u/atulyab93

Before I begin, I acknowledge that there is some reluctance to buy and use Starbucks beans for making an espresso or latte. But please hear me out. I recently purchased a Breville Barista Touch to stop spending upwards of $35 every month at Starbucks.

But when it comes to making espresso, I’m a compete novice. Since I usually drink a latte at Starbucks, I purchased the Starbucks Blonde Espresso beans. Here are my settings:

Grind size - 14
Grind time - 16s
Brew time - 28s

My input before and after grind is about 18g of coffee, and I get about 46g of espresso. My question is the following:

I use a Mattow tamper and each time I tamp a little harder or reduce the grind size to 10 (or less) while keeping the brewing time constant, my espresso yield is very low. Like 7 or 8g. I wasted almost half of packet of the coffee beans experimenting with grind sizes or tamping. Even a little extra tamping is drastically lowering the espresso yield. Does tamping have such a big impact on brew quantity?

Any ideas on how to pull a nice shot while using the Blonde espresso?

Hi Everyone!
I recently got the AMEX platinum card with 100K bonus points contingent on spending 12K in 6 months. I plan on clawing back the annual fee by using the Resy, Streaming , and the Hotel Credit. Unfortunately, I may not be able to use the airport lounges and other travel perks since I don’t travel that often. Having said that, what are some best practices or purchases to get the maximum out of the Platinum card?

Anyone notice the price increase of plain black coffee by 30cents? Where I live, the price of a short back coffee (blonde, medium or dark) was $2.55 before tax. Now it’s $2.85. Are we going to blame this on war too?