A colleague who has sent me coffee to review also supplies commercial espresso equipment for restaurants, bars, etc. Someone consulted them about using espresso machine to brew chicory and they wondered if I had any experience/knowledge about this? I'm ASSUMING the client meant chicory coffee, like a Cafe du Monde or something, and not pure chicory. Anyone have any experience with this, know anything about it? I'm assuming the client wants to make fast Vietnamese coffee, but I have very little info to go on.

Conceptually I guess it should work, but the logistics sound tricky.

Chicory is roasted and cut rather than ground, and I've only seen it in particle size that is fairly coarse, like coarse drip coffee. These larger particles wouldn't extract well in an espresso machine I imagine. You might be able to run the already cut chicory through a coffee grinder to reduce particle size, but I'm not about to try it on my grinder someone else can be the guinea pig for that.

I normally keep chicory around (My wife likes New Orleans style Cafe Au Lait) but I'm out at the moment. Next time I have some I may see what happens if I throw some in with an otherwise normal shot.

Last summer I found some wild chicory and harvested, roasted, and ground it. I used a spice grinder not my Kafatek

You could definitely grind it like coffee. I used it for cold brew so mine was pretty coarse but I could see going finer but not with a hand grinder.

As for putting it alone in an espresso machine without coffee? I've seen worse!

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