Dialling in is the process of tweaking your coffee settings until your espresso tastes "right".
Doing this at home can sometimes feel like a cycle of trial and error – tweak, taste, adjust, repeat. And while that process is part of learning, it doesn’t have to mean wasting half a bag of coffee along the way.
With a few smart shortcuts and a calmer approach, you can dial in faster, use less coffee, and get to a great-tasting cup much sooner.
Here’s how to do it.
Start With a Clear Baseline
The fastest way to dial in is to start from a solid, repeatable reference point.
We recommend beginning with:
- Dose: 18g of coffee
- Yield: 36g of espresso (a 1:2 ratio)
- Time: 25–30 seconds
This gives you a balanced starting point that works well for most home machines and both of our blends.
Once you have a baseline, every adjustment becomes more intentional, not guesswork.
Change One Thing at a Time
One of the biggest reasons dialling in takes longer (and wastes more coffee) is changing too many variables at once.
If something tastes off:
- Only adjust one thing (usually grind size)
- Keep dose, yield and temperature the same
- Taste, then decide your next move
This makes it much easier to understand what actually fixed (or caused) the issue.
Use Taste as Your Shortcut
Your palate is faster than numbers alone. Here’s a simple guide:
- Sour, sharp or watery – under-extracted: grind a little finer
- Dry, bitter or harsh – over-extracted: grind a little coarser
- Balanced, sweet, smooth – you’re close: make very small tweaks
Instead of chasing perfection immediately, aim for drinkable, then refine.
Make Smaller Adjustments
Big grind changes will mean big swings in flavour. To waste less coffee:
- Adjust your grinder in small increments
- Think “a few clicks”, not a full step
- Pull another shot only when the adjustment is subtle
Small changes add up and they’re much easier to control.
Dial In With Short Shots (When Needed)
If you’re still finding your range, you don’t always need to pull a full shot.
You can stop the shot early (around 20–25g out), taste for direction, not perfection or adjust again before pulling a full extraction
This lets you learn without pouring whole shots down the sink.
Choose Beans That Are Forgiving at Home
Not all coffee is easy to dial in – especially on home machines. Beans roasted for commercial cafes often need higher pressure, are less forgiving of small errors and can swing from sour to bitter quickly.
Our Smooth Medium and Rich Strong blends are roasted specifically for home machines, which means easier extraction, more stable flavour and less waste when dialling in.
When the coffee works with your machine, dialling in becomes much faster.
Weigh Early, Then Trust Your Routine
Using a scale at the start helps you dial in efficiently. Once you’ve found your sweet spot, you don’t need to weigh every single shot.
Return to weighing if flavour drifts, with seasonal changes or if you've opened a new bag of beans, which can all signal you need to tweak your settings again.
Keep Your Gear Clean
Old coffee oils can throw off flavour and slow your progress. Make it a habit to wipe your basket and shower screen, purge your grinder occasionally and clean your steam wand straight after use.
Clean gear gives you cleaner flavour and clearer feedback.
The Takeaway
Dialling in doesn’t have to be slow, wasteful or frustrating. With a clear starting point, smaller adjustments, and beans designed for home brewing, you can get to great coffee faster and enjoy the process a lot more.
Find Smooth Medium and Rich Strong at your local Woolworths or online anytime.
