The espresso machine I use at work has a pre-infusion step. I've been wondering if the volume of the pre-infusion affects the shot, especially the pressure of the main extraction.

  • What do you mean by volume? On my automatised half-automatic, I can only set pre-infusion time and pressure. A bit of espresso starts to come through after about 7 seconds of my 9-second pre-infusion. – JJJ May 24 '19 at 17:57

I was actually reading an article on this yesterday. There is no added volume during pre-infusion. All the pre-infusion step does is wet the espresso fully to prevent channeling.

The article I linked actually shows that less extraction happens during pre-infusion. So to answer your question, it does affect the shot, but not the volume.

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