“You just have to be consistent with everything you’re doing,” Pernicano said. But with enough patience, it’s more than possible to master it. “With everything in your control, you have more ways to fuck it up.” There are multiple steps of the process that will require a little extra practice, including pre-heating, grinding, and applying pressure. “I hate to be cliche, but like Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility,” said Pernicano. I love the Flair PRO 2, but it's definitely one for the (very) serious coffee heads. Sure, you can go buy a pretty good espresso down the street from your home or office, and I definitely still do that from time to time, but the feeling of sipping that first perfect, heavenly brew after you’ve learned to do it yourself is priceless. With an electric espresso machine, you’re more or less setting up every shot the exact same way (unless you’re literally an espresso technician like my friend) and have very little control over your final product. The PRO 2 lets you make minute changes based on the beans you’re getting, which can be extremely important. Using the PRO 2 really helps you understand that great espresso isn’t some magical operation that’s only possible with the help of an expensive machine-it’s actually a fairly simple process of extraction built on the right combination of temperature, grind size, and pressure. When learning to make espresso manually, the journey is the destination. It makes for a super-balanced and handsome pour, and its roasty depth and slight sweetness even comes through in a latte or macchiato. (I wanted to do more that day, but my partner advised me to switch to water before the Jordan Schlansky of our house became the Bruce Banner of our house.) When it comes to the espresso, the result here is sublime-the beans’ flavors and aromas come through with great, earthy complexity, and the shot's texture is creamy, melting across your tongue in just the right way. So I went forth and ground much finer, using the Royal Grinder exactly the way he showed me, and, lo and behold, I pulled a nearly perfect shot shortly after our call. I do have a tendency to become obsessed with new toys, and I think you have to have a bit of that to master this machine. “Are you going to become the Jordan Schlansky of our house?” she asked me. When I received the PRO 2 and Flair’s (also manual) Royal Grinder in the mail, I opened up the box, beaming with joy and the excitement of imminent heart palpitations and expedited digestion, but all I saw on my partner’s face was skepticism and fear. In layman’s terms, Flair lets you be in total control of nearly every aspect of the espresso-making process, from the grind size and the brewing pressure to the temperature, amount of water used, and the duration of the pull. You also grind your coffee separately, place it in a segmented, cylindrical contraption that you’ve manually preheated, secure a removable pressure gauge atop that, and then place it all at the fulcrum of the lever. Flair isn’t like most espresso machine companies, in that its machines are manual-you literally press down on a lever to brew the espresso.
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