Been meaning to make more espresso content to makeup for my coffee sins.
Tamped 18g of espresso ground as tight as I could into the portafilter, pulled 30 g of espresso at first. Since I under pulled, I pulled more and accidentally overpulled to 40g. Steamed some milk with a generous helping of Irish creme sugar-free syrup and sugar, then blended it with ice cubes in a small blender.
Came out pretty good! Probably because of the sugar and syrup and 3/4 cup of milk used, tbh. 18g of espresso is really hard to fit into the portafilter, was barely able to even fit the basket into the machine. One of these days I’m going to try espresso straight, no sugar or fluff, just to see what it’s like.


Fair. The manual as far as I could see just says to fill it up to the fill line in the baskets, but I don’t know if that means to the bottom edge, or to the top edge, or midway, or whatever, since it more or less matters. It seems no matter what I do, there’s a mark in the puck when I’m done.
The mark afterwards is normal, as the puck expands when it comes in contact with water. The Line sounds pretty confusing but it might help estimating if you have way too much or too little coffee.
Keep in mind too, different beans will have different densities. So one bean might fill fine at 18g, then another might fill fine at 16g. Just something to note.
I’d recommend over filling it slightly, then tamp, tighten, untighten, see how deep the indentation is, scrape that amount off and weigh how much is left then try that on your next shot. That might help a bit.
Ah that’s a good strategy! I’ll try it out tomorrow. Thanks!