Yield

Yield is the weight of liquid espresso collected in the cup after a shot finishes brewing, weighed rather than measured by volume because crema and bubbles make volume unreliable. A common espresso recipe might use an eighteen gram dose to reach a thirty six gram yield, often written as a 1:2 ratio.

Yield and time together tell you whether a shot extracted well; a shot that reaches its target yield too quickly was likely ground too coarse, while one that takes far longer than expected was likely ground too fine. Adjusting the grind size, not the pour time itself, is usually the right way to fix a yield that is off target.

A small scale placed under the cup lets you watch yield build in real time and stop the shot at the right weight instead of guessing by eye. A common mistake is timing shots by the clock alone and ignoring yield, which misses cases where a machine's flow rate has changed even though the timing looks normal.