Don Hernán's café doesn't have a name on the door. People who need to find it know where it is. He pulls every shot himself, on a Faema E61 he's been servicing since 1994. The grinder is a Mazzer that's older than I am.
He doesn't dial in. He doesn't taste. He doesn't have a refractometer or a scale. He just pulls the shot, looks at it, and either hands it to you or pours it down the drain and starts again. About one in twelve gets poured out.
What he taught us about dialing in
We brought him a kilo of our Felicidad and asked him to pull a shot. He fussed with the grind for about ninety seconds, pulled three test shots, then settled. The shot he handed us was the best espresso I've ever had from our own coffee. He shrugged when I told him.
"The grind tells you what to do. You just have to listen."
We're not going to pretend we can teach you anything that takes thirty years of practice. What we will say is this: spend more time adjusting your grinder and less time chasing recipes. The grinder is the variable that matters most, and Don Hernán has known that for decades.
