When you have Norm’s Coffee beans, you’re already halfway to an amazing coffee. Thanks to Norm’s efforts, your beans are great quality and roasted to perfection!

So how do you complete your journey to an amazing coffee? Now you have the right beans it’s all about a great coffee extraction and foaming some milk, if that’s what you’re into. Where it can all go wrong is in the extraction, you know, the bit where the coffee comes out? (Norm likes to sound professional by calling it the extraction like his friends at the roastery).

Turns out, you can have the best quality beans, freshly roasted, and still be left with a yucky tasting coffee in the end. Now, 9 times out of 10 this bad coffee experience can be blamed on the way the coffee has been ground or the way it has been placed into the group head basket. If you have an automatic machine you can skip the latter of these two points, as your machine is probably placing your coffee in the basket for you. What you’ll want to work with is the grind size, if possible. By the way if you’re on the hunt for a good home coffee machine, make sure to check for coffee grind adjustment capabilities!

What is grind size, and why is Norm making such a fuss about getting right? When we speak of grind size, we refer to how fine or coarse the coffee is being ground. If we want to grind the coffee into smaller, finer particles we reduce the grind size. Of course, the opposite applies, if we want to make our coffee courser with larger particles, we increase the grind size. When you taste your coffee and it tastes smooth, sweet and delicious, your coffee extraction has gone well, meaning the water flowing through your coffee puck was in contact with the coffee grinds for the correct amount of time, and all the coffee had equal contact with the water. Now remember, some of this coffee flavour greatness will be due to you distributing the coffee grinds evenly in your basket, but we’re going to talk more about that in a sec. 

So, when your coffee isn’t tasting so great, what can you do? First, identify how it’s tasting. Salty and sour? Try reducing the grind size. Coffee tasting bitter and burnt? Try increasing the coffee grind size. When tweaking your grind size, make sure to adjust it in tiny increments. It may take a bit of trial an error, but one of those extractions is going to come out just right and we know you’ll be rewarded for your efforts!

Top tip: Norm always grabs a Sharpie to mark the point on the grind dial where the coffee tasted best. You don’t want some falling coconuts or flying saucer to knock your grinds dial and lose that sweet spot!

In the main, once find the right grind size, it will serve you for a couple of months, however as your machines’ grinder blades wear, it’s definitely worth revisiting your grinder dial to make those hairline adjustments which make all the difference in coffee flavour!

If your coffee machine requires you to place coffee in the basket and tamp down the grinds, then that’s great! This gives you more control over your coffee extraction however, it does leave some room for error. Let’s go over Norm’s perfect coffee distribution advice.

When your machine performs the coffee extraction, it basically pushes water through your coffee grinds, usually at a pressure reading of nine bar. Norm looked it up, and nine bars is a fair bit of pressure! Under this amount of pressure, the water wants to take the easiest route through the group hand and out into your coffee cup. If your coffee is evenly distributed, and there are no holes or pits where the water can channel through, your water will flow evenly through all your coffee grind resulting in fantastic coffee flavour.

To make sure this happens, ensure that you carefully place the coffee grind into your basket. Ideally you should weigh out your coffee grinds according to your coffee basket size. (Norm has found to most common basket size to be 58mm in diameter for 22 grams of coffee). Holding the group head handle in one hand use the palm of your other hand to tap the sides of the group head from all angles. Norm makes sure he taps from underneath as this helps the coffee sit down into the basket nicely. Once the coffee grounds are sitting evenly across the group head basket use your index finger to smooth away any bumps or excess coffee by sliding it carefully across the rim of the coffee basket. Immediately take your tamper, squeezing the bottom of the handle with your thumb and index finger, with both fingertips pressing down on the top of the circular base, press the tamper directly down into the basket, applying about 15kgs of pressure. This should leave a lovely flat coffee puck ready to be placed into the machine.

Take a moment to inspect the coffee and make sure you haven’t applied too much pressure on one side, making the tamp uneven. Give yourself a couple of goes to get this right, Norm sure had some curly looking attempts!

It’s important to understand where things can go wrong and where you can improve your technique, in order to enjoy great coffee at home. Think of coffee extraction as a science, once you nail the process, you can rely on a beautiful beverage anytime. Of course, if you’re a lover of milky coffees then it’s not over for you just yet! Read on to learn Norm’s top tips on texturing milk into silk!