Part 1: Extract­ing the Essence The cof­fee I make at home tastes far bet­ter than most of the cof­fees I drink in the city. Even those from top-notch roas­t­er­ies some­times don’t com­pare to mine. This isn’t about arrogance—I’m not a supe­ri­or barista, nei­ther do I have high­­er-qual­i­­ty beans. And even though my espres­so machine is an excel­lent Ital­ian portafil­ter mod­el, it does­n’t quite match most pro­fes­sion­al machines. So, why does my cof­fee taste so much bet­ter? It comes down to one sim­ple rea­son: time. I have the lux­u­ry to weigh my beans to the near­est tenth of a gram every time and grind them accord­ing to their spe­cif­ic type and roast. I can thor­ough­ly clean the portafil­ter, even­ly dis­trib­ute the cof­fee grounds, break up clumps with a spe­cial­ized tool, and care­ful­ly tamp down. I can close­ly observe the flow rate and stop the extrac­tion at the per­fect moment. Most baris­tas in roas­t­er­ies and cafes don’t have this luxury—they’re under con­stant time pres­sure, as cus­tomers don’t like wait­ing for their hot bev­er­ages. Con­se­quent­ly, they can’t work as meticulously …