SPROMETHEUS!!!! You changed my coffee life with this video!!! I have a rocket Giotto rotary pump… for years I’ve been using it 9 bars. And I truly thought my espressos were awesome!!! Now let me tell you after watching this video I have it a shot, and lowered my pump to 7 bars added filter paper and and over my puck…. And let me tell you! The difference in flavor in espresso is heaven and earth…. I am blown away!!! I never had such a good shot in my life!! It’s like I added some sugar to my shot (in a good way..;) and the complexity of the flavors is huge!!! Thank you so so so soooooo much!!! ❤

Big take away for me is that the 9 bar shot still had decent complexity and cup quality while having the most body. This is why it is always the standard for shops due to all the milk drinks they are churning out at 12 to 16 oz. For a specialty shop not exceeding a 10.5 oz beverage 7 bars might be worth trying out.

I love it when I open up KZfaq to research a specific topic, and you’ve literally just made a video answering all of my questions. Spro Sage strikes again!! 🎉

Great timing! I have been thinking of trying pulling shots with 6 bars on my profitec 600 but I’m waiting on my flow control device to arrive. Thanks for the video man

Absolutely love this vid Spro, I love your honesty and humility to say you’re not a PHD in this, but yet you’re willing to go through rigorous testing to share your results and encourage us to do the same!! I’ve never wanted to mess with pressures more, and I just dimmer modded my little Bambino! Thanks brother, love your honest content and for who you are.

Great tests! I recently got rid of my espresso setups and have been focusing on and making videos utilizing filter brews only, however when I still had my Flair 58 i always preferred shots in the 6-8 range.

This is the single best and most helpful espresso video I have ever watched. Been pulling 6 to 7 bar shots on my Flair 58 for the past week, and they are golden. The espresso almost comes out in globs. The body is so rich and creamy. Literally been fighting nine bars for the last year and a half.

Happy to see a Bianca on the channel. A barista at the roaster I have been going to for about 7-8 years now has always sworn by 6 bar shots, whether on the Slayer or LM machines.I might try setting my pump lower with SO Ethiopian I have right now and see what that does to the taste and shot quality.

That was super interesting and turned out to be a game changer for me. For some time now I have preferred the sweeter taste of my Picopresso to my ECM Synchronika. Brew pressure was running 9.8 bar and after a quick youtube video on how to adjust (shout out to WLL), I brought it down in stages. Around 7bar gave me the sweet balanced taste that I really like and the best shots I have had from this machine.

Relative newbie to home barista’ing. Have a GCP Pro/2019 Classic with SoC dimmer/9 bar/PID/gauge. Preference is long black/Americano. Was recently brewing using the bloom plus 6.5bar profile. Getting amazing tasting coffee. Tried a straight shot at 7 bar. Wow. Complex yet distinct notes. Even on older beans. Really enjoying these videos especially since I have a machine that opens up a whole new world of coffee experimentation.

On the lower pressure needing a finer grind thing.. this is also a good way to save a shot if you’ve gone too fine on the grind. I’m talking an everyday morning shot where you just want a flat white and not concerned about optimal quality. Pulling back the pressure if you’ve noticed it’s choking will allow more flow and less extraction. It’s the difference between a drinkable coffee and a shot you have to make again. For example, I might see nothing is accumulating at the bottom of the basket during a 1bar pre infusion. I’ll push it up to 1.5bar for the pre infusion to try to wet everything, then rise to 6-7 bar to get some body out of it, but pull back to maybe 3 to 4bar or until I have a half decent flow rate. Higher pressures will push the coffee into itself and make it harder for water to get through.

Love single variable tests, thanks! Great video

I've only been making home espresso since Christmas time, but I have found that I liked to keep the gauge on my flair around 6-7 bars. That just seems to be where the fruitiness of my favorite coffees pop.

I do a 10 sec pre infusion on 3 bar, ramp up slowly to 9 bar then drop to 6 bar to end the shot. Works amazing for me! Great shots! (The shot is within the 28-32 second range.)

Thank you so much for this instructive video. For myself, I extract shots at 6,5 bars with long pre-brew, 2g in the cup which is over 20sec, then move to full flow for the rest of the shot. I do not recall where I took the idée to reduce pressure, but possibly it was on your channel. 😊

I have La Pavoni from the 90' and I have a problem with my espressos being too harsh and acidic. So something clicked in my head when you described the low pressure espressos. I was quite sure I'm putting enough pressure, but it's really hard to know. I'll try to play with it, but La Pavoni is such a tricky machine for consistency, from temperature, to pressure and speed. Thank you for making this video 🙏

I appreciate the straight-forward design and execution of this test. And results are highly informative. ❤

Each video is inspiring. Thanks :)

Really love the explanation at the end…it finally makes sense why the deceptively simple picopresso makes such bizarrely sweet shots. Definitely something to play with on lever machines.

THANK YOU !!! Just tried 3 pressures on my Izzo Alex Duetto IV and WOWZA...on 3rd try I got THE ONE. Such phenomenal balance with touch of sweetness. I'm so happy right now! The machine came around 8.6 bar and I turned up to 9 bar. After your video I tried 7 bar, 7.8 bar, and landed at 8.1 bar. I make frothed milk drinks with 2:1 ratio between bean weight and shot weight. I almost always use a medium roast. My grinder is DF64 Gen2 with SSP Cast Lab Sweet burrs. I so appreciate this video for encouraging me to experiment. Better espresso than I even imagined possible. I thought I was there (already) when I upgraded from Breville to this semi-commercial machine! Trust me, that was a huge jump. But I've made another giant leap in taste today! Yay 🎉

Great video man! Time to do some more experimenting!

Like your experiments, conclusions, open questions, guesses. Add to the complexity different roast degrees. Would be great to explore the respective taste profiles and compare different roast degrees with same bar levels with each other.

My machine was malfunctioning, avg pressure 3 to 4. I felt the shots were flat and bitter. Back to 9 bar: flavor and complexity returned! I will play with it. But high pressures are why I have the machine! Years of low cost “espresso” machines gave me a lifetime of flat coffee, thank you very much!

Great video, thanks!

After 17 years on my second machine, a Bezzera without pressure gauge, I am "learning" my new shiny dual boiler. In other channels, I only ever heard that raising the pressure will only get you so far - only hinting in the other direction. This video gave me confidence to check out below 8 bar.

Having seen your video, I tested the 7 bar shot on my Bianca today, and really liked the results. Similar body compared to the 9 bar shots I usually do but much more interesting and pleasant flavor-wise. Will definitely pursue this path (and adjust the rotary pump pressure accordingly). Thank you!

I was forced into this experiment when my last espresso machine got a fault. Not sure if it was the OPV opening too soon of my pump was failing, but either way it was making shots at low pressures... and they still tasted pretty good :)

Ok. I finally got Standart Mag. I couldn’t resist any longer. Merry Christmas to me.

I wonder how much of a difference the beans and roast profile makes. We are used to adjusting temperature, grind and dose to get the best out of a bag but perhaps machine should be allowing us to change pressure too and I don't mean flow control. I think it's important to distinguish here that this is "peak pressure" and not how pressure is profiled during the shot. Great video, been nagging you in the comments to reveal why you'd had the LMLM at 6 bar and if you'd done the same with the new LM. Now I see you were keeping it for a video! :)

As someone who's just learning espresso, this was huge for me. I have a flair 58 and a niche and have been struggling. Getting the 9 bars is unrealistic for me to maintain, so I've been hovering at 5 to 6 bars teetering more towards 5 getting perfect brew time and minimal channels, but the taste has been a bit harsh. I've been having to grind extremely fine to get there as well. I'm going to revisit my prep and attempt a 7-bar shot and I'm excited about the results!

My ECM Classika PID won't go lower than 8 bar (I think). I run it at 8 but stock setting is 9. I turned it down only to reduce channeling and it worked. The stock basket is better for channeling than a VST 18g ridgeless, I think due to it tapering down to a smaller pin hole area. I highly recommend the stock ECM baskets to anyone struggling with channeling. It's yet another variable! I think that's why we love the espresso game, there's so much to play around with! It's like a metaphor for life, some days you get a poor shot, some days it's perfect, you fiddle about, pay more attention, work harder at it, and you get better shots more often! ✌️

Extremely interesting video! Would be interesting to explore past 9 bar. Appreciate the good work

The way that I have been enjoying my morning espresso is by pressureprofiling. 20s blooming, followed by 10s pre-infusion at 2bars, followed by a 30s shot that starts at 8b and tampers down slowly to 3 bars after a bit. The higher pressure at the beginning make the fines agitate a bit more and increase the resistence, that then reduces as the extraction increases. The flow should start low, peak at 5b and reduce again substantially. Overall this is what matches the most into what I enjoy in my coffee: higher extraction, lower acidity, medium sweetness and lower bitterness.

Question: is calibrating to a specific set of parameters (including ratios and pull times) the best way to go in this sort of subjective comparative test? I do get the appeal, but wouldn't it be better to just dial in each pressure by taste to its fullest and then highlight what can/cannot be achieved? Like "at 9 bar I couldn't ever make it clear. At 3 bar I couldn't ever make it sweet" (or whatever). Maybe 9 bar goes better in a 1:2 ratio while 3 bar lends itself better to 1:3 on a longer pull (again, or whatever). Making it too homogeneous can by design favor some type of shots and/or some target pressure, no?

At home, I run 7bars and I feel like it brings out a lot of complexity and it's very clean. I thought I was alone in this feeling. Interesting to see the same results from others.

I've been holding off for several years on following through with drilling a hole in the side of my Izzo Alex Duetto III case because the pressure control adjustment is underneath the cover in the back side (resolve in the Duetto IV with a predrilled hole). I think this and several other videos lately around adjusting bar pressure is pushing me over the edge though. Experimentation will prevail!

I swear I watched a video by you that swore that 9 bar was the sweet spot. As someone who has been doing this at home for a long time, but never feeling I’m where I could be, I really take the videos of people I think know what they are doing to heart. I guess I need to adjust *again*, now to 7 bar & see what the hype might be about.

My Lelit Mara X by default generates 10 bars -- not one of the levels you test. I suspect there is a way of changing that if I thought that pressure was a variable that could be independently extracted from all the others. It's -- to use an old fashioned and slightly de-contextualized word -- a gestalt. If the beans in any particular dose were always the same as the last or the next, I'd say, yes, there is a "correct" way of pulling a shot. But as it is, I'm inclined to just surrender to the joy and surprise of what results on any given day, at any given time from my more or less consistent method. Ten bars and declining over the 30 seconds of pull. Your work is thought provoking and I'm grateful for it. Thanks!

You've convinced me that in order to get the best out of any particular coffee beans, it's good to be able to control the pressure. In each particular case, 9 bar might not be ideal. I recently had a frustrating experience (I use a recent rancilio) with coffee that channeled heavily no matter how I ground it or how many grams I put in the portafilter. I wish I could have tried fewer bars! -toby

I may be a bit late to this rodeo, but I lowered the pressure on my Lelit Bianca to 6 bar and... I like it. I didn't read up much on it before, so I was shocked when my espresso was tasting really good at 50-60 seconds, but it seems that's how it's supposed to be. I am also grinding finer and getting less channeling. The shots I've been getting are incredibly slow, but very beautiful (visually). Another thing I noticed is the shots are less harsh on my Niche Zero. In a month I will be receiving my Lagom P64 so I will keep experimenting.

Thank you for this great video! Very interesting... I have a ECM casa V so it is really easy to adjust pressure. With most vibration pumps it's however quite difficult to find out exactly what the brew pressure is without having a Scace machine. Having a brew pressure gauge like you have on your Bianca makes it much clearer. I was experimenting a bit back and forth and landed on the traditional 9 bars as I come from southwest Europe and now living in Germany I need some of the nostalgia of the strong, dark chocolate and sometimes not particularly complex flavors of my coffee roots.

Early impression on the df83? Looks really intriguing and Alternative Brewing had some interesting blind taste results

I do like the 2bar preinfusion, 8bar to 6bar declining pressure shots that I do on my robot. I feel like this gives me really good shots each time. And then a straight 6 bar for turbo shots.

"Sink shot" - love it ! (as a descriptor, not as a drink)

Inspirational yes. Informative maybe. Suggestions include multiple shots at each pressure and blind tasting.

It would be great to know your thoughts on the DF83. I hope you make a video about it! Greetings from Chile

great thumbnails on your channel btw ... nice.

Great video! May I assume in your test with the Bianca V3, the flow paddle is all the way to the right?

I've got my Gaggia OPV set to 6.5 bars, was thinking about setting it even lower (Shades sends another spring at 5 bars) kinda glad you did the work for me analyzing this Real-Spro, cheers! 😆

A quick play at 7.5 bar baseline (the OPV on my ECM Classika doesn't go any lower) and it is immediately obvious, sweeter and more complex. Maybe slightly less body than 9 bar but not really easy to pick out. Definitely a better shot. I have flow control and pull "raining blood" shots (yes I did steal this from your Slayer shot vid, which no one in the comments seemed to pick up).

I think it depends on the grinder and the profile of coffee particle sizes it creates. If you want to take this a step further you would try different grinds for every pressure. If anyone thinks espresso is easy... think not.

Since getting my flair 58, I have found myself liking the 3 bar pre-infusion and ramp up to 6 bar shots. Seems to provide the ideal balance of sweetness and acidity for me. The 9 bar shots that I have pulled on the flair have been too acidic for me.

This is very informative. Have you experimented with 6 bars of pressure pulling ristretto? I have an odd way to enjoy my coffee. I use 20 grams of coffee grinds at 9 bars in order to extract 45 grams in about 27 seconds. However, I hold a warm teaspoon under the basket in order to catch the first 5 ml of coffee, which is very viscuous oily liquid, that to me is coffee nirvana. I call it a very short ristretto. I use the rest of the pull for cappuccino, which is forgiving. I am curious how pressure affects viscosity, and whether you have an opinion on it.

I think the flow-rate (i.e. shot time to get 36g) could be the missing link here. I consistently brew at 6--7bar and have noticed that flow rate can change the flavor quite a bit. Of course, it's very difficult to hold all other variables constant, but I think it would be an interesting follow-up.

(Apologies, wall of text) So. I think you're missing something in here and that's that pressure doesn't look like a flat line, but rather a curve. You have to ramp into your pressure and as the puck degrades you fall out of that pressure. The Decent does the best at displaying it, but it happens on all machines, even machines with static pre-set pressure. What you're kind of isolating with the Bianca is what the bulk of the time of extraction pressure is at prior to puck degradation. What is really hard to measure on something that's not a Decent (again this isn't a quality thing it's just a display and tracking thing) is the time duration of each segment of the curve. That time really, really matters in my experience, especially with what you do with a preinfusion. On more modern style light roasted coffees i tend to do what some might call obscenely long preinfusions (often 10-14 seconds) followed by a ramp into 6-7 bar for the shot, leading to a very long extraction time, but resulting in a lot of complexity in the cup. I love that we can now play with these variables and repeat them, though we could always do this on lever machines in the past.

I would have liked to see 10, 12 and 14 bars as well given that most Breville's are using max pressures of 14 bars out of the box at times depending on how the OPV is set at the factory. This would shed light on the necessity of lower pressures closet to 9. Great video though!

Hi. I love the video. When creating your recipe for each bar of pressure. Are you keeping the time variable the same and just changing your grind setting as you adjust at each different bar of pressure? Or does time change during the extraction of each bar adjustment?? Flow/pressure profiling confuses me from the “standard” suggested roaster recipe recommendation. Thanks!

La Pavoni lever here. I've been doing 6 bars for years. Actually, my La Pavoni has a hard time rising to 8 or above, even 7 is hard. So I developed a protocole (weight and grind) that works well at 6 bars, and I am extremely happy with the results. Semi dark roast, Tanzania Peaberry.

I lust over these nice espresso machines

One of the things I am going to try with my new Sanremo YOU. Very interesting empiric research.

Great video! Personally, I've always thought 9 bar was a value designed to cover for deficiencies in equipment and technique. Bad basket, poor grind consistency, clumpy grounds... just tamp hard and extract high. It wasn't until I got a spirit basket, WDT device and tamp pressure mat that I realized - ya, no. I'm at 6.5 bar with no preinfusion in the spirit and getting the best results ever.

If 6 bars allows you to grind finer, will adding filter paper at the bottom of basket allows you to grind even finer and get a higher extraction?

Espresso ist so interesting and cool. We are currently in an age where technological advancement allows us to challenge the traditional methods that have been preached for years and we have learned about for years. I am so looking forward to seeing what the "new normal" will be in the future !! Thanks Sprometheus for this exciting video !

Ive been doing 6bar shots for a while. Well. 2bar preinfusion then slowly ramp up to 6bar. It eliminates harshness and increases clarity. It makes it more enjoyable and easier to taste the flavor notes. Some single origin, high altitude light roasts are undrinkable with a 9bar profile. At least to me. I prefer it for light roasts. They turned out very sweet and mellow. But 9bar is much better for milk drink or medium to dark roasts where body is really important.

Thanks!

lovely marax in white back there!

I'm curious, how much did you have to adjust the grind setting between the different pressure settings? I know you said the lower settings required finer grinds but I'd like the numbers for comparative purposes.

Thanks! Genius idea! The 7 bar shot taste a lot better than the 9 bar shot. I have two questions: how many bars is the difference between the pressure indicated on the standard pump pressure gauge and the pressure in the brew group? My second question is: is the rotary pump actually better than the vibration pump when it comes to the final result (especially the taste)? I have a EMC Classika PID. And it has a vibration pump. I hope it is good enough for quality espresso.

Decent……….quickly found the lower pressure pre infusions worked for myself and wife and follow lever principles if we go analogue at some juncture

I have been also reading a lot about this lately, from what i have researched it is also important to reduce the brew temperature as the extraction time will go longer with the finer grind idea. Did you experiment with longer than 25s extraction time?

based on not knowing the grind size or lighter or darker roasts ..9 is the magic number..i can't yet check properly ...i will be able to soon ..big love and thank you.

Would love to see you try these experiments on a Decent. For example- lower pressure/higher volume shots.

At what setting did you have the paddle for the 6 bar. If 9 bars is all the way open. I have the exact same Maschine so would be super helpful. 🙏

Thank you my friend.

Brew pressures 🤩 Lessssssssppprrrroooooooo 🙌🏻

Very interering test. I reduced the pressure down to 7 bar (I usually used 9.5 bar). Taste is much more smooth. Regarding to the test procedure, may I ask if you only adjust the pressure while keep other figure (grind setting, temperature..etc) the same? Thanks.

Did I miss something? Is there no pre infusion in this test?

I have an older gaggia where the OPV can be adjusted with an allen wrench... have it at about 8 bar, gonna have to try these lower pressures

I just bought a flair and had a lot of trouble balancing brew time with 9 bars of pressure. For some reason I assumed there was no choice but to go 9 bars. Armed with this video though, I've discovered 6 bars seems to be the sweet spot for the medium roast I'm dialing in right now!

Currently running a gaggia with 9 bar spring and now this is making me tempted to switch to the 6.5 bar spring. Just worried about effecting the steam since I usually make cortados.

I have noticed on my bianca v1 when setting the pump pressure whit closed paddle, the pressure increase 1 bar higher when the paddle is open. Same thing when pulling a shot: at first the pump is on 9 bar, but after the pressure in the grouphead has reach his maximum the pressure of the pump goes on 10 bar. In the 6 bar area when pulling a turbo shot it increase only 0.5 bar. Do you know why? And which pressure is the relevant one for the shot? First or second?

What temp did you brew at. In one shot I saw 203 on the display, but wasn't sure if that was just a b-roll shot you had. Thanks.

Surely the variation could well be due to your grind adjustments as much as the pressure. So the reason you had a dip and a return to flavour between pressure tests is more down to grind adjustments not being as effective.

I use the Profitec go and it was set to 10 bars stock. My shots tend to run a bit punchy and pungent. What is the likely pressure at the group head? I adjusted it to 9 bars and will try that out tomorrow and go from there.

I would like to know how you work with less pressure grinding finer, since the pressure of the coffee maker is automatic depending on the thickness of the ground coffee. Thinner, more pressing generates more pressure, thicker generates less pressure.

ok so bottom line is espresso extracted from low pressure like 3 or 4 bars is safe to drink?

Great, now Im going to crack open the synchronika, fix that buzzing and start adjusting pressure. Also Dark Horse is great stuff! even a bag of nearly stale Colombian was great.

Would this translate to vibration pump machines as well?

Will try 7 bars now!

When I got my Bianca a year ago everything I saw showed to set the pump pressure to 10-bars, and then use the flow paddle to adjust from there. In this vid I was surprised that your high/starting point was setting the pump to 9-bars.

With Pre-infuse? Ramp down ? thx

Why do not use the gs3 to this?

how do you change to pressure on a LaSpariale mini

What about higher pressures than 9 bars, is it out of the equation? I ask this because my gaggia classic pro i believe has more than 9 bars pressure.

Did you see much variation in what happened at the group pressure gauge on the Bianca while adjusting the pump pressure?

So what you're saying is I might be able to get my Mr. Coffee espresso machine to produce decent espresso?

all of these though you ramp up to a constant pressure? isn't one of the main uses of flow control to feather off the pressure towards the end of the shot for a more even extraction?

worth mentioning is to change the bar isnt he changing grind size?? and therefore different coffee surface areas and shot time for each?? I would imagine those two virtually the sole reason for the different taste of each cup.

What happens if you pull shots at 10 bars of pressure?

Yeah if your just ramping up no or minimal PI then lower pressure 6-7bar is the sweetspot for straight espresso, but put fully saturation PI into the mix and that typically improves the 8-9bar noticeable, so when I run 9bar I always do fully saturation PI or I stop it at max. 7 bar pressure.