Using a single basket with a Breville or Sage home espresso machine

Tips to make tasty single espressos

“I enjoy drinking single espressos more” or “Double shot milk drinks are too strong for me, I’d like to use only a single shot of espresso for my lattes and cappuccinos” or “Can I switch to a single basket and still get a good espresso?”. These are all fair comments and I get a lot of questions on this particular topic, either on my Instagram page or during my home barista online workshops.

When making espresso at home and switching to a single basket, you’re probably expecting to get half the amount of espresso of a double and achieve the same taste, right? Well, it’s actually not that simple. Even though you’re using half the amount of ground coffee and keeping the same grind size, you’ll need to manage your expectations. In some cases you’ll probably have to tweak both dose and grind size in order to pull a tasty single shot of espresso.

How is the single basket different from the double basket?

As you may have already noticed, the single baskets have a different design. One of the most common single baskets (such as the one you get in the box with your Breville or Sage espresso machine) is the conical basket. Compared to the double basket, it has the same size at the top, but it’s more narrow as you go down, resulting in a truncated cone shape at the bottom.

The challenge with this shape is that it often leads to an uneven extraction. Water won’t flow evenly across the coffee bed, which will lead to channeling i.e. an espresso shot inconsistent in extraction time, as well as in taste.

When I compare an espresso made with the single basket and a single espresso made with the double basket (i.e. splitting the shot across 2 espresso cups), I always prefer the one made with the double basket: it’s richer, more flavourful and has a better aftertaste. But, of course, I encourage you to experiment, take notes and see what works best for you.

Can you still make a decent shot of espresso using a single basket?

If you decide to swap filter baskets and run single espressos instead (let’s assume your usual dose for a double espresso is 18 grams), it’s still possible to make a good espresso, but you might want to consider a few tips in the process:

Increase the dose

If the extraction runs too quickly, I recommend to increase the dose and use 10 grams of ground coffee.

Adjust the grind size

If the shot time doesn’t improve (i.e. still runs too quickly), you may want to adjust the grind size to finer by 1 or 2 steps.

Use a 1:2 brew ratio

To avoid ending up with an espresso that tastes flat and watered down, I highly recommend sticking to a 1:2 brew ratio (i.e. for a dose of 10 grams, pull 20 grams of espresso out).

Using a scale will help a lot. Alternatively, you can consider programming the single shot espresso button on your Breville or Sage machine.

Purge the grinder in between shots

Going from the double to a single basket and changing the grind size will require purging the grinder in between shots. This makes sure there’s no old coffee sitting in the chute and allows new coffee to pass through the burrs.

To reduce waste, you may want to look into single dosing (i.e. not filling up the hopper and instead pre-weighing every individual dose of coffee beans in advance).

I hope you find these tips helpful and, if you’d like to dive deeper, you may consider our espresso and latte art home barista workshops. Happy brewing!

P.S. If you enjoyed reading this, you might find this blogpost here interesting too – How to reprogram the espresso shot volume on your Sage or Breville Barista Express