All the most sophisticated technique and an experienced barman will never succeed in extracting a good espresso by a poor coffee.
Blend or pure quality, coffee must be good, already pleasant, sweet, perfumed, and aromatic and leave a pleasant and lasting aftertaste.
Let's remember that always, after having drunk a good espresso, roasted in Italy, we have to feel the desire to taste another one. In the limit of the habits and the local tastes then, the coffee beans must be roast at the right point, because if it is too dark, it will result more bitter, if too clear, it will excessively be acid.

The coffee beans keep for a long time in the original package, bag or can, but, once opened the package, the product quickly deteriorates. To keep it in the best way, after using, it should be set in a watertight container and in the refrigerator.
The same technique can be used at home to keep the ground coffee, but in any case, even with this prudence the ground coffee will lose every value in few days.
Let's remember that ground coffee is around fifty times more perishable than the one in beans. This is, in fact, the increase, by the grinding, of the coffee's surface exposed to the oxidation of the atmosphere.
The barman should never keep the ground coffee for one day to the other in the coffee grinder and measurer.

To prepare a good Italian espresso, one has to fill the filter by the batcher; coffee must be pressed with strength of 10 - 20 kilos. A good barman will act pressing the coffee so that to compensate possible small differences of grinding.

Before hooking it to machine, the edge of the coffee filter must be polished up, because residual of coffee could limit the closing (with consequent loss of pressure) and form deposits on the gasket that will quickly deteriorate it. The time of extraction changes among 20 seconds for a strong coffee, and 40 for a long one. The quantity in cup will be accordingly between 20 and 40 ml.

Coffee has to come out with a throw that has the form of a “mouse's tail”, flowing in regular way. It's useless to remember that the external fund of the cup must be polished up before leaning it on the saucer.

“Having” a coffee at the bar represents for the most of people a moment of break, of “pause” from the stress and from the frenetic days, and that's why one of the fundamental ingredients of a “good coffee” is, with the quality of the product, the gentleness of the barman.
Exchanging merrily some word but also, simply, offering the service with a smile, they transmit to the Clients feelings of agreeability and liking: what, at that time, they look for and that, to the Barman doesn't cost anything after all.

What is sure is that a cordial and available Barman gets an affirmation stronger and stronger day by day from his own Clients that, in turn, aware always to find a suitable treatment, they will make that bar "their" own one.