Learning To Make Coffee (Properly, Sort Of)
Monday, 10th November 2025
I don't normally write about coffee, but over the last few months it's become something I've genuinely got into. So, I thought I'd document my experiences so far - partly for my own record, and partly because I've enjoyed learning how to make a decent cup from home.
It all started back in the summer at Orchard Springs campsite, where every morning the owner would make me a latte from his little office cabin. It was a good start to the day, and when I got home, I missed it.
So, on August 16, I bought myself a Breville Barista Mini. Since then, I've been making a coffee every morning without fail. It's not a quick process, but I enjoy it. I've spent the last few months experimenting, or at least thinking about experimenting, but mostly just enjoying the process. The coffee I'm making now is already delicious - far better than any pods or instant I've ever had - though part of me still suspects it could be better.
Before the Breville, I'd had a Nespresso and then a Dolce Gusto. They were fine, but every Nespresso pod tastes the same to me, and with that machine, I had to microwave milk for lattes. Dolce Gusto did the milk for you, but it was powdered and just brewed a tiny serving. I need to use four pods - two coffee, two milk - each time to get a full cup. And that's a lot of plastic waste.
The Barista Mini is my first proper coffee machine - if you can call it proper. My first my Dad and Jean bought me for Christmas in 2000. It was small, similar to the Breville but stripped back - no removable basket, probably some built-in system that tried to do everything automatically. It even had a little steam wand that worked surprisingly well. Carla bought me a hand-powered grinder that same year, and I went out and bought a milk pan so I could heat and froth milk manually. For a 20-year-old, that setup wasn't bad at all. But, like many early hobbies, it faded over time. I went from espresso to instant, then pods, and now - finally - full circle back to espresso again.
So now, coffee has become part of my morning routine. I've been trying to "master" it, though that's a generous term. In truth, I've mostly been reading, watching, and tweaking. I watch a lot of James Hoffmann videos - I sort of think of him as the Tom Scott of coffee - calm, precise, immaculate. I saw his book in John Lewis recently - a deep green hardback with gold detailing - and it looked so beautifully designed that I was tempted to buy it just to sit next to the machine even though I'll never read it. I went with the audiobook instead, which I'll start soon, though I'm not sure how a reference-heavy book will work in audio form. Still, I have a feeling I'll end up buying the print version anyway.
Of course, with a machine like mine you can make any coffee you want, espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, flat white... The list is endless. But I don't really experiment as much as I thought I would, probably because I like a latte, so what's the point? I've had the Breville a few months now, and I've made a coffee every day but haven't once had a proper test session to "dial in" like you see these YouTube coffee experts doing. The problem is I don't drink espresso, I drink latte, so experimenting requires milk, and there's only so much milk I'd want to use and drink in a day. In the morning I make a latte because that's what I want. By the evening, when I'm watching Hoffmann's videos and feel most inspired to try something, I either don't want another cup or don't want to use more milk.
For some coffee is a hobby - I don't think I'd go that far, but it's clearly now an interest of mine. I've watched hours and hours of videos about grinding beans, milk steaming, and extraction ratios. I don't do that for breakfast cereal, which is also part of my morning routine, so clearly something about this has gripped me. Like any interest, I've been sucked in just enough to start collecting the accessories, but I'm also genuinely content with what I've got. I like the idea of improving, but I'm not chasing perfection.
If I'm honest, I can't tell the difference between all the settings, ratios, or blends I've tried. I'm sure I'd notice distinctions if I tasted them side by side. But from day to day, they all taste good. Not samey like pods or flat like instant - just good coffee.
I watch people on YouTube dial in their espresso, tasting shots and talking about chocolate notes, citrus brightness, or hints of hazelnut. I admire the dedication, but that's not me. I don't like neat espresso, so I'm never going to be tasting it in that way. I like lattes - coffee softened with sweet, aerated milk. I use skimmed milk because I don't like the creaminess of full-fat or plant milks. Skimmed is practically water, and that's fine by me.
I suppose I could test blends side by side to find what I really like, but I don't think it matters much. Once you're buying freshly roasted coffee that's ground and shipped within a few days, you're already drinking something excellent. I've been buying from Rave which is only about 40 miles away in Cirencester and Brian Wogan's roasters at the top of the M32 in Bristol. Both grind to order and deliver usually next day. What I like is that, because they're small-scale roasters compared with supermarket brands, their ground coffee hasn't been sitting in warehouses for months, then they're sending it out to stores where is sits on their shelves for weeks or months.
I think I have good coffee, and that's half the battle, really. Because when you think about it, even a random pub with a 19-year-old behind the bar can make a decent latte. They're not coffee obsessives, but they still manage a solid cup - so if I'm doing that, I'm doing alright. Don't get me wrong, I can tell when a coffee's bad, but it's rare. Maybe I just don't have the most sophisticated palate when it comes to coffee, but it does mean I can just enjoy what I make without overthinking it.
I picked the Breville Barista Mini because it doesn't have a coffee grinder built in. It seems any machine with a grinder included had at least £200 added to its price tag - and I found I could get a cheaper standalone grinder - plus, the hopper for beans would have made any machine too tall to fit into the area of the kitchen I call "the coffee station."
So when I first got the coffee machine, my brewing process started with whole beans, grinding them fresh each morning using a cheap Amazon blade grinder - it's basically a spinning blade that chops the beans. It seemed to work fine.
From there, I fill the one-cup portafilter basket, tamp it, and lock it in. The Breville has an automatic volumetric cut-off, meaning it stops the flow on its own once it's dispensed a programmed amount. Then I move on to the milk steaming, because I drink lattes. I use skimmed milk, which is practically water, but that's exactly how I like it. I've never liked the creaminess of full-fat or even semi-skimmed milk, and I find plant milks are even worse because they're trying to mimic the creaminess of real milk.
When I first started, I was dosing around 18 g of coffee for a single shot, which turned out to be far too much. The puck was so tightly packed it would stick inside the portafilter every time. So I dropped the dose to 10 - 12 g, which freed it up - but then the puck started coming out soggy. That seems to be how home coffee making works... fix one problem and you create another.
Then there's the ratio. I'd seen in YouTube videos that espresso should roughly follow a 1:2 to 1:2.5 ratio - one part ground coffee in to two parts liquid espresso out. When I tested mine, I discovered that with 10 g of coffee, I was pulling about 38 g of espresso. That's closer to 1:4, meaning my espressos were slightly over-extracted. Brew time also plays a part. The sweet spot is around 30 seconds from turning it on, including the pre-infusion stage. But my shots were running closer to 20 - 25. That suggests the grind is too coarse or the machine's dispensing too much water too fast.
I soon learnt that with a blade grinder, you hit a ceiling pretty quickly. There's no real control over how fine or coarse the grind is - something I later realised is important and the thing you're actually paying for with a good, built-in grinder. A blade grinder can't grind consistently - some bits are powder-fine, others are chunky - and espresso needs a precise, uniform grind to extract properly. It's why every coffee guide repeats the same mantra that the grinder is more important than the machine. They're not wrong. Still, but burr grinders - the type you want - are expensive, and mine was doing "good enough" for now. I doubted I'd even notice the subtle improvement.
So, I'd realised that although I was making a good coffee, the grinder was holding me back. The next obstacle I uncovered was that the Breville comes with double-wall filter baskets. Now this is sort of good and bad. It's designed to compensate for imperfect grinds - so it was to some extent correcting my poor grinds. The second wall creates artificial pressure, forcing the water to push through evenly even when the grind isn't ideal.
However, it also means you can't really tweak and improve if you have this artificial correction layer between the machine and your cup. I started reading that people with the same machine were ditching the double walls in favour of single-wall baskets, saying they gave a more authentic espresso and better crema.
That sent me down another rabbit hole. If the double wall is fixing the flaws in my grind, wouldn't switching to single wall make things worse? Probably, yes - unless I could fix the grind itself. That's when I started wondering about using pre-ground coffee from a proper roaster. Freshly ground beans are ideal in theory, but only if you can grind them properly. A professional grind would at least be consistent, even if it sacrifices a bit of freshness.
I decided not to rush into buying a single-wall basket and instead switched from the one-cup double-wall basket to the two-cup double-wall that came with the Breville. That change seemed to correct the extraction time and ratio, bringing it to roughly 30 seconds and almost exactly 1:2. Before making any more adjustments, I thought it made sense to move from whole beans to pre-ground coffee, changing one variable at a time rather than several at once.
Before I made any more change, I thought it made sense to move from whole bean to pre-ground, changing one variable at a time, rather than multiple things.
So, that was the plan: stick with the double-wall baskets and switch to ground coffee.
Brian Wogan offer a specific grind for "domestic espresso." I did think about going there to pick it up, since it's so close, but I ended up ordering a 250 g bag online - the postage was cheaper than the petrol and parking I'd have spent driving into the city. I'll probably visit at some point though, just to chat with them in person and grab a coffee, because it looks nice there and it's dog friendly. I also bought some espresso grind from Rave Coffee.
The first shot I pulled with the Wogan espresso blend ran for about 40 seconds, which felt a bit long, and the result was noticeably bitter. I couldn't tell whether that was down to over-extraction or just the roast itself.
I ran another test the next day, this time switching to the single-cup portafilter. The difference was instant - a neat 30-second extraction, a 1:2 ratio, and the taste was spot on.
The two-cup basket still baffles me a bit. I dose it correctly, obviously more coffee than the single, but the results don't taste quite as good. My best guess is that it's simply a milk-to-espresso thing. I'm used to a certain balance, and the two-cup version tips it a bit too far toward the espresso. The bitterness I picked up might not have been over-extraction at all - just a stronger brew ratio than I'm used to drinking.
So, the one-cup double-wall basket with Wogan's pre-ground espresso now gives me a 30-second pull and roughly a 1:2 output, which consistently makes a really satisfying cup.
But the biggest surprise came from Rave's Swiss Water Decaf Blend No. 11. I'd bought the beans before and liked them, but now I've tried the espresso grind, and it might actually be my favourite coffee so far.
Decaf gets a bad reputation, but this one just tastes good. It doesn't have that bland, hollow flavour you sometimes get with caffeine-free blends. The truth is, there aren't many real downsides to decaf. Most modern versions - especially Swiss Water Process - avoid harsh chemicals and keep most of the natural flavour. You just lose the stimulant, and that's about it.
In my case, that's no loss at all. I don't get any sort of caffeine kick anyway. No rush of energy, no sharpened focus - nothing. I could have a coffee right before bed and still sleep like a baby. I don't even get cravings. I used to assume it was because I'd been drinking coffee since I was a kid and maybe just built up a tolerance over time, but that doesn't explain why I don't miss caffeine when I skip it.
And that's really where I've landed with all this. I'm not chasing the perfect shot anymore. I think I'm more chasing the perfect routine - that small, daily process of grinding, tamping, steaming, and sipping. I want to know how to do it "properly," even if I can't actually taste the subtle differences myself. After all, what if a guest came over who did have a more refined taste for coffee? I'd want to make them the best espresso they'd ever had.
The next phase of my coffee adventure is about to begin. I found you can get 58 mm single-wall filter baskets for about a tenner on Amazon, so I've got a two-cup one on the way, which should give me a bit more control and a cleaner, more authentic extraction.
Right now, my setup is the dual-wall one-cup basket with around 18 g in and 36 g out, using the one-cup setting on the Breville. I've also got a set of coffee scales on the way, which should make timing and weighing ratios a bit easier.
I don't want to be weighing every cup - that's just a faff. So once the scales and new filter arrive, I plan to dial things in properly and then reprogram the default volumetric presets on the Breville. If I can fine-tune how much the machine actually pours, I should be able to rely on that setting to brew a consistent cup each morning. I know it won't ever be millilitre-perfect - every puck's slightly different - but I'm happy with "close enough." I don't want to turn my mornings into a chemistry lesson.
The only thing I'm not sure about is whether I'll actually be able to use the two-cup single-wall basket for just one cup. That remains to be seen.
Once the new basket and scales arrive, I'll put them through their paces and report back once I've lived with the setup for a bit. This might not be a pursuit of perfection, but it's definitely a pursuit of better - and I'm already enjoying every step of it.
It all started back in the summer at Orchard Springs campsite, where every morning the owner would make me a latte from his little office cabin. It was a good start to the day, and when I got home, I missed it.
So, on August 16, I bought myself a Breville Barista Mini. Since then, I've been making a coffee every morning without fail. It's not a quick process, but I enjoy it. I've spent the last few months experimenting, or at least thinking about experimenting, but mostly just enjoying the process. The coffee I'm making now is already delicious - far better than any pods or instant I've ever had - though part of me still suspects it could be better.
Before the Breville, I'd had a Nespresso and then a Dolce Gusto. They were fine, but every Nespresso pod tastes the same to me, and with that machine, I had to microwave milk for lattes. Dolce Gusto did the milk for you, but it was powdered and just brewed a tiny serving. I need to use four pods - two coffee, two milk - each time to get a full cup. And that's a lot of plastic waste.
The Barista Mini is my first proper coffee machine - if you can call it proper. My first my Dad and Jean bought me for Christmas in 2000. It was small, similar to the Breville but stripped back - no removable basket, probably some built-in system that tried to do everything automatically. It even had a little steam wand that worked surprisingly well. Carla bought me a hand-powered grinder that same year, and I went out and bought a milk pan so I could heat and froth milk manually. For a 20-year-old, that setup wasn't bad at all. But, like many early hobbies, it faded over time. I went from espresso to instant, then pods, and now - finally - full circle back to espresso again.
So now, coffee has become part of my morning routine. I've been trying to "master" it, though that's a generous term. In truth, I've mostly been reading, watching, and tweaking. I watch a lot of James Hoffmann videos - I sort of think of him as the Tom Scott of coffee - calm, precise, immaculate. I saw his book in John Lewis recently - a deep green hardback with gold detailing - and it looked so beautifully designed that I was tempted to buy it just to sit next to the machine even though I'll never read it. I went with the audiobook instead, which I'll start soon, though I'm not sure how a reference-heavy book will work in audio form. Still, I have a feeling I'll end up buying the print version anyway.
Of course, with a machine like mine you can make any coffee you want, espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, flat white... The list is endless. But I don't really experiment as much as I thought I would, probably because I like a latte, so what's the point? I've had the Breville a few months now, and I've made a coffee every day but haven't once had a proper test session to "dial in" like you see these YouTube coffee experts doing. The problem is I don't drink espresso, I drink latte, so experimenting requires milk, and there's only so much milk I'd want to use and drink in a day. In the morning I make a latte because that's what I want. By the evening, when I'm watching Hoffmann's videos and feel most inspired to try something, I either don't want another cup or don't want to use more milk.
For some coffee is a hobby - I don't think I'd go that far, but it's clearly now an interest of mine. I've watched hours and hours of videos about grinding beans, milk steaming, and extraction ratios. I don't do that for breakfast cereal, which is also part of my morning routine, so clearly something about this has gripped me. Like any interest, I've been sucked in just enough to start collecting the accessories, but I'm also genuinely content with what I've got. I like the idea of improving, but I'm not chasing perfection.
If I'm honest, I can't tell the difference between all the settings, ratios, or blends I've tried. I'm sure I'd notice distinctions if I tasted them side by side. But from day to day, they all taste good. Not samey like pods or flat like instant - just good coffee.
I watch people on YouTube dial in their espresso, tasting shots and talking about chocolate notes, citrus brightness, or hints of hazelnut. I admire the dedication, but that's not me. I don't like neat espresso, so I'm never going to be tasting it in that way. I like lattes - coffee softened with sweet, aerated milk. I use skimmed milk because I don't like the creaminess of full-fat or plant milks. Skimmed is practically water, and that's fine by me.
I suppose I could test blends side by side to find what I really like, but I don't think it matters much. Once you're buying freshly roasted coffee that's ground and shipped within a few days, you're already drinking something excellent. I've been buying from Rave which is only about 40 miles away in Cirencester and Brian Wogan's roasters at the top of the M32 in Bristol. Both grind to order and deliver usually next day. What I like is that, because they're small-scale roasters compared with supermarket brands, their ground coffee hasn't been sitting in warehouses for months, then they're sending it out to stores where is sits on their shelves for weeks or months.
I think I have good coffee, and that's half the battle, really. Because when you think about it, even a random pub with a 19-year-old behind the bar can make a decent latte. They're not coffee obsessives, but they still manage a solid cup - so if I'm doing that, I'm doing alright. Don't get me wrong, I can tell when a coffee's bad, but it's rare. Maybe I just don't have the most sophisticated palate when it comes to coffee, but it does mean I can just enjoy what I make without overthinking it.
Dialling It In (Sort Of)
I picked the Breville Barista Mini because it doesn't have a coffee grinder built in. It seems any machine with a grinder included had at least £200 added to its price tag - and I found I could get a cheaper standalone grinder - plus, the hopper for beans would have made any machine too tall to fit into the area of the kitchen I call "the coffee station."
So when I first got the coffee machine, my brewing process started with whole beans, grinding them fresh each morning using a cheap Amazon blade grinder - it's basically a spinning blade that chops the beans. It seemed to work fine.
From there, I fill the one-cup portafilter basket, tamp it, and lock it in. The Breville has an automatic volumetric cut-off, meaning it stops the flow on its own once it's dispensed a programmed amount. Then I move on to the milk steaming, because I drink lattes. I use skimmed milk, which is practically water, but that's exactly how I like it. I've never liked the creaminess of full-fat or even semi-skimmed milk, and I find plant milks are even worse because they're trying to mimic the creaminess of real milk.
When I first started, I was dosing around 18 g of coffee for a single shot, which turned out to be far too much. The puck was so tightly packed it would stick inside the portafilter every time. So I dropped the dose to 10 - 12 g, which freed it up - but then the puck started coming out soggy. That seems to be how home coffee making works... fix one problem and you create another.
Then there's the ratio. I'd seen in YouTube videos that espresso should roughly follow a 1:2 to 1:2.5 ratio - one part ground coffee in to two parts liquid espresso out. When I tested mine, I discovered that with 10 g of coffee, I was pulling about 38 g of espresso. That's closer to 1:4, meaning my espressos were slightly over-extracted. Brew time also plays a part. The sweet spot is around 30 seconds from turning it on, including the pre-infusion stage. But my shots were running closer to 20 - 25. That suggests the grind is too coarse or the machine's dispensing too much water too fast.
I soon learnt that with a blade grinder, you hit a ceiling pretty quickly. There's no real control over how fine or coarse the grind is - something I later realised is important and the thing you're actually paying for with a good, built-in grinder. A blade grinder can't grind consistently - some bits are powder-fine, others are chunky - and espresso needs a precise, uniform grind to extract properly. It's why every coffee guide repeats the same mantra that the grinder is more important than the machine. They're not wrong. Still, but burr grinders - the type you want - are expensive, and mine was doing "good enough" for now. I doubted I'd even notice the subtle improvement.
So, I'd realised that although I was making a good coffee, the grinder was holding me back. The next obstacle I uncovered was that the Breville comes with double-wall filter baskets. Now this is sort of good and bad. It's designed to compensate for imperfect grinds - so it was to some extent correcting my poor grinds. The second wall creates artificial pressure, forcing the water to push through evenly even when the grind isn't ideal.
However, it also means you can't really tweak and improve if you have this artificial correction layer between the machine and your cup. I started reading that people with the same machine were ditching the double walls in favour of single-wall baskets, saying they gave a more authentic espresso and better crema.
That sent me down another rabbit hole. If the double wall is fixing the flaws in my grind, wouldn't switching to single wall make things worse? Probably, yes - unless I could fix the grind itself. That's when I started wondering about using pre-ground coffee from a proper roaster. Freshly ground beans are ideal in theory, but only if you can grind them properly. A professional grind would at least be consistent, even if it sacrifices a bit of freshness.
I decided not to rush into buying a single-wall basket and instead switched from the one-cup double-wall basket to the two-cup double-wall that came with the Breville. That change seemed to correct the extraction time and ratio, bringing it to roughly 30 seconds and almost exactly 1:2. Before making any more adjustments, I thought it made sense to move from whole beans to pre-ground coffee, changing one variable at a time rather than several at once.
Before I made any more change, I thought it made sense to move from whole bean to pre-ground, changing one variable at a time, rather than multiple things.
Settling Into the Brew
So, that was the plan: stick with the double-wall baskets and switch to ground coffee.
Brian Wogan offer a specific grind for "domestic espresso." I did think about going there to pick it up, since it's so close, but I ended up ordering a 250 g bag online - the postage was cheaper than the petrol and parking I'd have spent driving into the city. I'll probably visit at some point though, just to chat with them in person and grab a coffee, because it looks nice there and it's dog friendly. I also bought some espresso grind from Rave Coffee.
The first shot I pulled with the Wogan espresso blend ran for about 40 seconds, which felt a bit long, and the result was noticeably bitter. I couldn't tell whether that was down to over-extraction or just the roast itself.
I ran another test the next day, this time switching to the single-cup portafilter. The difference was instant - a neat 30-second extraction, a 1:2 ratio, and the taste was spot on.
The two-cup basket still baffles me a bit. I dose it correctly, obviously more coffee than the single, but the results don't taste quite as good. My best guess is that it's simply a milk-to-espresso thing. I'm used to a certain balance, and the two-cup version tips it a bit too far toward the espresso. The bitterness I picked up might not have been over-extraction at all - just a stronger brew ratio than I'm used to drinking.
So, the one-cup double-wall basket with Wogan's pre-ground espresso now gives me a 30-second pull and roughly a 1:2 output, which consistently makes a really satisfying cup.
But the biggest surprise came from Rave's Swiss Water Decaf Blend No. 11. I'd bought the beans before and liked them, but now I've tried the espresso grind, and it might actually be my favourite coffee so far.
Decaf gets a bad reputation, but this one just tastes good. It doesn't have that bland, hollow flavour you sometimes get with caffeine-free blends. The truth is, there aren't many real downsides to decaf. Most modern versions - especially Swiss Water Process - avoid harsh chemicals and keep most of the natural flavour. You just lose the stimulant, and that's about it.
In my case, that's no loss at all. I don't get any sort of caffeine kick anyway. No rush of energy, no sharpened focus - nothing. I could have a coffee right before bed and still sleep like a baby. I don't even get cravings. I used to assume it was because I'd been drinking coffee since I was a kid and maybe just built up a tolerance over time, but that doesn't explain why I don't miss caffeine when I skip it.
And that's really where I've landed with all this. I'm not chasing the perfect shot anymore. I think I'm more chasing the perfect routine - that small, daily process of grinding, tamping, steaming, and sipping. I want to know how to do it "properly," even if I can't actually taste the subtle differences myself. After all, what if a guest came over who did have a more refined taste for coffee? I'd want to make them the best espresso they'd ever had.
What's Next
The next phase of my coffee adventure is about to begin. I found you can get 58 mm single-wall filter baskets for about a tenner on Amazon, so I've got a two-cup one on the way, which should give me a bit more control and a cleaner, more authentic extraction.
Right now, my setup is the dual-wall one-cup basket with around 18 g in and 36 g out, using the one-cup setting on the Breville. I've also got a set of coffee scales on the way, which should make timing and weighing ratios a bit easier.
I don't want to be weighing every cup - that's just a faff. So once the scales and new filter arrive, I plan to dial things in properly and then reprogram the default volumetric presets on the Breville. If I can fine-tune how much the machine actually pours, I should be able to rely on that setting to brew a consistent cup each morning. I know it won't ever be millilitre-perfect - every puck's slightly different - but I'm happy with "close enough." I don't want to turn my mornings into a chemistry lesson.
The only thing I'm not sure about is whether I'll actually be able to use the two-cup single-wall basket for just one cup. That remains to be seen.
Once the new basket and scales arrive, I'll put them through their paces and report back once I've lived with the setup for a bit. This might not be a pursuit of perfection, but it's definitely a pursuit of better - and I'm already enjoying every step of it.