So, when I first dipped my toes into the espresso world as a newbie “pro” barista, my boss was all about using an 18g dose on the cafe’s Nuova Simonelli machine. I vaguely remembered reading that Italian espresso stuck to the 7g/14g dose sizes, and I remember thinking that “wow, my boss is a bit of a splurger!”

But, as I dove deeper into online research, soaking up every bit of espresso info I could find, I realized that an 18g dose was actually the norm in the USA, and some folks were even going heavier with 19g, 21g, or even 23g doses. Even big brands like Breville were advocating for this 18g dose territory in their literature and machine page descriptions.

CoffeeGeek is also to blame. The powers that be here have long settled on 18.5g as the target dose for any 58mm portafilter equipped espresso machine. Why, if the Italian standard (one still written about in books to this day) is 14g for the double dose, would you use 4.5g more coffee for a double shot? I had to ask.

“We settled on 18.5g as the dose for our test parameters sometime in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s”, Mark Prince, CoffeeGeek’s Senior Editor said. “For a long time we were doing 17.5g and that was actually based on a Rancilio Silvia hack that was popular from about 1999 onwards, of using a La Marzocco spec double basket with straight walls. The standard Silvia baskets were designed to hold, at most, 15g in the double, and 8 or 9g in the single basket, but someone in the newsgroup alt.coffee discovered La Marzocco’s custom baskets of the era not only fit the Silvia portafilter, but you could cram more coffee into them.”

I asked Prince why the change and pursuit of these larger doses. “I think it started with the idea of ‘more coffee equals more flavor’, but a big change came in 2003 when an Australian guy named Paul Basset won the WBC (World Barista Championship).” Prince said. “He had a unique technique in preparing his espresso shots for the judges, something he called ‘updosing’. The machines used in the competition then were La Marzocco Lineas, and used the La Marzocco (straight wall) baskets. Paul dosed as much as 5g more than other competitors did, changing the grinder to account for the different dose volume, and ended up with richer, more flavorful shots that won him the championship”. 

Prince went on to talk about how “updosing” became a super hot topic in the forums of that era, and everyone was upgrading their filter baskets to the La Marzocco straight wall ones. They were, in effect, the VST and IMS precision baskets of their day. Very soon, the idea that a proper dose was 17, 18 or more grams for a double dose became the norm, not the exception, at least in the USA. 

But here’s the catch: the bigger the dose, the more work and precision it requires, and, crucially for me, the more caffeine you end up with in your cup. And that’s what got me thinking.

Caffeine and Espresso

I was intrigued by an article here on CoffeeGeek recently, called A Bit About Caffeine. Specifically, the caffeine milligram numbers for a double shot of espresso. A bit of TL:DR here: if a roasted coffee has 1.5% its weight in caffeine, and espresso extraction pulls out 80% of that caffeine, that means every 1g in your dose has the potential to deliver 12mg of caffeine to the cup. 

That means a 18.5g dose (the CoffeeGeek standard), brewing 60ml (2oz) can deliver up to a whopping 222mg caffeine in the cup. That is a very high dose of caffeine!!

By the same math, a 14g double dose, also brewing 60ml, can deliver 168mg caffeine in the cup, or 28% less caffeine. 

Now let’s put this in Italian espresso traditional volumes, going with a standard 1oz / 30ml shot. The 18.5g dose will give you two single 1oz espresso shots, each with as much as 111mg of caffeine. The 14g dose gives a 1oz single shot with 84mg caffeine.

That’s a pretty big difference! Basically if you have three single shots of the higher dosed coffee, you’re getting the same caffeine levels you would get from four traditional Italian single espresso shots.

If you love the taste of coffee, but find the impact of caffeine is hitting you hard, maybe the Italians were onto something.

The ‘Challenge’ of the 14g Dose

Updosing (as Paul Bassett coined) has its ups and downs. Dial in your coffee great and you get a richer, more complete, better viscosity shot of espresso. A bigger flavor punch as it were. But dosing more coffee means a lot more work dialing things in. 

I have a Breville Dual Boiler, a Flair Signature lever machine, and a 1Zpresso J-Max for my espresso good times at home. I spent a month working with 14 gram doses and discovered a few things: some good, some a challenge:

The Good

• “Nailing” shots totally slaps and is more forgiving now. My go-to grinder for espresso, the J-Max from 1Zpresso, just hits different when it comes to dialing in. I’ve noticed I can play around with grind settings more freely, especially when brewing with 14g.
  
• Prepping the puck doesn’t seem as crucial for a smooth extraction flow and rate with lower doses.
  
• I’ve noticed temperature affects the shots less with lower doses; even if I start with a colder portafilter, it doesn’t mess up the final shot as much.
  
• The whole shot-making process cuts me some slack on technique; it’s not as finicky if I don’t nail every little detail.
  
• Puck screens are my new best friend; when I was all Bassett-y updosing, I couldn’t really use them for lack of space in the basket. Now I can, and they help distribute water over the coffee bed way better.

The Bad:

• The puck ends up a bit soupy and harder to clean out of the filter basket (there’s more headspace now, if I stick to using the stock Breville double baskets). But hey, I got myself a 15g 3W-Bomber basket, and it’s a game-changer.
  
• While the shots taste great, they do feel a bit thinner in flavor compared to when I brewed the same volumes. Don’t ask me for TDS readings; I don’t have the tools for that.
  
• I don’t get those “wow, this vibes!” shots as often (you know, the ones they used to call ‘god shots’) like I used to with my old dosing technique.
  

I know pure caffeine is bitter as heck, so the sweetness kick from these 14g double shots must be from the lower caffeine levels, considering I’m brewing similar cup sizes. I mean, it’s up to 30% less caffeine. It’s like a two-for-one deal: less caffeine, sweeter shots.

I am still experimenting with this, but once again: maybe the Italians were onto something!