It does­n’t take long to learn how to pull a shot of espres­so. Search for that phrase on Youtube, and you’ll find hours’ worth of sound instruc­tion, most of it in the form of brief and eas­i­ly digestible videos. All of them cov­er the same basic stages of the process: grind­ing, dos­ing, tamp­ing, and brew­ing. When exam­ined close­ly, each of those stages reveals a for­mi­da­ble body of knowl­edge to mas­ter. If any one Youtu­ber can lay claim to hav­ing mas­tered all of them, it must be James Hoff­mann, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his videos on sub­jects from deep-fried cof­fee to the clas­sic Bialet­ti Moka Express. In the six-part series above, he offers view­ers an overview of all they need to know to achieve a true under­stand­ing of espres­so.

Episode by episode, Hoff­mann explains how to choose the right dose of cof­fee, ratio between the amount of ground and liq­uid cof­fee, brew time, grind size, brew tem­per­a­ture, and pres­sure. Of course, there is no sin­gle uni­ver­sal­ly cor­rect set­ting or amount of any of these things: each is a vari­able with its own range of effects on the shot of espres­so ulti­mate­ly yield­ed.

Each drinker, too, has a dif­fer­ent con­cep­tion of the taste and tex­ture of the ide­al espres­so shot, and con­sis­tent­ly real­iz­ing those qual­i­ties — or at least get­ting close — neces­si­tates no small amount of tri­al and error. But those who lis­ten well to Hoff­man­n’s expla­na­tions will sure­ly end up with few­er errors, and in any case get more enjoy­ment from the tri­als.

Watch “Under­stand­ing Espres­so,” and you’re going to want to know how Hoff­mann pulls shots for him­self. This he address­es in a bonus episode — unsur­pris­ing­ly, the longest one of the bunch — which shows his entire process in detail, from prepar­ing the beans to stir­ring and sip­ping. Along the way, he also intro­duces the vari­ety of spe­cial­ized devices he uses: a strong draw for his many cof­fee-gear­head sub­scribers, but one he presents with the caveat that you real­ly don’t need to go high-end all the way in order to live your best espres­so life. Even so, the ded­i­cat­ed home enthu­si­ast must put in con­sid­er­ably more time and atten­tion than the aver­age chain-cof­fee-shop barista. “Cafés want to make good espres­so as quick­ly and eas­i­ly as pos­si­ble,” he reminds us. “We want to make incred­i­ble espres­so every time.”

You can watch the entire playlist, from start to fin­ish, at the very top of the post.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Cof­fee Col­lege: Every­thing You Want­ed to Know about Cof­fee Mak­ing in One Lec­ture

All Espres­so Drinks Explained: Cap­puc­ci­no, Lat­te, Mac­chi­a­to & Beyond

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“The word ‘con­nois­seur’ is not an attrac­tive one,” writes Jan­cis Robin­son in her mem­oir Tast­ing Plea­sure: Con­fes­sions of a Wine Lover. “It smacks of exclu­siv­i­ty, pre­cious­ness and elit­ism.” Indeed, “con­nois­seur­ship is not a nec­es­sary state for wine appre­ci­a­tion. It is per­fect­ly pos­si­ble to enjoy wine enor­mous­ly with­out real­ly under­stand­ing it. But a con­nois­seur sees each indi­vid­ual wine in its his­tor­i­cal, geo­graph­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal con­text and is tru­ly sen­si­tive to its pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Those who drink wine too care­less­ly or too strin­gent­ly, “those who will not meet a wine halfway, and who con­sis­tent­ly ignore the sto­ry each wine has to tell, deprive them­selves of a large part of the poten­tial plea­sure asso­ci­at­ed with each bot­tle.”

How best to expe­ri­ence that plea­sure — or rather, how best to attain the state of con­nois­seur­ship that makes it acces­si­ble in the first place? One could do worse than start­ing with the works of Robin­son her­self, who’s not just one of the most respect­ed wine writ­ers alive today, but also one­time super­vi­sor of the lux­u­ry wine selec­tion on British Air­ways’ Con­corde and advi­sor for the wine cel­lar of the late Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

Since she began cov­er­ing wine pro­fes­sion­al­ly near­ly half a cen­tu­ry ago, she has pro­duced a great deal of work in print as well as for the screen. Among the lat­ter, per­haps the most ambi­tious is Jan­cis Robin­son’s Wine Course, whose ten episodes orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC 2 in 1995 and are now avail­able to watch on Robin­son’s own Youtube chan­nel.

With this $1.6 mil­lion pro­duc­tion, Robin­son was “set loose on the wine world, far too much of the time in full make­up, with fresh­ly done hair and clothes sub­si­dized by an offi­cial BBC bud­get.” Ded­i­cat­ing each episode to a dif­fer­ent grape vari­etal “allowed us with­in a sin­gle pro­gram to vis­it more than one region — and there­fore vary the scenery, archi­tec­ture and cli­mate. It also reflect­ed my pas­sion­ate inter­est in grape vari­eties and my con­vic­tion that com­ing to grips with the most impor­tant grapes pro­vides the eas­i­est route to learn­ing about wine.” The year­long shoot took her and her team around the globe, vis­it­ing wine­mak­ers wher­ev­er they could be found: France, Ger­many, Aus­tralia, Chile, and even north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, where they man­aged an audi­ence with auteur-vint­ner Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

“The con­flict between the New and Old Worlds of wine was com­ing nice­ly to a head at just the right time for our series, Robin­son notes.” Those worlds have set­tled into a kind of rel­a­tive peace in the decades since — as has the “Chardon­nay boom” of the mid-nine­teen-nineties, about which Robin­son lets slip some frus­tra­tion onscreen. Despite her vast knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of wine, Robin­son sel­dom shows any hes­i­tan­cy to crack a joke, and sure­ly her con­tin­ued promi­nence as a wine edu­ca­tor owes some­thing to that sense of humor, on dis­play in the Talks at Google inter­view about her 2016 book The 24-Hour Wine Expert. More recent­ly, she entered into anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with the BBC, specif­i­cal­ly the new BBC Mae­stro online edu­ca­tion plat­form, to cre­ate the course “An Under­stand­ing of Wine.” In all pur­suits, under­stand­ing is the basis of plea­sure — but in wine, even more so.

Episodes of Jan­cis Robin­son’s Wine Course:

• Episode 1׃ Aper­i­tif
• Episode 2: Chardon­nay
• Episode 3: Caber­net Sauvi­gnon
• Episode 4: Sauvi­gnon Blanc
• Episode 5: Syrah
• Episode 6: Ries­ling
• Episode 7: Pinot Noir
• Episode 8: Mer­lot
• Episode 9: Grapes and Gas
• Episode 10: Grape Invaders

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vin­tage Wine Course (UC Davis, 1973)

High-Tech Japan­ese Cam­era Proves That the Shape of a Wine Glass Affects the Fla­vor of Wines

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

Storm: New Short Film Cap­tures the Artistry of Wine­mak­ing

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Image by Casa Buonar­roti, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I admit to hav­ing a hard time keep­ing gro­cery lists. Do I write them by hand? If so, do I do it in a ded­i­cat­ed note­book, on a refrig­er­a­tor pad, or on any old scrap I find around? Do I com­pose them elec­tron­i­cal­ly, using some com­bi­na­tion of my com­put­er, my phone, and oth­er, more spe­cial­ized devices? And do I keep sep­a­rate lists for sep­a­rate trips to sep­a­rate stores? (Cer­tain del­i­ca­cies, after all, you can only get at Trad­er Joe’s.)

Liv­ing in the 15th and 16th cen­turies, the Ital­ian High Renais­sance sculp­tor, painter, archi­tect, poet, and engi­neer Michelan­ge­lo faced a rather less com­pli­cat­ed shop­ping prob­lem: he had only to send assis­tants off to mar­ket to bring back what he need­ed. Though van­ish­ing­ly few of this pro­lif­ic cre­ator’s papers sur­vive today, we do hap­pen to have a few of the gro­cery lists he sent with them, like that which you see above.

John Updike once wrote that “excel­lence in the great things is built upon excel­lence in the small,” and the obser­va­tion holds up ide­al­ly when we think about Michelan­gelo’s numer­ous great achieve­ments — Pietà, David, The Last Judg­ment, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca — in com­par­i­son to this hum­ble yet strik­ing run­down of ingre­di­ents for a meal, of the same basic kind each of us scrawl out reg­u­lar­ly. But when Michelan­ge­lo scrawled, he scrawled with both a craftsman’s prac­ti­cal pre­ci­sion and an artist’s evoca­tive flair. “Because the ser­vant he was send­ing to mar­ket was illit­er­ate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin in a review of a Seat­tle Art Muse­um show, “Michelan­ge­lo illus­trat­ed the shop­ping lists — a her­ring, tortel­li, two fen­nel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quar­ter of a rough wine’ — with rushed (and all the more exquis­ite for it) car­i­ca­tures in pen and ink.” As we can see, the true Renais­sance Man didn’t just pur­sue a vari­ety of inter­ests, but applied his mas­tery equal­ly to tasks excep­tion­al and mun­dane. Which, of course, ren­ders the mun­dane excep­tion­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

No mat­ter how much cof­fee you drink, you nev­er drink the same cof­fee twice. Cof­fee-drinkers under­stand this instinc­tive­ly, even those who only drink their cof­fee at home using the same beans and the same brew­ing process day in and day out. For even in the most con­trolled cof­fee-mak­ing con­di­tions we can achieve in our every­day lives, vari­a­tions have a way of creep­ing in. End­less scruti­ny of those vari­a­tions is all in a day’s work for some­one like Matt Perg­er, who’s come out on or near the top of sev­er­al barista cham­pi­onships, and who found­ed the online cof­fee-edu­ca­tion ser­vice Barista Hus­tle and its asso­ci­at­ed Youtube chan­nel.

In the chan­nel’s most pop­u­lar video by far, Perg­er deliv­ers an 80-minute lec­ture on “advanced cof­fee mak­ing” at Assem­bly Cof­fee in Lon­don. After cov­er­ing the adjec­tives used to describe the fla­vor of cof­fee in gen­er­al — from “weak,” “del­i­cate,” and “tea-like” to “lus­cious,” “bit­ter,” and “over­whelm­ing” — he moves on to the vocab­u­lary of extrac­tion.

The most impor­tant stage in the cof­fee-mak­ing process as far as the result­ing taste is con­cerned, extrac­tion is accom­plished by putting hot water through cof­fee grounds, in whichev­er man­ner and with whichev­er device you may choose to do it. Weak­er meth­ods of extrac­tion result in “salty” or “veg­e­tal” tastes, and stronger meth­ods in “astrin­gent” or “pow­dery” ones.

As in so many pur­suits, the most desir­able out­comes lie in the mid­dle of the spec­trum.  Just how to achieve that per­fect­ly “trans­par­ent,” “nut­ty,” “bal­anced,” and even “sweet” cup of cof­fee con­sti­tutes the dri­ving pro­fes­sion­al ques­tion for Perg­er and baris­tas like him. Clear­ly pos­sessed of a taste for rig­or, he explains the effects of every­thing from the design of roast­ers and grinders to the tech­niques of brew­ing and pour­ing while cit­ing the find­ings of exper­i­ments and blind taste tests — and even acknowl­edg­ing when pieces of expen­sive cof­fee-mak­ing gear yield no demon­stra­ble quan­ti­ta­tive ben­e­fit. True cof­fee afi­ciona­dos who have an end­less appetite for this kind of talk may find them­selves tempt­ed to sign up for Barista Hus­tle’s online cours­es, but even more so to brew anoth­er cup for them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

How to Make Cof­fee in the Bialet­ti Moka Pot: The “Ulti­mate Techique”

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Your Burn­ing Ques­tions About Cof­fee Answered by James Hoff­mann

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.