Using an Espresso Machine

Video Transcript

"Here we have our espresso machine. Now the espresso machine is a little bit different than the coffee makers so this is something that if you're just purchasing the espresso machine, you do want to read the directions because you may have been drinking coffee your whole life does not mean you know how to work an espresso machine. That's speaking from experience. Basically there are a few parts that are included in the espresso maker. You have your coffee pot, or its like a mini coffee pot that you actually can use to measure the amount of water that you are going to pour into your espresso machine and it's labeled here two cups, four cups and back if you want two cups of espresso then you'll go ahead fill it up with two cups of water. If you want four cups of espresso then you fill it up with four cups of water and it has a nice little top here that you can go ahead and fill it up and put it back here and you actually can see this little stuff here. I'll explain why that?s there but it's just like your top of your coffee maker giving a little spout for the espresso to actually pour in. So this is actually where your espresso once it's done brewing will end up in there. The next part is the actual, this is like your filter. There aren't any paper filters that are used in espresso machines. It's actually a metal filter that you put your espresso grounds in which it's ground a little differently than coffee. It's finer and the water is actually pushed through the espresso machine actually through the grounds a lot faster than a coffee maker. But that's a whole other topic. You're going to actually fill this up to the very top and then your going to slide it right back in and it actually, there's actually a locking mechanism right up here that you slide it up and it locks into place and this is just, this will help you later on when emptying out the coffee grounds as to not burn yourself. You hold it down and you can actually dump it without your filter coming out into the garbage. So you want to go ahead and lock that into place once it's filled up with the coffee grounds. Now as you can see up here on this model of espresso machine there's actually a twist off top where your going to actually pour your water in there and this is an extremely, extremely, hot piece of metal once your machine is actually turned on because your water is actually being steamed at a very high temperature, so you have to make sure that you know, you don't touch that when trying to clean or when if it is still hot and as you can see here is a knob that you actually turn to actually turn on your espresso machine and there's two settings. There is off and there is steam. Now, when you actually want to brew your espresso, you're just going actually turn the machine. You?re going to turn the knob forward which actually brews your espresso and this green light will come on once it's plugged in. That's very simple for brewing it's just a simple twist on and it brews the espresso, but this espresso machine has also a nice feature where you can actually steam your milk. This does get very hot and for this you'll actually have to refill the machine with water to actually get the steam to come out to get your milk hot. This setting is a, a little bit different. You're actually going to turn the knob towards you for this but you want to do this slowly. It's not like when brewing espresso where it's just turn the knob on and it does the work itself. You want to actually turn this on very slowly as to not burn yourself and so that the steam can slowly heat up and slowly warm your milk and not splash milk all over the place and once you see that it's slowly turning on you can turn the knob all the way to the steam button and safely go ahead and steam the milk to make cappuccinos or lattes or mochas whichever coffee drinks that you prefer. But make sure you fill it up with water, you fill up your filter with a full to the top measurement of coffee ground and then you want to go ahead and stick your pot right back underneath, making sure that it's securely in there and it'll fill up your coffee pot with the correct amount of espresso. But that is the basic use of espresso machines this will vary depending upon them model but this is how this one works."