Espresso is a weird animal. In my experience, there’s basically “good espresso” and “bad espresso”. The fancy equipment mostly helps you make the good kind more frequently.
Experts can critique your cup, but hitting the sweet spot of “good” feels more like 97% of the output. If anything, the Pareto principle applies instead to the frequency of “good” extraction.
That’s about right. Sometimes my machine makes a great cup and I have no idea what I did that day. Sometimes my cream froths almost instantly, others it barely froths. No discernible difference in steps. Maybe it’s related to horoscopes.
Experts can critique your cup, but hitting the sweet spot of “good” feels more like 97% of the output. If anything, the Pareto principle applies instead to the frequency of “good” extraction.