In this video, I want to talk about 5 innovations that we've developed at Decent Espresso
that make for better-tasting espresso - possibly better than you've ever tasted before.
So, the first and the most significant one is based on how we actually decide on the temperature of the water in making espresso.
So, before Decent Espresso's approach, everyone focused on what was called the "boiler temperature",
which is the water temperature coming out of the boiler, going in here into your coffee grinds.
At the same time, everyone in the professional industry knew that the portafilter,
which is a big hunk of metal, often not that warm,
and the grounds, which are usually room temperature,
cool the water really significantly.
So if you, for example, wanted to make your espresso at a 92°C infusion temperature,
you put water in that is 92°C, you're actually probably around 87/88°C for the first 5 or 10 seconds,
because the grinds are cooling the water that goes in.
Then, the water temperature will climb, and the end of your infusion will be close to the set temperature.
At Decent Espresso, we've not used a boiler. Instead, what we've done is a water mixing technology,
where we mix water that's slightly too hot with room-temperature water, dynamically in a mixing chamber back here,
so that we can immediately and very precisely set the water temperature that's going into the coffee grinds.
So there's two modes on the espresso machine here: one is our traditional mode - works like a boiler -
the other is to use the temperature probe that is directly above the coffee grinds
and tell the espresso machine that this is the brew temperature you're looking for.
The espresso machine will automatically use what's called "temperature profiling", which is to say it varies the temperature of the water,
in order to get that infusion temperature as close as possible to your goal, as quickly as possible.
Now that's the kind of thing you get in a pour-over: we have a ton of water and not too much coffee beans,
it all - it's infused at the same temperature. But in espresso, that's not the case.
So what we're trying to do is use this insight that has come from the world of pour-over coffee and use it here.
And it finally gives a good reason for temperature profiling. which a few high-end machines have had,
but people haven't been able to figure out what we're gonna do with it.
Well, the reason is it was just too complicated to do something if you had to program it all.
So we came up with the idea of the infusion temperature being the goal
and that the espresso machine varied the water temperature for you to get there.
The second big innovation that will lead to better-tasting espresso is the automatic end-of-pre-infusion detection.
Now, that's a mouthful. But let me break it down for you.
Pre-infusion is when water goes in slowly into your coffee grinds at the beginning of the shot in order to saturate the puck and make it swell and even out.
Now, the reason you want pre-infusion is if, "blam", you hit the puck with 9 bars of pressure,
it's very likely that some water is gonna go squirting through some other parts
because you're gonna create what's called "channels",
and it's really hard to make a totally even coffee grind bed that's dry, that can resist 9 bars of pressure evenly.
So, pre-infusion is a technique that a number of professional espresso machines use
to prepare the bed and then gently rise the pressure, which compresses it, so that then you get even extraction.
So where's our innovation?
Our innovation is "how do you know how much water?", and "how do you know how long?"
With other espresso machines, you have to just guess.
First of all, you my not even have access to change the rate of water flow during pre-infusion.
And then, secondly, you have to look and see if you get a drop of espresso coming out in order to know when the pre-infusion is done,
or if it's time if you don't have that control, and you just do, say, 40s of water, 5s of pause, I hope that's right.
With the Decent Espresso Machine, we have a very sensitive pressure sensor in here.
And what we do is flow water in at the flow rate that you want and then, when the water resistance increases just slightly,
we know that the puck is now fully saturated, and we can ramp the pressure up and start the shot.
Now, we give you a lot of control over that;
you can decide on the DE1+ if you want a certain amount of water pressure change to be what clinches it,
or an increase in pressure, or volume of water, or the old-fashioned time,
and on the DE1, we just do it for you with the settings that we think work best.
But that automatic pre-infusion feature is available on both, the DE1 and the DE1+, because it just makes better coffee.
Finally, a number of people wanted what's called a "pressure profiling machine".
That's the ability to change the pressure over the course of a shot.
Older machines can't do that. There's some more expensive, professional machines now that can make it.
But to my knowledge, there's no home machine that can do pressure profiling, and, frankly, not that many commercial ones either.
Furthermore, it's actually quite hard to do, to set your pressure profile perfectly.
That's why a number of professional machines will put a paddle here. And they'll let you, in real-time, change the pressure.
The reason you wanna do that is as the coffee puck erodes - and it loses about 20% of its mass during the shot -
the water speeds up. And as the water speeds up, it doesn't spend enough time on the coffee grinds, and it tastes less good.
So, a professional barista will let a shot run for maybe 10s and then slowly decline the pressure
so that the water flow stays constant.
We've got something called "flow priority mode" in our DE1+, which just does that for you.
So you can tell the DE1+: "I want pre-infusion until the puck is wet, I want this shot to be at 9 bar,
and then just take care of the pressure, keep the water flowing at 1ml/s, until I've got 34ml of coffee, then stop.
That will make much more consistent coffee in any setting: at home or in a commercial setting.
So you need less skill to make really top espresso.
I just covered three innovations from Decent Espresso that we think will make the best espresso that you've ever tasted.
Now on top of that, we've got two other innovations that go into making the drink - not really related to espresso, but I think important none the less.
So the first - maybe not that exciting - but if you drink Americanos,
it's never been possible to actually get the water going into your espresso to be the right temperature or volume.
So if you've put all this work into making just the perfect espresso shot,
and then you put hot water and it's boiling, you scald it, you make the flavor terrible.
Or you put water in and it's not hot enough. Well, now you've got a cold coffee
or you go to the microwave and warm it up, which ruins the flavor.
So - you can probably not see it here, but right behind the group head is a little spout,
and if I hit "hot water" here and start, you will see that water comes out from there into your cup.
Now, what's happening is it's perfecting the temperature,
and as soon as it finishes perfecting it, the water is gonna come out.
And here we go with the water coming out.
Now, we put it there so that it literally just fills the cup that you just made espresso in.
You can set the water volume and the exact temperature that you want,
so, precisely the dilution and the temperature of the Americano - that has never been possible before.
So, finally, I wanna talk about steam.
Because one of the things about home machines especially is that the steam power is not all that great.
And you end up steaming for a long time and putting a lot of water in your milk.
And so, your drink tastes kind of watery.
What we've done here is doing steam in a brand new way.
Now, to my knowledge, there's only one professional company that is making an espresso machine that does steam this way.
And they talk about it as a really major feature.
For us, it's just another part of the Decent Espresso Machine.
What we're doing is we're heating up our steam heater here to 170°C.
Now, a normal professional machine would go to 128°C - that would be the maximum that you can do.
And we're often putting out 3 bars of pressure coming out the steam wand.
So what we're doing is extremely high-temperature, energetic steam. And what that lets us do is use half the water
to reach the same temperature than if you had a professional machine.
So, all in all, if you spend 30-40s steaming your milk, you'll find that you actually put half as much water in.
Now, you actually know how much water you put in. Because when you go here and do "steam",
it actually tells you the flow rate of the steam coming out,
whether it's how much water is coming out in the steam as well as the total volume.
Right, so at this point, we've put 8ml of water into our drink to make that steam.
That's about half as much water as anybody else.
So, those five innovations: the temperature of the infusion, the pre-infusion detection,
the constant flow rate with a flow priority mode, the hot water, volume and temperature,
and the twice-as-powerful, half-as-wet steam - those are five things that you will not find in any espresso machine,
that we put together for you, that we think make the best espresso you've ever tasted.