The bright colour 3.5in touchscreen leads you through the process step by step. It asks for the roast type of your beans and adjusts the brewing temperature to suit – something other assisted machines don’t tend to automate. It also helps you balance the grind size, dosage and pour with a guided, hands-on approach. The La Specialista Touch sees De’Longhi attempt to blend the ease of use of its bean-to-cup machines with the brewing talents of its La Specialista manual espresso models.

But at heart, a tamper really just needs to be a hunk of stainless steel that you use to pack your coffee grounds into your espresso machine's portafilter. This is an important step because it's what helps generate pressure (hence the Italian word italian espresso cups espresso, which best translates to the verb "expressed" in English). The nuances of cleaning an espresso machine will vary depending on your specific machine, so always check the manufacturer’s instructions first.

When it comes to espresso preparation, weighing your shots as they’re extracting will help you achieve the kind of consistency that’s impossible by just eyeballing what’s happening. As I've mentioned, if you do want to use a WDT tool, then you'll need a dosing ring to place on the portafilter to stop the coffee going all over the place when you use the tool. I do it, because I quite like doing it, I find it quite therapeutic, and if I've had to go particularly fine with the beans I'm using I think it probably has more of a benefit, as there tends to be more clumps to break up when you grind finer. The Barista touch has the same, so no thermometer is required for that either. The Barista Express Impress is a machine that fits almost right in the middle between home barista and hand-off, you can use it fully manually or fully assisted, it has a calibrated tamp lever and auto dosing, a very clever machine! You don't need a tamper for it of course, but if you want to use it fully manual or semi manual, you'll need a 54mm tamper.

There are baristas who’ll sneer at the very idea of using a puck screen, claiming it’s completely unnecessary. On the other hand, there are those who wouldn’t dream of pulling a shot without one. If you're starting out on a very small budget, and you end up with one of the very cheap espresso machines, along the lines of the Swan Retro and other similar machines that suffer from both high basket pressure and overheating, then a puck screen could help. Again, though, they're cheap, they're simple to use (lob them on the puck after puck prep) so you can have a play and see what you think without having to invest a huge amount of money.

Be the first to know about new collections and exclusive offers. An exclusive collaboration with Fortnum & Mason created to compliment their new house blend coffee range - see here. We’ve made some bespoke boxes to house sets of four of our original mugs. Sign up to our newsletter for early access to special offers and limited releases. Our new small cafetière is the perfect size for coffee for two. While our large cafetière can quench a crowd, this one...

I feel strongly that these machines are often sold without buyers being made aware of the complexities involved in operating them, so I hope that some of the information in this post will be useful for new owners and anyone who has been struggling to master home espresso. Sips of steaming warmth, a sense of calm,Rushing energy, a subtle charm,Espresso, my espresso, a tiny cup of bliss,A wake-up call, my comfort morning kiss. You might find references online to WDT, RDT and such with regards to levelling and tamping, but that’s advanced stuff and I’m not even going to approach those things.

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