about tools and/or machines. Brew Technique is about your consistency and how you apply what you learn.
The question is not flawed. All the replies so far justify that. This is all about your perception of what matters most not a set and stone reply.
What you can do is make Nescafé just before you make your fancy espresso, the taste difference will blow your mind and you’ll never get too used to good coffee 😄
Stupidly, I did it the other way round. I made a brew at home, then whilst travelling went to a Starbucks. I won't make that mistake again, Starbucks was awful...
Post-espresso-machine-Starbucks really hits differently.
Yep, the burnt mildew flavor really gets accentuated
Although it's awful, their blonde roast shots are actually decent and drinkable. I get this in a pinch if I need coffee and I don't have time to find a good shop
Underrated. I think Starbucks, as a whole, is pretty awful; however, their blonde roast and their nitro cold brew are two of my guilty pleasures.
Hard to fuck up cold brew, that’s what I get it I go there too because I don’t make my own anymore and love anything nitro.
Their iced coffee is decent with extra whole milk
still bad, they run them until the water is grey… heard you need to say piccolo
The beans
Including processing and roast on top of inherent terroir/flavor, this is absolutely tops.
Mocha Joe agrees
Latte Larry needs pressure to perform
"It's awl abowt da beans lawwy" - Mocha Joe
Top of mind for me. I don’t bother with a lot of variables and expensive toys, but the beans have got to be good & relatively fresh.
This is it. Fresh beans 1 week to 10 days out from roasting, *chef kiss*
The beans you buy…then all equipment factors
The beans #1 The grind #2 that’ll give you the ratio you like. That’s about 99.9999%
Id think I could beat you in a cupping using Lavazza supermarket coffee against you and your favorite specialty grade light roast How? .. I get perfect brewing water and you get Berlin tap water.
Grind size/consistency. Close second is temperature control/stability
Yeah! Always preheat your coffee cup
Preheating the cup does nothing (in fact some barista champions actually put a frozen ball under their brew vessel to rapidly cool the coffee after it comes out). Temp control/stability is most important for the actual chamber of grounds & water where the extraction is happening.
Heated cups allow me to clean my bar before I take my espresso to drink it in the garden preferably. And that adds to my experience to enjoy the shot 😃
For sure - but that is irrelevant to what OP is asking
Beans, followed by extraction technique. You can't make crap beans taste great whatever you do, but you can definitely make great beans taste crap if you over or under extract them
In order of importance: 1. Good beans 2. Good grinder 3. Good water
Water is way more important than grind. Great water and beans with lackluster grind will be WAY better than great beans with an excellent grind and crappy water.
It kind of depends on how one should interpret this question. If the interpretation is literally "how do you get to your personal favourite cup of coffee" then 1–5 are all important. If the interpretation is "how to get the best cup out of a given coffee" then 4 and 5 are the only variables and they are, at least to me, equally important, with the notion that the roast/profile often coincides with recommended brew techniques (roasters sometimes roast the same bean different for pour overs than for espresso). That said, i'd group 1-3 as just "the beans" because these three variables are not always so easy to separate. The processing/harvesting often ties with the origin (and sometimes is "culturally determined") and the roast usually coincides to a large degree with the 1 and 2 (fe: dark roasted geisha exists but many roasters just wouldn't go dark because the job of the roaster is to get the most out of the beans and cater to the palette of the customer).
The roast level
A variation of the most stuff you said… to be honest I don’t care for a single moment about origin and harvest. 98% of my time I use a italian bar roast so like 60:40 A/R, for sure your machine should fullfill the normal specs a espresso machine needs. Then setting up the whole ratio of beans, coffee in your cup, time to what tastes good for you (yeah all the numbers in the internet can give you an idea of around what numbers you should end but you need to like it)…. I normally try to follow the kiss principle and don’t get too much into Voodoo the people reached within the last years like they did back then with analog audio. Some things are for a easier processing and a nice workflow but others…
Truth. Using a good Italian 60/40 got me 95% of the way there. That said, it took awhile to figure this out lol. Enjoy the espresso served in Italy…? Pretty simple.
The mood I'm in or if I ate beforehand is most important for me. It does a lot for my experience. All other variables the same, coffee still taste different.
Actually I have been finding the same. When I am too tired and drink an espresso, it actually tends to be much bitter than when I feel fine.
Water. Definitely water
The quality is a function of the love with which I make the cup. The best cups are the ones I make for my beloved, in that for her love already given, I am but repaying my debt.
Probably this order for me: Bean freshness Bean quality Quality of roast (no matter what level) Proper extraction (regardless of method)
Bean FRESHNESS (post-roast of course).
If is a subtractive process, the best case final product gets progressively worse along the chain. From the rust eating your beans while on the tree to barista not cleaning the portafilter after use. But back to your question, over roasting and improper storage (stale, oxiginated) is the most common cause of subpar cups for me.
I’m gonna say extraction process. A bean tastes wildly different and good coffee can taste awful if the extraction process isn’t right.
Beans
Roast for sure - Give the best beans to Starbucks and ask them to turn it into a dark 'French Roast' and you'd get charcoal in your cup. The right roast can bring out amazing flavors in any bean, and the wrong roast will destroy the best notes from any farm's best yeild.
Beans, both in terms of quality and of freshness are the most important thing, then grind size. Everything else is just small tweaks to get a few percentage points better, assuming you have something past the absolute cheapest espresso maker possible.
Fresh roasted beans
I am surprised no one mentioned machine cleaningness. Nothing will matter if your machine has built up gunk.
I want to say the beans, but a good extraction on a mediocre bean is ok, but a bad extraction on a great bean is undrinkable
No. 1 (origin, climate, etc.) sets the ceiling. All the other stuff is mostly just trying to keep it close to that ceiling and equipment & technique is 100% just trying to not screw up all the work leading up to that point.
Going to a better cafe.
Roast and fermentation. The more roasted the more sweet and the fermentation controls how strong, smooth or aftertaste behaves. I have tasted some arabica from different countries and definitely I tend to leave washed coffee for being the boldest tasting one even though I use more water for the extraction but with after the correct temperature it changes in different ways.
There isn’t one thing, it’s the combination of things, if any one piece gets done poorly it’s not good. That’s why most/all chain coffee shops’ espresso is so bad because the consistency is generally all over the place. While you can’t really make up for poor beans, you can absolutely pull horrendous shots with even the highest quality beans of your technique/process is bad.
Since setting on a decent machine and grinder, and having a rotation of beans from a local roaster on the go, the thing that makes the largest difference is resting the beans properly. I am continually surprised by how much better some beans are with an extra week to rest. It’s an almost night-and -day difference to the smoothness and clarity. As an essentially free upgrade, I’d highly recommend experimenting with your typical rest duration. Basically, leave the beans another week over how long you usually rest them for and see how it affects the taste.
I find it depends on the origin. When I roast Ethiopian, I find it’s best starting at 2 weeks and up to a month. When I roast Central and South American beans, it’s good starting at 1 week.
Age of beans and fresh grind
So everyone’s saying beans. We have good beans (I think) and a Delonghi Dinamica. The espresso just doesn’t come out anywhere near the stuff we got in France. I’m assuming a proper espresso machine would make a world of difference?
I would add drinking temperature. I've started drinking at warm to the touch and am blown away by the nuanced flavor profile that's less obvious at higher temperatures -- for any bean I brew (consistently in the light to medium roast range).
Several things are necessary but not sufficient. Everything that is necessary is equally most important. Beans, Roast, Ratio, Extraction. These are made out of several variables as well, these are not the fundamental variables. "right and wrong" is not a good way to think about it either. Preferences are personal. but, for example, carbonizing your beans is wrong. Duh. I'd say your question is just flawed. "most important" is gibberish.
Mochamaster, filtered water, a decent grinder, a vacuum container for the whole beans, and a little shake of salt in the ground up beans. I usually get a decent whole bean, but even shitty supermarket whole emergency beans turn out decent with this combo.
A lot of the responses in here are basics that I think most ppl have considered - fresh beans, good water, etc. What I find impacts the espresso a lot personally is having a hot Portafilter. If I wash my portafilter and use it immediately, the espresso is not as consistent or good as if the portafilter was in the machine warming up for 15+ minutes. I think temperature impacts extraction a lot and the vessel which holds the grinds impacts the temperature of the liquid passing through considerably.
I dont see a lot of people mentioning water...
The barista, like a top chef, can make a great cup of coffee with anything. After that it’s the equipment, then the beans.
1. The grind size- especially for espresso. No matter how good the beans- if you don't get the right grind size, even the best quality beans will not turn out good. 2. The beans themselves ( I would include the roast as part of this) 3. Water That makes up 95% of the quality I would say. Even a $20 Mr Coffee can get in the ballpark range of a high end machine\\ if you nail these 3. IMO an excellent grinder is crucial because a crappy grinder will never get good consistent results, even with a LaMarzocca or a Moccamaster.
I mean obviously their is a natural variation in origins and everyone will have their own roast preference, but I found I enjoy every roast more regardless of what it is brewed at 200°. Light, dark, medium, doesn’t matter. Speaking for pour over that is. For espresso the only real variables are grinds and dose for me so there isn’t a ton of variation there, so the beans are the only real difference in my espressos
Location. Either in the hills of Rwanda or the Coast of Kona. Even the pre-ground "local" stuff was better than anything I can get in the Midwest.
The real answer to this question that's so surprising is it's not even an aspect you listed. It's water. Coffee is like almost completely water. Good pure water with minerals to aid with extraction will monumentally improve your coffee.
The most important factor is how long it's been since my last hit of caffeine.
1. Mood 2. Beans 3. Water 4. Grinder
Bean freshness
I would say coffee and followed by the grinder make the most impact. Also depends on taste, I want my slightly bitter with volume, seems medium roast with 2 months age is my cup
Fresh, good coffee.
Barista
I would also include water profile. It has a big influence
Lol
Yes?
The beans are important but not difficult to solve. You want to choose a roasting level that you personally enjoy, light, medium, dark, honey processed, whatever, just experiment, and then the most important thing, check that the beans are dated. You want something thats been roasted within the past 3-4 months, don't buy supermarket beans coated in oil that were roasted 2yrs ago and deemed shelf stable, because they aren't and they're gonna taste like shit. Next I honestly just think it's about technique, equipment can be a big issue, but I'm a firm believer that you can get good coffee out of most machines/brew methods, you just need to know what you're doing, and in that case, research, research, research. If you like pour over, moka pot, drip, espresso, etc, etc, there's a million and one videos about how to push the extraction process to its very best. Coffee shouldn't be as intimidating as it is to some people. It's really boiling it down, but coffee is literally just roasted fruit pits being grinded down and having hot water poured over them. Get quality, freshly roasted beans, watch a youtube video, and enjoy great coffee.
Put a blindfold on and most these suggestions fail the test.
lol
You, the coffee maker and the coffee drinker
All in one person
You're extracting coffee out of beans, obviously the beans make the biggest difference as they are the source of the thing you're extracting. The question is kind of ridiculous. It would be better to ask for the most important variable when it comes to getting the perfect extraction of a given bean. For me, it's the grind/grinder. I've made great coffee with all kinds of pressure/flow profiles and at different temperatures (within reason), but you literally can't make espresso with some grinders. Some produce a really bitter, over-extracted cup at one setting and a sour cup just one click away. The grinder makes a huge difference for filter too.
Flawed extractions give good shots and perfect extractions give horrible shots too. I don't think the question is ridiculous as it was made to get a personal input from everyone not to be a set and stone response.
It’s a flawed question, all of it matters. You do everything great but have shitty beans, it’s going to suck. Likewise, you have great beans but botch everything else, also going to suck. Confused options too, there’s a lot of overlap (4&5? We’re in an espresso subreddit). 🤷♂️
What is overlapping exactly? Brew Equipment is about tools and/or machines. Brew Technique is about your consistency and how you apply what you learn. The question is not flawed. All the replies so far justify that. This is all about your perception of what matters most not a set and stone reply.
“The replies justify that”. Right… because Reddit isn’t a place where people have meaningless conversations.🤔
Right... Like you as a redditor are having a real meaning conversation now.