First one is a long 5 minute effort where I attempt to talk through what I do step by step. Warning: it is dreadfully dull.
Second one is this mornings routine on the fly with no chit chat and therefore less painful to watch. Of the two shots this was marginally the better extraction.
18g straight walled vst basket used with naked PF. Coffee is Ethiopian yirg.
Although it's hard to see the evenness of cone during the extraction (turn on the flash of the iPhone next time), the pour looks nice and even and the crema has the right color.
Cheers for the tip. The first one the extraction was a little too quick but would have tasted good enough I reckon. The second was a very solid (and much needed) morning jolt.
Thanks Gino! I watched both videos as the L is heating up here and I can't wait to pull one myself now! Very nice presentation, especially your talking, relaxed and providing all the information, with some humor here and there. Beautiful tamper too. Nice technique.
as a coffee roaster, but not a barista, i am always very happy to take lessons in coffee prep as there as as many techniques are there are baristas almost
(too often it is implied that a champion barista also means a champion roaster, and i just don't believe that it logically follows. i.e. if A, then B. there will be cases where both conditions are true, but they are largely independent events and they certainly do not logically follow, one from the other)
roaster and barista are separate disciplines within the same industry, nothing more
i have been watching the posts on this thread and trying to make sense of it, at least for myself
in particular the VST thing has been bugging me
but since I've had a bit more time in the last few days i think I've figured it out
the vertical sides and the tight radius where it meets the base of the basket with mean it is very easy for the coffee grounds not to be pushed right into the very corner of this tight radius, and if this occurs its time for a donut extraction (and that is why the issue does not arise on the stock, tapered basket - all the angles involved are greater than 90 degrees, so you can easily get the coffee right into the corners
i have been debating at length with Dave Hyde, a L1 customer on this forum as he is a convex tamper man and i am a flat faced tamper man
but i concede that i have found the VSTs a challenge, so i had to get to the bottom of it and to that end i was even willing to consider going the convex way
but this is what i have discovered: nutating, which i have never done before, solves the issue for me
for this to make sense to those of you who hold differing views, let me tell you a bit more
i have little patience for convoluted rituals when it comes to grinding, dosing, tamping - i am always looking to simplify my method and improve my extraction
in particular i find stirring the grinds of coffee with a whisk to be a chore that eats away at me as the months pass
so i have a Compak K10 fresh which admittedly you are going to carry an overhead of ditching at least the first shot of the day out (stale) and really the second one too if you are fussy about it
but i am impressed with the consistency of the electronic dosing (which is more closely grouped than a robur can dream of)
i dose direct into the PF so it piles up in the classic volcano shape
i now take the LONDINIUM button tamper and nutate
for me this means copying the exact action that you used to put the top half of the group into the bottom half when your L1 arrived
i.e. it is not a spinning action. you are rolling the tamper around on its axis, as you might if it were a child's spinning top. you do not exert downward force on the tamper whilst nutating
there is no need to adapt an extreme angle, but the nutating action with the flat face tamper drives the coffee sideways in the basket, whilst that force is rotating at the same time - just as a child's spinning top does when it develops a wobble
this action seems to do a very good job of ensuring the coffee is driven right into this tight radius around the entire perimeter of the inside of the basket where the bottom of the basket meets the side
have performed 2, or at a maximum 3 revolutions of nutating you return the button tamper to the horizontal position and tamp down with light to moderate force
assuming you have a naked portafilter you should be able to see a dramatic improvement with the coffee bleeding out the holes in the bottom of the basket from outside to centre very very rapidly, so it almost looks as though it is bleeding evenly across the entire face
and one other note of caution, when you are docking the PF into the bottom of the group take care - if you knock and belt the PF too heavily as you do it you run the risk of dislodging the puck of coffee that you have so carefully tamped into the basket, and then all your efforts are in vain as the water will shoot straight down the side of the basket where you knock as broken the seal between the puck and the basket
let me know if using this approach you can get consistent results from your VST basket
oh, and i am using a 18gVST ridgeless and dosing about 16g for the duration of this experiment
if you are struggling out there with any part of your L1 experience please get a post up - i would hate it if you are sitting there going bah! am i the only one who can't get my machine to knock out a great shot? please don't suffer in silence - get a post up.
You obviously have been putting a lot of thought into this topic!
As to the flat, curved, debate I have found that a curved works better in the 7g basket because of that small bottom on the basket. I hope to be getting a "Euro Curved" Reg Barber tamper base next week which has a more pronounced curve than what I have been using. I have been dosing 10.5g into the 7g basket, sometimes a bit less. If there is not enough bean in the basket then the flat bottomed tamper hits the bottom of the basket.
Otherwise I have been using a flat tamper on your OEM and VST baskets. I seem to get good extractions with the 18g basket using 16.5g of beans an a 15g basket using 14g beans. The 22g VST I use for 2 milk drinks pulled at the same time.
I slightly nutate the tamper before pressing on it with a light tamp, making sure the tamper is sitting evenly in the basket before press the puck.
I also shake the grounds to settle them in the basket holder I make by sliding the holder back and forth on the counter.
Since I am one armed/handed for a month it will be a while before I can video the techniques.
i forgot to add that the reason i still favour the flat base is that for nutating a flat base gives you a 1:1 translation of the angle of inclination
with nutating instead of just using a downward force in the vertical plane to try and push the coffee grinds into every space inside the basket you are using the tilted base of the tamper sort of like the vanes on a coffee grinder with a doser to sweep the sideways as well as downwards, i.e. the force is no longer straight down, but angled outwards and rotating at the same time, a bit like a cake mixer
i.e. with a flat base if you tilt the tamper 'X' degrees the force is being applied to the coffee at angle 'X' too, which is what you want
with a convex base the more pronounced the angle of incline on the base the more it cancels out the angle of inclination you have applied to the tamper. I'm happy to be told otherwise, but for my money this can't be desirable
i.e. with a convex base with an angle of incline of say 10 degrees on the base (to keep the maths simple), then if you angled your tamper over by 10 degrees to nutate, the force would be directed to the coffee on the bottom of the tamper horizontally! as a result it is less likely to drive the coffee outwards into that tight radius, which is the whole point of nutating
milling the sides of the tamper so they lean in (i.e. tapering from bottom to top) would obviously allow you to nutate to a greater angle, but from my experiments here I'm getting all the inclination i need with vertical sides. vertical sides really help to ensure your tamp is level, which is important
Thinking over Reiss' posts, I got the idea to switch on the Mazzer Mini again. Had not used it for months, but since Reiss isn't using the HG One in his experiments with nutating and the flat based tamper, I thought this could maybe make a difference.
And it does. Using the Mazzer Mini with the Super Jolly burrs, single dosing, with the finger protection shield and the little anti-static wire mesh removed, I grind into the straight walled VST basket in the PF with Stephen Sweeney's acrylic funnel on top. Then without stirring the grinds, I use a finger to even out the cone in the basket and I use the LONDINIUM button tamper to nutate and press.
Only one in about ten test shots I saw some early circle of drops along the outside of the PF, all the rest was just fine.
So it seems reasonable in my case, for now, to conclude that it's mainly the HG One making it more difficult to use the flat button tamper in straight walled baskets. The HG One with tapered basket or convex tamper is easy.
To me, it seems no L1 or tamper issue but more like a grinder subject.
the issue for me was why i found the straight sided, tight radius cornered VSTs so difficult to get a nice extraction out of, HG1 or K10f, whereas the stock L1 baskets were so easy it's incredible
stirring the grinds before tamping to assist in an even distribution of large, medium, and small grounds (& diff shaped grounds) throughout the puck def helps, but i really resent the time it takes to stir the grounds, having to find a whisk, usu putting a few grounds on the bench or floor while I'm at it - i place high premium on fuss free prep
nutating, something i have not done before, resolves the issue for me - i can now achieve good pours from VST baskets, so for me that is an advancement. hope it is of some use to anyone else finding the L1 stock basket trouble free and the VSTs more of a challenge
This is a very enlightening thread on technique and I am grateful to every poster for their contribution(s). I am a freshman home barista but I am not unschooled in scientific research and good unscientific (anecdotal) research. I work with an L1, three tampers (2 convex, 1 flat) and a K-10wbc. The things that benefit me the most are keeping my eyes open, trying things for myself and not discounting others' experiences.
My reaction to this thread ia that it is a correlation between behavior going in (technique) and behavior coming out (infusion, stream, crema). Demonstrable behaviors are a lot easier to document by photo, video or even descriptors than are subjective outcomes such as taste.
Gino M. was the only poster who used the word 'taste' (twice).
Does the difference between a non-nutated straight basket with a modicum of 'edge-collection' (are you sure edge collection always = edge channeling?) and a tapered basket result in a consistently different tasting cup?
I would be more interested in even a 'soft' anecdotal answer, such as, "we asked ourselves that question and so we got together once..." or clarification, "as you implied, this is an in/out engineering/technique discussion which may or may not be a prime determinate when it comes to taste..." and less interested in opinion, such as, "edge channeling always degrades the taste of the infusion, everyone knows that..." Buckley
Comments
First one is a long 5 minute effort where I attempt to talk through what I do step by step. Warning: it is dreadfully dull.
Second one is this mornings routine on the fly with no chit chat and therefore less painful to watch. Of the two shots this was marginally the better extraction.
18g straight walled vst basket used with naked PF. Coffee is Ethiopian yirg.
Let me know if these links fail.
Although it's hard to see the evenness of cone during the extraction (turn on the flash of the iPhone next time), the pour looks nice and even and the crema has the right color.
Thank you for sharing.
Kfir.
Cheers for the tip. The first one the extraction was a little too quick but would have tasted good enough I reckon. The second was a very solid (and much needed) morning jolt.
(too often it is implied that a champion barista also means a champion roaster, and i just don't believe that it logically follows. i.e. if A, then B. there will be cases where both conditions are true, but they are largely independent events and they certainly do not logically follow, one from the other)
roaster and barista are separate disciplines within the same industry, nothing more
i have been watching the posts on this thread and trying to make sense of it, at least for myself
in particular the VST thing has been bugging me
but since I've had a bit more time in the last few days i think I've figured it out
the vertical sides and the tight radius where it meets the base of the basket with mean it is very easy for the coffee grounds not to be pushed right into the very corner of this tight radius, and if this occurs its time for a donut extraction
(and that is why the issue does not arise on the stock, tapered basket - all the angles involved are greater than 90 degrees, so you can easily get the coffee right into the corners
i have been debating at length with Dave Hyde, a L1 customer on this forum as he is a convex tamper man and i am a flat faced tamper man
but i concede that i have found the VSTs a challenge, so i had to get to the bottom of it and to that end i was even willing to consider going the convex way
but this is what i have discovered: nutating, which i have never done before, solves the issue for me
for this to make sense to those of you who hold differing views, let me tell you a bit more
i have little patience for convoluted rituals when it comes to grinding, dosing, tamping - i am always looking to simplify my method and improve my extraction
in particular i find stirring the grinds of coffee with a whisk to be a chore that eats away at me as the months pass
so i have a Compak K10 fresh which admittedly you are going to carry an overhead of ditching at least the first shot of the day out (stale) and really the second one too if you are fussy about it
but i am impressed with the consistency of the electronic dosing (which is more closely grouped than a robur can dream of)
i dose direct into the PF so it piles up in the classic volcano shape
i now take the LONDINIUM button tamper and nutate
for me this means copying the exact action that you used to put the top half of the group into the bottom half when your L1 arrived
i.e. it is not a spinning action. you are rolling the tamper around on its axis, as you might if it were a child's spinning top. you do not exert downward force on the tamper whilst nutating
there is no need to adapt an extreme angle, but the nutating action with the flat face tamper drives the coffee sideways in the basket, whilst that force is rotating at the same time - just as a child's spinning top does when it develops a wobble
this action seems to do a very good job of ensuring the coffee is driven right into this tight radius around the entire perimeter of the inside of the basket where the bottom of the basket meets the side
have performed 2, or at a maximum 3 revolutions of nutating you return the button tamper to the horizontal position and tamp down with light to moderate force
assuming you have a naked portafilter you should be able to see a dramatic improvement with the coffee bleeding out the holes in the bottom of the basket from outside to centre very very rapidly, so it almost looks as though it is bleeding evenly across the entire face
and one other note of caution, when you are docking the PF into the bottom of the group take care - if you knock and belt the PF too heavily as you do it you run the risk of dislodging the puck of coffee that you have so carefully tamped into the basket, and then all your efforts are in vain as the water will shoot straight down the side of the basket where you knock as broken the seal between the puck and the basket
let me know if using this approach you can get consistent results from your VST basket
oh, and i am using a 18gVST ridgeless and dosing about 16g for the duration of this experiment
if you are struggling out there with any part of your L1 experience please get a post up - i would hate it if you are sitting there going bah! am i the only one who can't get my machine to knock out a great shot? please don't suffer in silence - get a post up.
You obviously have been putting a lot of thought into this topic!
As to the flat, curved, debate I have found that a curved works better in the 7g basket because of that small bottom on the basket. I hope to be getting a "Euro Curved" Reg Barber tamper base next week which has a more pronounced curve than what I have been using. I have been dosing 10.5g into the 7g basket, sometimes a bit less. If there is not enough bean in the basket then the flat bottomed tamper hits the bottom of the basket.
Otherwise I have been using a flat tamper on your OEM and VST baskets. I seem to get good extractions with the 18g basket using 16.5g of beans an a 15g basket using 14g beans. The 22g VST I use for 2 milk drinks pulled at the same time.
I slightly nutate the tamper before pressing on it with a light tamp, making sure the tamper is sitting evenly in the basket before press the puck.
I also shake the grounds to settle them in the basket holder I make by sliding the holder back and forth on the counter.
Since I am one armed/handed for a month it will be a while before I can video the techniques.
with nutating instead of just using a downward force in the vertical plane to try and push the coffee grinds into every space inside the basket you are using the tilted base of the tamper sort of like the vanes on a coffee grinder with a doser to sweep the sideways as well as downwards, i.e. the force is no longer straight down, but angled outwards and rotating at the same time, a bit like a cake mixer
i.e. with a flat base if you tilt the tamper 'X' degrees the force is being applied to the coffee at angle 'X' too, which is what you want
with a convex base the more pronounced the angle of incline on the base the more it cancels out the angle of inclination you have applied to the tamper. I'm happy to be told otherwise, but for my money this can't be desirable
i.e. with a convex base with an angle of incline of say 10 degrees on the base (to keep the maths simple), then if you angled your tamper over by 10 degrees to nutate, the force would be directed to the coffee on the bottom of the tamper horizontally! as a result it is less likely to drive the coffee outwards into that tight radius, which is the whole point of nutating
milling the sides of the tamper so they lean in (i.e. tapering from bottom to top) would obviously allow you to nutate to a greater angle, but from my experiments here I'm getting all the inclination i need with vertical sides. vertical sides really help to ensure your tamp is level, which is important
And it does. Using the Mazzer Mini with the Super Jolly burrs, single dosing, with the finger protection shield and the little anti-static wire mesh removed, I grind into the straight walled VST basket in the PF with Stephen Sweeney's acrylic funnel on top. Then without stirring the grinds, I use a finger to even out the cone in the basket and I use the LONDINIUM button tamper to nutate and press.
Only one in about ten test shots I saw some early circle of drops along the outside of the PF, all the rest was just fine.
So it seems reasonable in my case, for now, to conclude that it's mainly the HG One making it more difficult to use the flat button tamper in straight walled baskets. The HG One with tapered basket or convex tamper is easy.
To me, it seems no L1 or tamper issue but more like a grinder subject.
the issue for me was why i found the straight sided, tight radius cornered VSTs so difficult to get a nice extraction out of, HG1 or K10f, whereas the stock L1 baskets were so easy it's incredible
stirring the grinds before tamping to assist in an even distribution of large, medium, and small grounds (& diff shaped grounds) throughout the puck def helps, but i really resent the time it takes to stir the grounds, having to find a whisk, usu putting a few grounds on the bench or floor while I'm at it - i place high premium on fuss free prep
nutating, something i have not done before, resolves the issue for me - i can now achieve good pours from VST baskets, so for me that is an advancement. hope it is of some use to anyone else finding the L1 stock basket trouble free and the VSTs more of a challenge
Do you want some more Reiss?
I am a freshman home barista but I am not unschooled in scientific research and good unscientific (anecdotal) research. I work with an L1, three tampers (2 convex, 1 flat) and a K-10wbc. The things that benefit me the most are keeping my eyes open, trying things for myself and not discounting others' experiences.
My reaction to this thread ia that it is a correlation between behavior going in (technique) and behavior coming out (infusion, stream, crema). Demonstrable behaviors are a lot easier to document by photo, video or even descriptors than are subjective outcomes such as taste.
Gino M. was the only poster who used the word 'taste' (twice).
Does the difference between a non-nutated straight basket with a modicum of 'edge-collection' (are you sure edge collection always = edge channeling?) and a tapered basket result in a consistently different tasting cup?
I would be more interested in even a 'soft' anecdotal answer, such as, "we asked ourselves that question and so we got together once..." or clarification, "as you implied, this is an in/out engineering/technique discussion which may or may not be a prime determinate when it comes to taste..." and less interested in opinion, such as, "edge channeling always degrades the taste of the infusion, everyone knows that..."
Buckley