How to Dial In Espresso — A Complete Beginner's Guide (2026)

Dialling in is the process of adjusting three variables — grind size, dose (coffee in), and yield (espresso out) — until the shot extracts in the right time and tastes balanced.

Every time you change beans, you have to dial in again. Different roasts, ages, and origins all behave differently. A grind setting that was perfect for last week's bag will almost certainly be wrong for the new one.

The good news: once you understand the recipe, dialling in a fresh bag takes 3 to 5 shots, not a whole bag of coffee.

For almost any home machine — Breville Barista Express, DeLonghi Dedica, La Specialista, Sage, Rancilio, Gaggia — start with this recipe:

• Dose: 18 g of ground coffee in the basket
• Yield: 36 g of liquid espresso in the cup
• Time: 25 to 30 seconds from the moment you press the brew button
• Ratio: 1:2 (yield is double the dose)

This is your target. Everything you adjust is just trying to hit these three numbers while making the espresso taste good.

You don't need fancy gear, but you do need:

• Kitchen scales that read to 0.1 g (around AUD $20 from Kmart or Amazon)
• A timer (your phone is fine)
• Fresh beans, ideally 7 to 21 days off roast — check the bag for a roast date, not a best-before date
• A fully heated machine — wait 15 to 20 minutes after switch-on, and flush hot water through the group head before the first shot

If you skip the warm-up, your shots will taste sour no matter what you do with the grind.

Set your grinder to roughly the middle of its range (grind 8 on a Breville Barista Express, setting 12 on a DeLonghi Dedica). Weigh out 18 g of beans, grind, distribute and tamp evenly with firm pressure.

Put your cup on the scales, tare to zero, and start the shot at the same moment you start the timer. Stop the shot when the cup hits 36 g.

Write down: time, taste, and what the pour looked like.

Three things tell you what to change next:

• Time: Under 20 s = grind too coarse. Over 35 s = grind too fine. 25 to 30 s = on target.
• Taste: Sour and watery = under-extracted (grind finer or pull more yield). Bitter, ashy, dry = over-extracted (grind coarser or stop the shot earlier).
• Look: A fast, pale, gushing shot is under-extracted. A dark, dripping, blonde-streaked shot is over-extracted. A steady, honey-coloured stream that thickens then lightens is dialled in.

If you're not sure whether sour or bitter is the dominant flavour, add a tiny bit of milk — sour shots become tangy, bitter shots become harsh.

The single biggest mistake new home baristas make is changing two things at once. You can never tell what fixed it.

The order to adjust:

1. Grind size first — it has the biggest impact on extraction 2. Dose second — only adjust by 0.5 g at a time 3. Yield last — once grind and dose are stable, fine-tune the cup weight to taste

Move one grind step finer or coarser, pull another 18 g in / 36 g out shot, and time it again. Repeat until you're inside the 25 to 30 s window.

Once you're in the right time window, the shot will be drinkable but might not yet be brilliant. This is where personal taste comes in.

• Want it brighter and more acidic? Pull a slightly shorter shot (e.g. 18 in / 32 out).
• Want it sweeter and rounder? Pull a slightly longer shot (e.g. 18 in / 40 out) or grind a touch finer.
• Want more body for milk drinks? Drop the yield to 1:1.5 (18 in / 27 out) for a ristretto-style base.

Make one tweak, taste, repeat. Three iterations is usually enough.

• Shots run fast no matter how fine I grind. Your dose is too low, your tamp is uneven, or you've maxed out the external grinder dial and need to recalibrate the internal burr (common on Breville Barista Express).
• Shots choke and barely drip. Grind is too fine, dose too high, or tamp too hard. Coarsen one step and try again.
• Channelling — water spurts sideways from a bottomless portafilter. Distribution is uneven. Tap the portafilter, use a WDT tool (or a paperclip), then tamp level.
• Shot tastes flat and lifeless. Beans are stale (over 6 weeks off roast) or you're using pre-ground coffee. Get fresh beans.

For a fresh bag of beans on a familiar machine: 3 to 5 shots, about 15 minutes.

For a brand-new machine you've never used before: 1 to 2 bags of coffee while you also learn distribution, tamping pressure and your grinder's behaviour.

Don't aim for perfection on day one. Aim for "better than yesterday" and you'll be making café-quality shots within a week.

If you've been at it for an hour and every shot still tastes wrong, stop and get a second opinion. Often it's something tiny — a basket size mismatch, a stale bag, or the machine not being warm enough — that no amount of grind tweaking will fix.

You can chat with our AI barista for instant dial-in help based on your exact dose, yield and time, or book a full session with a real expert for photo diagnosis and machine-specific advice.