How to Pull Espresso to Make a Caffe Latte

"Tonight I'm going to show you how to make a caffe latte on professional equipment, but you might not have that at home. Most of these techniques will transfer over to your home machine though. This is the espresso machine that we're going to be working with tonight. This part of the machine is called the portafilter, this is called the group head...ouch, very hot. Inside the portafilter is the basket of the portafilter where the espresso grinds will go in order to pull espresso to make a caffe latte. That fits in there nice and snug. Your espresso needs to extract into a preheated cup, and these cups are kept hot by our industrial espresso machine, but at home you can just prepare by filling your latte bowl with hot water, and this will ensure the espresso temperature doesn't get shocked. Before you begin, clear the group head of any old grinds that might be in there from a previous drink just by letting the water run through for a couple seconds. Take your rag and wipe out the portafilter basket of any water droplets or grinds..and grind. Now with grinding the beans into the basket, you want to do what we call overdose, meaning that the amount of ground espresso will be a little more than the basket can hold. As you can see here, there's sort of a hump on the top, and we're going to actually wipe that away. This part of the process is called leveling. You're going to want to arch your index finger, going over the grounds somewhat loosely about three or four times, and then with a straight finger you're going to wipe across the hump making the espresso grinds as level as possible. Then wipe off any of the excess grinds that might be underneath or on the sides of the portafilter. And now we are going to tamp. Hold the tamp in your hand like a doorknob and tamp down with about 30 pounds of pressure. You can practice doing this on a scale at home. Knock the sides very gently and then polish the top of the espresso grinds by spinning the tamp about three times. The grinds are tightly packed and as level as possible. Put the portafilter up in the group head snugly. Place your preheated latte bowl under the portafilter and push your extraction button, and you'll see the espresso start to pull. This is when your timer comes in handy. Start timing as soon as you see the orange creme extracting from the portafilter spouts. Now, a perfect double shot should take about 20-23 seconds to pull, have a nice dark orangish-brown creme, and amount to about one and a half to two ounces of liquid when finished. You can see in this nice, white latte bowl that the creme is looking pretty good. A couple details before moving on to milk. You now have an espresso puck in the portafilter basket. You want to knock it out into the knock box and wipe out your basket. Then place the portafilter back in its home. And here you can see that the puck is all in one piece, which indicates that you've pulled your espresso correctly."