14 Best WIRED Tested and Reviewed Espresso Machines (2024)

There’s at all times room to up your recreation, and there are fairly a couple of further instruments that may assist you to make the perfect espresso doable. These are all instruments you’d make use of earlier than the brew, setting the stage for the right extraction.

Fellow Atmos Canister for Coffee Beans ($40): A vacuum canister is an effective way to retailer your espresso beans. By vacating the chamber of all air each time you shut it, the Fellow Atmos slows down the degradation of all these flavorful oils and chemical compounds inside your freshly roasted beans.

Oxo Conical Burr Grinder ($100): That is certainly one of our high picks in our Best Coffee Grinders guide, and it is a good selection for espresso. Espresso requires a effective and constant grind, the likes of which you’ll simply get out of a burr grinder. Simply make sure you get in there and provides your burrs a sweep every now and then—upkeep that the Oxo makes simple, with a bean bin that snaps aside with none fuss.

Bottomless Portafilter ($50): Nothing will enhance your expertise of watching espresso brew like a bottomless portafilter. Not as a result of it’ll make your espresso higher; it’ll make you higher by making you extra conscious of your errors and inconsistencies. Bottomless portafilters are finicky, and when your grind is off otherwise you’ve over-tamped your grounds, the bottomless portafilter helps you to see that in how the espresso coats the underside of the filter and pours down into the cup. Remember to double-check the circumference in your espresso machine’s group head, although (the place the filter attaches). There are a variety of ordinary sizes, so you’ll want to be sure you order the fitting one. The most typical are 53 mm and 58 mm, and nearly each bottomless portafilter is available in every of those sizes.

Crema Distributor & Tamp ($39): As soon as you set your grounds into your portafilter, the following step is giving them a great, even tamping. You need to use about 30 to 40 kilos of stress, and whereas you need to use a scale to find out precisely what that looks like, I discover it’s higher to simply press together with your higher physique, then extract a shot and see the way it went. If it’s too bitter, you tamped too laborious; if it’s too watery you didn’t tamp laborious sufficient. A distributor (additionally known as a leveler) makes it simple to get an excellent floor so that you can tamp, and this one has a tamp on one facet and a distributor on the opposite so you may degree off your beans, then flip this instrument over and provides ’em a great tamp. Simply be sure you get one that matches the circumference of your machine’s portafilter!

Duralex Picardie Shot Glasses, Set of Six ($20): These are my favourite shot glasses basically, however they’re additionally nice espresso shot glasses—tall and slim sufficient to permit a splendidly aerated crema to kind on high, and manufactured from tempered glass to allow them to stand as much as the warmth. They’re additionally nice for serving up smaller drinks like macchiatos—a shot of espresso with a dollop of froth on high.