How many bars of pressure should a coffee machine have to be considered good?
Does more bars mean better coffee?
These are two questions that are often asked when choosing a coffee machine. However, the answer is not so obvious: in fact, a greater number of bars does not translate into a better quality of the espresso obtained.
Let’s find out why.
Bar and pressure
Before continuing and understanding what the effect of pressure is on our beloved espresso, it is necessary to define what we are talking about when using the term bar.
The bar is a unit of pressure measurement, which corresponds more or less to the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
When we say that a coffee machine has a pressure of 9 bars, basically what we are saying is that the pump is able to push the water to a pressure 9 times higher than that of the air at sea level.
Why pressure is important in a coffee machine
Espresso coffee is such precisely because of the pressure at which it is extracted. It is precisely thanks to the pressure that we are able to extract all its aromas and properties from coffee, making them end up in a cup in the form of a concentrated, rich and particularly creamy drink.
Even if with other methods of coffee extraction it is in fact possible to obtain equally strong drinks from the point of view of flavour, without the pressure we could never obtain the same body and the same creaminess.
Of course, pressure is not the only factor that affects espresso coffee, but there are many others, including:
- Quality of the coffee used
- Grinding
- Amount of coffee used
- Pressure used for pressing
How many bars should a coffee machine have?
When we are about to choose the right coffee machine from coffeeme.in for our needs, the pressure and the relative bars always tend to jump to the eye. However , more pressure does not necessarily translate into better coffee.
In fact, to obtain an excellent espresso, the perfect pressure is around 9 bars , with an ideal range between 7 and 11 bars.
As we have said before, therefore, a high pressure is therefore necessary for the correct extraction of the espresso, but the perfect value is often far from those often promoted by manufacturers of domestic coffee machines.
The reason why such high values are often seen is partly for marketing reasons: over the years, in fact, consumers have become accustomed to associating a greater number of bars with a better quality of the drinks obtained, a definitely non-existent correlation.
Espresso machines, for example, usually work at a pressure of 19 bar, but this does not necessarily make them superior to all the others. It is simply the ideal pressure for that specific capsule system and machine models.
All this not to mention that often the value we see in the product sheets refers to the maximum pressure that a pump is able to deliver, but which will not necessarily be used when it is used in preparation.
Very often then, poor quality components installed on the machines, cause the part of the pressure to be then “lost” during the preparation, making us in any case find ourselves with a lower value than the one specified.
Conclusion
Ultimately, machine pressure and espresso coffee are two points that are certainly connected to each other, but often in a different way from what is commonly believed.
The bars and pressure are indeed very important, but they should certainly not be the deciding factor in choosing a good coffee machine.
