Making a perfect shot of espresso is a delightful blend of precision and artistry. Follow these step-by-step instructions to master the art of crafting a flawless espresso.

Ingredients and Equipment:

• Freshly roasted coffee beans
• Burr grinder
• Espresso machine
• Scale
• Tamper
• Filter basket
• Clean, filtered water

Steps:

1. Choose High-Quality Coffee Beans:

The perfect espresso start with coffee beans. You can create a good espresso with a medium machine but you cannot without specialty coffee beans.
Discover the perfect coffee for you by talking with a professional to guide you to chocolate flavor, floral flavor… depend on your taste.
The coffee beans need to be freshly roasted. Coffee beans oxidize over time. Try to put them in pressurized canister and not in direct light. If you don’t know if the coffee beans are still in good condition, after your extraction there should be a layer of crema.
If you wonder if your coffee beans are still great or expired, notice that there should be a thick layer of golden-brown-ish crema.
If that is not the case, it probably means that your coffee beans are not at their best stage anymore. But no worries, your coffee is still drinkable. Although you’d rather always try to finish a coffee beans pack in the two weeks following its roasting date.

2. Choose great water:

Try to use none calcareous water for the health of your machine and your taste. Also try to favor a poorly mineralized water. It affect the coffee, more precisely the acidity and a bitter aftertaste.

3. Measure the Coffee:

The measurement of your beans for a shot is really important.
One gram less or more can slightly change the taste. Use a precise scale to help you. On average, 18 grams is a good shot. You can go lower, you can go higher also but you need to keep in mind that we need to extract accordingly with how much grams of beans you grinded.
This is a standard, but pouring a shot of espresso is like science, it's a lot of tests, fails and messes, but you have to get through these in order to create your own recipe and enjoy your coffees.

3. Grind the Coffee:

Grinding coffee is one of the most important step of making the perfect shot. Indeed you need to dial in the right coffee grind size so that your shot doesn't pull out too fast, but not too slow either.
For this part you need to get through a lot of testing with your own coffee brewer, but always try to talk with the people you bought the coffee from, they can help you.
Grind your coffee right before pulling your shot; ground coffee oxidizes faster.

4. Preheat the Espresso Machine:

Preheat your coffee machine have two benefits. The first one is to eject water stuck in the pipes, the second one is to heat those pipes to keep them at the good temperature. The standard water temperature is around 93ºC - 199ºF.

5. Prepare the portafilter:

For a good shot, some conditions have to be reunited before you tamp the coffee. The first one is if you have some coffee blocks, you need to breaks them to only have fine grind. For that to be done, you can use a WDT tool. From the simplest one to the most technical one, you can definitely get one adapted to your budget.
And the second step is to distribute this fine grind evenly. Indeed, if you tamp your coffee and there is more ground on one side, the water will flow where it's easier to, which can lead to an uneven extraction.
The distribution of your coffee must be evenly everywhere. A coffee distributor tool will definitely do the job.

6. Tamp the coffee:

Tamping a coffee is a precise muscular movement. As much as the coffee grind size is the most important variable in pouring a shot, the force you put in your tamping is complementary to it. If you want to get away with this variable, there is now some tampers have a spring to always tamp at the same pressure. Just like the coffee ground, tamping too much will make your extraction too slow, and not tamping enough will allow the water to get through the ground too fast, leading a under-extracted espresso.
Yet it’s more complicated to tamp too much to not tamp enough. The good tamp looks like putting a 10-13kg / 15-30lbs pressure.
Also, it is very important in this part to stay horizontal in your tamping, as said before, the water will always flow where it's easier to; tilted tamping will lead to an uneven extraction. Be careful of this one. Keep hold of the portafilter horizontally and tamp as the same. You can use your finger to guide you and see if you are feeling the same pressure on all your fingers. I would still advise investing in a spring tamper.
Now that your coffee looks greatly flat and evenly horizontal, you can insert your portafilter securely in your machine.

8. Start the Extraction:

The extraction is like a recipe, if you had 18g of coffee beans in first, the most used recipe is 40 grams of coffee in your cup, for an extraction between 25 and 30 seconds.
The time should start when the first drop of coffee touch the cup. That is why having a precise scale will help you. If the coffee is going too fast, it most probably means your ground is too coarse, and on the opposite, if it is too slow then the ground is too fine. Back to step 3!
The tamping could also be the reason but it's most unlikely. Focus on finding the correct grind size for your coffee.

9. Observe the Crema:

Observe your espresso, if there is no crema, it can be two things, the oxidation or the grind.
It’s often sign of a good extraction. Keep in mind that special espresso do not deliver much or not crema. It not always true. The crema need to be thick and consistent and have golden-brown color.
If the crema is pale, the coffee is a bit old or the coffee is not really a coffee that deliver crema.

10. Adjust as Needed:

Taste it. What do you think. There is a thing you need to know.
If you want a coffee who leaves more on the bitter, grind a bit more the coffee fore the coffee extract in 35sec.
If contrary you want it a bit more acidic, try to grind just a bit more fine to bo in 20sec but “the Golden Shot” is about 25-30sec of extraction, for 40g in the cup, and 18g of coffee beans.
It should be rich, powerful, full-bodied and have a balanced flavor profile.

11. Clean the Equipment:

The cleaning must be taken seriously.
For you, your experience and for your equipment. To not get dirty, clean your portafilter, filter with water and if you have a machine with backflush option, do it daily.
If you haven’t try to replace the water with vinegar and run the machine few times.

That’s it. You hold all the card to make the perfect shot of espresso. It’s a repetitive process and the result of your own experience.