Brew time, extraction time, pull time — three words for the same principle. And yet there's confusion about when you should actually start counting. At the press of a button? At the first drop? We'll clear this up. (Looking for a complete guide to espresso preparation? You'll find it in our Espresso Preparation Guide.)
Brew time is contact time
Whether you call it brew time, extraction time, or pull time: it always means the contact time between water and coffee. Nothing more, nothing less.
Extraction begins the moment hot water hits your coffee puck. Not when the first drop falls into the cup. And it ends when the pump stops working and no more water is pushed through the coffee.
This sounds simple, but in practice it regularly leads to misunderstandings. Because between the moment you start the pull and the moment water actually reaches the coffee, depending on your machine, one to four seconds can pass.
When to start counting?
The short answer: When your machine dispenses water.
With most machines this happens virtually immediately when you press the button or pull the lever. Then the button press is your start signal. With some machines there's a small delay of a second or two — you can easily test this by running it once without the portafilter and see when the water comes. Simply subtract this latency.
Why not count from the first drop? Because several seconds of extraction already occur between water contact and the first drop in the cup. The water must first penetrate the entire coffee puck before anything comes out at the bottom. If you only start counting from the first drop, you're missing several seconds of contact time — and your recipe no longer works.
And precisely the first seconds of contact between water and coffee heavily influence the entire extraction time. This already shows whether the grind size was chosen correctly or not.
What scales with drip detection can do (and what they can't)
Some scales start the timer automatically as soon as the first drop hits the scale. That's not useful as a time measurement for brew time because it doesn't reflect the beginning of extraction.
Nevertheless, the function isn't worthless. It can tell you something about your coffee: If the first drop arrives after three seconds, you're probably grinding too coarse. If nothing comes for ten seconds, your grind size is probably too fine — or your puck has a problem. So drip detection is useful as a diagnostic tool. But not as a stopwatch for brew time.
We've added our favorite scales to our shop. There's something for every price range.
Vibratory pump vs. rotary pump: The difference that changes your recipes
This is where it becomes practically relevant, because your pump determines how you need to interpret recipes.
A rotary pump builds pressure almost immediately. Within a few seconds, full brew pressure is on the coffee. The brew chamber fills, water hits the puck, and it begins. With a rotary pump, pressing the button and the start of extraction are practically the same thing.
A vibratory pump works differently. It takes much longer to build pressure — the flow starts slowly and increases over several seconds. This means: contact time is running, but the first phase is far from as intense as with a rotary pump. The coffee is essentially pre-wetted gently before full pressure arrives.
This has consequences for your recipes.
The +3-seconds rule
Most recipes you get from roasteries — "18 g in, 36 g out, 25 seconds" — are made with rotary pumps. That's because many roasteries use professional commercial machines, and they almost always have rotary pumps.
If you have a vibratory pump at home (and that applies to the vast majority of home machines), you need about three more seconds for such recipes. So: 25 seconds recipe specification → around 28 seconds on your machine. This isn't an exact law, but a good guideline to get in the right ballpark.
At Kaffeemacher we usually provide our recipes for both vibratory and rotary pumps and label them accordingly. If you're unsure at a roastery, ask which machine the recipe was made with. That gives you a better reference point than any rule of thumb.
Extraction time for single and double espresso
A question that often comes up: Does a double espresso need to run longer than a single?
Not necessarily. If you use double the amount of coffee in a larger basket for a double espresso and let double the amount of water run through, the contact time often remains similar. The resistance of the coffee puck and the flow rate scale with it. What changes is the brew ratio — and that should remain constant. A 1:2 ratio (18 g coffee → 36 g espresso) applies to the double just as much as a 1:2 ratio (9 g → 18 g) applies to the single. Though single espressos always have their own unique dynamics. Little coffee powder doesn't create resistance as evenly as the coffee powder in a double espresso does. One reason we tend to recommend doing double extractions.
Extraction time is your control tool here: If the time doesn't match with the same brew ratio, your grind size probably isn't right.
Brew time as guidance, not as law
25 seconds is not a magic number. We provide recipes as time windows, not as second-precise specifications. The reason: Every machine behaves a bit differently, every coffee reacts a bit differently, and two seconds more or less makes little difference in taste with a well-dialed recipe.
Use brew time as a guideline. If you land at 22 seconds with 18 g coffee and 36 g espresso, you're probably grinding a bit too coarse. At 35 seconds, too fine. But whether 26 or 28 seconds — try it and decide based on taste.
In the end, what matters is what's in the cup. Brew time helps you get there. But it doesn't replace your palate.
Want to know how pre-brewing and pre-infusion affect extraction time? We explain that in the article Pre-brewing with espresso: What's it really good for? — including why 3 seconds of pre-infusion is almost always too short.
This article is also available as a video on our YouTube channel.
