Pre-ground Espresso Opinions

[Christian]

Hi I'm relatively new to brewing espresso. Wondering people's thoughts on good brands of pre-ground espresso. Illy and Lavazza come to mind, but no personal experience with either.

The reasoning is I once in awhile have a need to brew decaf, and it would be a nice way to avoid changing out the beans in the grinder.

Using a Breville BES970XL. The manual advises using pressurized baskets for pre-ground coffee. My understanding is pressurized baskets are only for inconsistent grinds. Assuming an expensive brand like illy would have a consistent grind capable of brewing in a proper machine. Anyone have a comment on this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[peterjschmidt]

I only grind per shot, so switching to decaf can happen anytime.

 

[PinkRose]

Hi I'm relatively new to brewing espresso. Wondering people's thoughts on good brands of pre-ground espresso. Illy and Lavazza come to mind, but no personal experience with either.

The reasoning is I once in awhile have a need to brew decaf, and it would be a nice way to avoid changing out the beans in the grinder.

Using a Breville BES970XL. The manual advises using pressurized baskets for pre-ground coffee. My understanding is pressurized baskets are only for inconsistent grinds. Assuming an expensive brand like illy would have a consistent grind capable of brewing in a proper machine. Anyone have a comment on this?

Thanks in advance.

It sounds like you want to have pre-ground decaf coffee on hand for those "once in a while" occasions when you need it?

How often is once in a while?

I agree with Peter's method of not filling you grinder's hopper up with beans, and only grinding enough for each espresso shot. If you did that, switching from one bean to another wouldn't be a problem.

But, if that doesn't work for you.....

It's not an ideal solution, but you could get some good freshly-roasted decaf beans, grind them, and then quickly divide it all into one-use portions and freeze them in small freezer bags (placed inside a larger freezer bag). That way you could remove one portion at a time from the freezer before you need to make the coffee.