This brew guide takes you through how to make a flat white on an at home espresso machine.
You will need
- 16g coffee
- Coffee grinder (unless your coffee is pre-ground)
- Scales
- Timer/stopwatch
- Tamper
- Espresso machine
Method
1) Weigh your coffee – we're going to start off with a recipe of 16g of ground coffee going into the portafilter, to get a 32g shot of coffee out, so it's a 1:2 ratio. That should all take about 27 to 30 seconds.
2) The main thing you're going to need to adjust is your grind size, so if your shots are taking too long (more than 30 seconds) you need to go a touch coarser with your grind to speed things up. If they're going too fast (less than 27 seconds) you need to go such finer with the grind to slow things down.
3) Once the coffee is weighed, ground and in your portafilter, we're going to level it out – give it a nice even tamp to make sure everything's nice and even. Then wipe across the top of the basket with your hand to make sure it’s clean.
4) Whack the portafilter into the group head. Here we hit our program button which we've pre-programmed to give us a 32g shot out.
5) If you have a manual machine, you can stick scales under the cup and tare, that's another way to just measure the yield and stop the shot once you reach that 32g. Make sure to start your stop watch at the same time you start the shot so you can ensure you’re getting that 32g in 27-30 seconds. If something isn’t right, adjust your coffee grind (see above).
6) Now to add a little bit of milk. Frothing milk is a whole other video really, but we wanted to show you the drink from start to finish.
7) You can use dairy or your favourite alternative milk. The first part of steaming milk is to add a little bit of air and then begin the kind of whirlpool process. So, holding the jug at a slight angle, encourages the milk to spin around the jug. This gives you a nice even microfoam texture throughout the milk. Use your other hand to gauge the temperature of the milk – if it's too hot to touch it's going to be too hot to drink.
8) Fill up the cup two thirds with your warm frothy milk, then drop the spout of the jug nice and close to the surface of the crema which allows the milk to float on top and you'll start to see a pattern form.
