Dialing-In Your Flair 58 Plus Manual Espresso Maker
Introduction
Dialing in your espresso is a crucial step to unlocking the full potential of your Flair 58 Plus. It involves finding the perfect balance of grind size, dose, and extraction time to produce a delicious cup. The combination of these three components, along with your water’s temperature and the pressure you brew at, is called your brew recipe. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the basics of dialing in your espresso on your Flair 58 Plus and provide tips for achieving the ideal espresso.
Before You Start
Turn on your Flair espresso maker and select a preheat setting. Raise the lever fully, lock in your portafilter, and allow the preheat system five minutes to bring your brew chamber and portafilter up to temp.
Preheat Setting & Water Temperature
The Flair 58 preheat system is designed to allow you to control your brewhead temperatures based on your chosen coffee.
We recommend using the LOW setting (85C/185F) for dark roasts, MEDIUM setting (90C/194F) for medium roasts, and the HIGH setting (95C/203F) for light roasts. Toward the end of this preheat cycle, you can turn on your kettle and set the temperature to closely match the preheat setting you selected.
Understanding the Recipe Components
A well-dialed-in espresso recipe consists of three main components:
- Dose: The amount of ground coffee used, usually expressed in grams. We recommend using a dose that matches the basket you are using. For example, an 18g dose is ideal in the Flair high-flow basket that comes with the Flair 58 Plus.
- Yield: The amount of espresso produced, usually expressed in grams. Starting with a yield that’s close to double the weight of ground coffee is an easy way to get a good baseline. Extremely lightly roasted coffees can benefit from a larger yield, closer to three times the weight of ground coffee. A dark roast on the other hand will taste best with a yield similar to your dose weight, or one and a half times the dose weight.
- Brew Time:Â The total extraction time once you begin your brew, in seconds. A 25-30s brew is commonly recommended as a good starting point for a new coffee when using a manual espresso machine.
Keeping the first two variables constant, adjusting your grind will result in changes to your brewing times, which you can use to adjust your espresso and pull a well-balanced and delicious shot.
Start With A Simple Recipe
While you can absolutely play around with recipes, we recommend starting out with the following recipe on your Flair 58 to familiarize yourself with the dial-in process and how changes to the variables impact your final drink:
- Dose: 18g
- Yield: 40g
- Target Brew Time: 30 seconds
The relationship between your dose and yield is commonly called your ‘brew ratio’, and is often expressed as such. If you read or hear of someone using a 1:2 ratio, it simply means that their yield is double their dose. For example, an 18 gram dose would yield a 36 gram shot when brewing a 2:1 ratio. Similarly, a ratio of 1:1 would suggest someone is brewing the same yield as their dose.
In a recent survey, James Hoffmann asked thousands of espresso brewers from around the world to describe their recipes, and compiled and shared the results in THIS VIDEO. The most common recipe, used the world around, was a 2:1 ratio!
This is a good reason to use this as a benchmark recipe – since it’s where many people find results they enjoy, it can serve as a great starting point from which you can make tweaks based on your own taste preferences.
Grinding Your Coffee
Grinding your coffee fresh, and to the correct consistency, is essential for optimal extraction on any manual espresso maker, especially the Flair 58 Plus. We recommend using a high-quality burr grinder, such as our very own Flair Royal, to ensure excellent and repeatable results.
Here’s a simple trick to select an initial grind size: Grind a small amount of coffee at your selected setting and run the ground coffee between your fingers. If it makes a gritty sound, it’s too coarse. If it’s too fine, it will cling to your fingers in clumps.
Brewing And Adjusting
Once you have your initial grind size, it’s time to brew your espresso and make adjustments as needed.
When brewing, start by lowering the lever at a rate which maintains 3BAR of pressure for 5-10 seconds, and then ramp up the pressure to 6 or 7 BAR for the remainder of the shot. This is a simple and easily repeatable pressure profile to follow, which helps ease the dial in process. The low initial pressure is a great way to allow your coffee to slowly expand, leading to fewer channels forming and a more even extraction.
For your first few brews, focus on making adjustments to hit the target time – 30-seconds at 6-7 BAR. If your shot is too slow, grind coarser. If it’s too fast, grind finer.
After reaching the target time, start to focus in on the flavor of your espresso. If it’s too sour, this means the coffee has been under-extracted. To solve a sour espresso shot, try these three options:
- Raising the water temperature a few degrees,
- Grinding finer (even if this extends your extraction time beyond 30 seconds), or
- Slightly lowering the dose.
If your espresso tastes too bitter, this means it has been over-extracted. Consider these options if your espresso tastes bitter and over-extracted:
- Lowering the water temperature a few degrees,
- Grinding coarser (even if this shortens your extraction time below 30 seconds), or
- Slightly raising the dose.
This final stage of the espresso dial-in process is where the magic happens, and your espresso really comes into its own.
Dialing-In Tips
- Experiment: Don’t be afraid to try different recipes to find what works best for your coffee.
- Patience is Key: As you try new things, be sure to only make a single adjustment at a time – either temperature, grind size, dose, or yield. Other variables will drift in response, but actively changing too many things at once can obscure the results of your changes.
- Take Notes: Keep track of your experiments to see what works best. As you tweak things, you may find the need to go back to a prior value, and tracking changes is the easiest way to accomplish this.
