At its core, shaking addresses the issue of uneven coffee distribution—a major cause of inconsistent brews. Whether you’re pulling espresso shots or brewing pour-overs, evenly distributed grounds ensure uniform water flow, preventing channeling and unlocking the full potential of your coffee.
What Happens Without Shaking?
When fresh coffee grounds are poured straight into a brew basket or porta filter, grounds tend to clump together, and coffee particles are unevenly distributed. When coffee is brewed, water takes the path of least resistance, a phenomenon known as channeling. This leads to over-extraction in some areas (bitter flavors) and under-extraction in others (sour or weak notes). The result? A muddled, unbalanced cup that doesn’t showcase your coffee’s best flavors.
Some Science on Shaking
Baristas, coffee lovers and coffee enthusiasts have come up with an array of techniques over time to extract the best possible flavours. The relatively new method of shaking grounds breaks up clumps and evenly distributes the coffee in a process called densification, creating a uniform bed that allows water to flow smoothly and extract flavors consistently. This is especially important in espresso preparation, where precision is key, but it also benefits manual brewing methods by enhancing saturation. Shaking essentially ensures that every ground contributes to your coffee’s final taste.
What the Experts Say
Opinions on shaking are varied but consistent in their support of even distribution. Some baristas prefer shaking for its simplicity, while others combine it with techniques like leveling or tapping. What’s universally agreed upon is the importance of avoiding channeling to ensure consistent extractions. We will continue to investigate and reasoning and why shaking does work the way it does. If you are also interested in this matter, we’ve collected some great resources of fellow coffee lovers to help you dive deeper into this topic:
Our current top 3 Videos on learning more about coffee prep:
- Our friend and fellow coffee nerd Lance Hedrick has shared this video on various prepping methods. https://youtu.be/OyUaCuoqYWc?si=fywCFMmup0bqh7OH
- This one draws a little different picture on shaking, we are still trying to find out how her results differ from those of others, but we liked the overall approach. https://www.baristahustle.com/shake-it-real-good/
- To into Coffee Making, this great video from Sci Show dives straight into the science of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUoFhcQBiZY
Shaking for Better Coffee
Shaking isn’t just a step—it’s a method that ensures your coffee reaches its full potential, over and over again. With our Iris coffee shaker, this process becomes effortless, fun and bringing you one step closer to consistently better tasting coffee. Try it for yourself.
What are your thoughts on shaking coffee grounds? We would love to hear from you. Share your experience in the comments!
Cheers to better coffee,
Sebastian