I'd strongly advise against spraying your beans in the bag, or your hopper, or wherever you store your beans, because wetting your beans and leaving them wet, will in (theoretically at least) increase the aging process. If you do store your beans in the hopper, by the way, I'd advise against that too, hoppers aren't intended for storage. See: If you've just invested in an espresso machine, or you've not done it yet but you're planning on it, you may have found yourself “falling down the rabbit hole”, and if you haven't, just be warned ;-), you're probably about to. This usually involves discovering that there are a million and one espresso machine accessories you need, also known as home barista tools. Our next selection is the Grindenstein – the flagship product for Australian kitchen appliance inventors Dreamfarm, who have been innovating and creating handy gadgets since 2003.

An SPN tool is a revolutionary tool invented by ancient Egyptians (probably) that can also be used for stirring, and spooning.As you would expect, we’re looking at a quality stainless steel unit here, which just glistens and oozes with class. It’s a lovely thing to have in your kitchen, and wouldn’t look out of place in the trendiest of coffee shops. This would seem like the perfect opportunity to introduce you to the supplier of freshly roasted, high-quality coffee beans that I started a couple of years ago, initially as a little project with a few special coffees. The Coffeeworks now supplies 19 different freshly roasted coffees (roasted within a few days of dispatch), and we have a small but growing section for coffee gear too including coffee machine accessories. Please bear in mind that not all manufacturers provide correct imagery and we may put a similar or alternative image to the actual product for illustration purposes only.The actual item you receive may differ from that which is displayed, for example the box may have changed or a model may have been upgraded or changed after we have added the product online. Some would say that if you're going to fit a pid you may as well buy an espresso machine that doesn't need modding to include a PID, and while that does make sense for the Rancilio Silvia given that you're actually quite close to the price of the Profitec Go or ECM Casa V by the time you've pidded it, it's not quite true of the Classic.

If you're a hands-off, traditional espresso machine user, really this means you're a Sage coffee machine user, and you have the Sage Oracle or Oracle Touch. In my humble opinion, at the time of writing, these are really the only machines that I believe give true home barista quality espresso with the convenience of bean to cup. There are probably only a few coffee machine accessories that are actually essential, and for the rest of them, it just depends on what you're looking for from your espresso machine. My plan with this post is to help everyone to understand which tools you need, and which you can ignore, for you personally, because there really is no one size fits all approach for home espresso. Coffee Machine Accessories – The Horses for Courses Approach I'm starting off with the most obvious tools and accessories for home barista espresso, so if you're already familiar with most of these, and/or you already have most of them, then just scroll down a bit to the likes of the WDT, RDT, Shower Screens, Mods and so on, that may be what you came here to find. Coffee GrinderAt present, Sage are really the only brand in the UK that is properly approaching the hands-off true espresso market, coffee machines that deliver barista cup quality with bean to cup convenience. There are other brands on the market who say that some of their machines are for this market, I've tried them, and as far as I'm concerned, all the other machines I've seen so far that claim to compete with Sage in this area, are only doing this in the marketing blurb! Whether you need to upgrade your basket depends on your machine, mainly. If you have a machine with a portafilter size that competition baskets are available for, which is most 51, 53, 54, and 58mm group machines, then it's an option you could look into. Similarly to the above, this will depend on whether you can get decent replacement shower screens for your particular machine, you can for most, but whether you'll actually find much of an improvement in the shot is unlikely, I'd say. You may find a difference, but whether it's necessarily an improvement, is hard to say. It’s a nice size as well. Measuring 11.5×11.5×12 centimetres, it is big enough for domestic use, but without being so big as to prove a problem to fit on to your kitchen worktop. With its look and size, it won’t look out of place in almost any kitchen.

It's not as if adding WDT to your workflow is going to take your espresso from zero to hero, in fact, I regularly do tasting with and without WDT, and most of the time I can't actually detect the difference, that's not to say there isn't one, but I think it's often very small. If you get into pouring latte art (or at least learning to, as it's a skill that takes a lot of practice to develop) then you might want to try other milk jugs. Brew Scales So I'm breaking this post into two main sections, the two groups of coffee machine users who I think actually need coffee machine accessories, and that are hands-off speciality coffee drinkers and home baristas. If you are using a spray bottle, I would recommend being very sparing with the mist. Also, definitely only do this for single dosing.There is plenty to like about this. First of all, it’s certainly big enough to cope with pretty much any domestic use. You will not be needing to empty this every time you use it, that’s for sure. Measuring 17cmx17cmx17cm, but in an oval shape, it is larger than the Sage product that we looked at above, but certainly isn’t large enough to cause a problem on your kitchen work surface – it should fit in nicely around your other appliances.