What is a 1:2 espresso ratio?

An 18 g dose producing 36 g of espresso in the cup. The ratio compares beverage mass out to dry dose in, and it does not include the shot time.

Should I weigh my espresso shot?

Weighing the beverage is what makes the ratio real. Volume in a cup includes crema, which changes between coffees and settles as you look at it, so a scale under the cup is the more repeatable reading.

What ratio is a lungo?

CupTune uses 1:4 as a lungo starting point, so an 18 g dose gives 72 g of beverage. There is no standard that fixes this; ristretto, normale and lungo describe a spectrum of beverage ratios.

Why did my shot get faster when I changed beans?

Roast level, freshness and bean density all change how the puck resists water. A new bag usually needs the grind reset, which is why the dial-in loop holds dose and yield fixed and moves grind.

Dose in, beverage out

Espresso ratio without the folklore

Espresso has its own ratio convention, and most arguments about it are really arguments about which two numbers are being divided.

Espresso ratios as beverage mass per gram of dose. An americano is drawn for scale only: its water is added after brewing, not pushed through the puck.

The convention

Espresso ratio is beverage mass out ÷ dry dose in. An 18 g dose pulled to 36 g in the cup is 1:2. Note what is not in that sentence: time. Time is a diagnostic, not a term in the ratio.

An SCA survey of current espresso practice reported an average around 1:2, an 18–20 g dose, 36.5 g of beverage and 25–30 seconds as current practice. That is a description of what people do, not a rule about what is correct, and CupTune uses it as a starting point for exactly that reason.

Ristretto, normale, lungo

These are ratio names, not machine buttons. Roughly: a ristretto is shorter than 1:1.5, a normale sits near 1:2, and a lungo runs to 1:3 or 1:4. Our lungo recipe uses 1:4, and the reason it usually needs a coarser grind than your 1:2 setting is simply that more water is being asked to pass through the same puck in a sensible time.

Why shot time is a clue and not a target

If you fix dose and fix beverage mass, the time it takes is telling you about the grind and the puck — a fast shot is a loose bed, a slow one is a tight bed. That is genuinely useful information. What it is not is a quality score. Chasing 27 seconds while ignoring what the espresso tastes like is optimising the instrument instead of the result.

Change one variable

Keep dose fixed. Keep target beverage mass fixed. Move grind. Taste. That is the whole loop, and it is the only way to know which change caused which result; the espresso dial-in guide walks it with a symptom table and a shot log. CupTune's dial-in coach will refuse to give you a confident answer when the symptoms you tick conflict, which is a feature: two opposing symptoms genuinely do not identify one variable.

What this page will not tell you

It will not tell you a correct pressure, temperature or time for your machine and your coffee, because those depend on equipment CupTune cannot see. And it will not tell you that a number in a table beats what is in your cup.