- Today, we're going to talk about espresso machine baskets.
Why are they so important?
Why are they, I think, an essential upgrade?
How do you tell if yours is good or not?
And how exactly do they affect the way you brew espresso.
All this and more, we will answer today.
Now this is kind of important.
I'm going to talk today about a couple of brands
that I think are good and make very good baskets.
What I can't do is really know the entire state
of the market, so I can't tell you
who's making bad baskets necessarily
or where different manufacturers are,
so we're not actually going to pick
on anyone necessarily today
and say "you're doing a bad job" but like I said,
we'll talk about how to literally identify
a well-made basket from a badly made basket.
Now, I need to do just a little bit of history
because the invention of the precision basket
is a relatively modern thing, go back maybe 12 years,
a little bit more,
it wasn't really something we thought about or worried about
despite the fact that actually it was having a big impact
on the way that we were making espresso.
Because you've got to remember that espresso comes
from Italy, it comes from 14 grams for a double
and modern espresso had started using 18 20, 22, 24 grams
of coffee in the same baskets.
And we hadn't thought about the way
that the baskets themselves were impacting
the coffee we were making.
Now we would have funny issues with baskets;
I've seen baskets split at the bottom,
I've seen badly made baskets where the flow
in a two group is totally different out of one side
than the other, because the baskets were inconsistent
in that regard and it can make a really big difference.
So it became a thing we worried about primarily due
to one man, one company. That was a guy called
Vince Fedele of VST who still make Precision Baskets,
who also make refractometers.
He had a very big impact on the industry.
His background: he did I think what was ultimately Apple's
first external hard drive, he has a background in technology
and he'd built a 3D fingerprint scanner.
And one day he put his espresso machine's basket
onto his 3D fingerprint scanner and was appalled
by the results.
What he saw was a lack of uniformity in the holes
at the bottom of the basket.
Not just with the varying sizes,
some weren't proper holes,
there hadn't been properly machined in the first place,
and then he put a different basket on
and saw, even though it was the same manufacturer,
it was different again.
And he saw an opportunity and he started to make baskets
that I think had a really really really big impact.
I was, for disclosure, a beta tester of those baskets back
in what would have been maybe 2010.
It did result in me making one
of the most satisfying espressos of my life,
Tim Wendelboe, fantastic roaster from Norway,
also a blunt and fussy man,
and I don't think he would mind me saying
that, he has strong opinions and is not afraid
to share them.
Well, he came to visit and I'd had some fun dialing
in his espresso blend, exactly how I wanted it to.
Because we were just at the beginning
of understanding weight in, weight out,
understanding the importance of those things.
And then having this basket
that let me properly extract coffee
let me serve him something that he couldn't make
in his shop.
And he left annoyed and
that made me embarrassingly delighted.
But let's get into why they impact espresso
and how they might make your espresso taste better.
It's important to understand that when you brew espresso,
the puck of coffee is doing most of the work
to create resistance to the water flowing from the pump,
but the basket plays a role too.
It's not just total open area,
it is mostly a solid surface
with some very small holes scattered throughout it.
That means that the basket offers some resistance.
What Vince very quickly worked out
was that for a fixed amount of coffee,
that resistance should be kind of commensurate,
it should match.
So that if you were say brewing 14 grams,
you might want to have more resistance
from the basket than if you were brewing say 18 grams.
Because if you kept the resistance the same you'd have
to grind your 18 grams much much coarser
to have a similar flow rate. Grinding coarser
decreases your extraction, you get more acidity,
you are tempted to roast darker,
you get into a cycle, a kind of spiral
of dark roasting under extraction that I think a lot
of the industry had been in for a long time.
And so Vince came along
and offered a different kind of thing,
and he began to produce baskets that had doses on the side.
If I get one for an 18 gram basket
and one for a 22 gram basket,
you'll see that they're actually quite different.
You get a little chart showing you the count of holes
and the hole sizes that's kind of interesting,
but you'll see there's a difference
in the distribution between the two.
So as a quick illustration of the total open area,
I'll show you a kind of simple experiment.
I'm going to grind about 40 grams of coffee
for espresso, a little bit more than I need.
I'm gonna give it a good mix up,
so that for each of these two doses
they're going to be using identical coffee.
And I'll put 18 grams into an 18 gram basket
and I'll put 18 grams into a 22 gram basket.
And we'll compare the flow from each one
because the 22 gram basket should have a larger open area,
we should see a faster flow.
Now I know there'll be some impact
from there being a larger headspace
in the 22 gram basket,
but really we're looking at just overall flow rate,
and I think it's a nice illustration
of the difference you get in well-made baskets.
Now this is all taken to its logical extreme
by these things: pressurized portafilter baskets.
They look normal on one side,
but you'll typically see this just one small hole
on the other side.
These are there to have the basket itself,
add all the resistance that's missing
because you're using coarsely-ground coffee.
When you use properly finely ground coffee,
the basket doesn't have to add much resistance,
if you're using pre-ground coffee,
the basket has to do a lot more work,
and so that's literally what's happening here.
The basket is adding all the resistance you're missing
to give you a kind of appropriate flow rate,
and to let you build the kind of pressure you need to
to pull out any CO2 that's in the coffee
to give you some sort of crema at the end of it,
so that's the extreme.
And you kind of don't want too much resistance
if you've got a good grinder.
Now, if you're out there shopping for a basket,
you've got a number of choices to make in terms
of the basket that you buy.
You'll see some baskets have ridges along the side here,
some do not, and the difference between a ridged
and ridgeless basket, isn't really in the brewing itself,
It's in the wider utility of the whole thing.
In an espresso machine portafilter,
you'll have a little spring, like this we call it a spring,
but it's just a piece of wire kind of clip that sits inside
and holds the basket.
If this is weak or the basket is ill-fitting the ridges
there to help give you another layer of security of holding
the basket in so that when you knock the puck out
that the basket doesn't fall out too.
In most cases, these clips are perfectly adequate
to not need a ridge on the basket and having
no ridge means that the puck knocks out cleaner,
and that's a good thing.
So I am a big fan of ridgeless baskets over ridged
and I would rather change this little clip out
and have a stiffer one than go to a ridged basket
from a kind of workflow perspective,
just because the easier, the better.
Now, the other thing that obviously changes
with different baskets in terms
of volume is actually the literal height of the basket here.
If you take an 18 gram basket and a 22 gram basket,
well, one is literally taller than the other
to allow more coffee in there without pressing it against
the shower screen,
you don't want to be mashing coffee
against the shower screen that may disrupt the puck as well,
so larger doses should go into larger baskets,
that makes total sense.
You can always underdose a basket,
and the downside will generally be that the puck
at the end is kind of sloppy and loose
because it's had a lot of space to expand
at the end of the shot.
So when you finish brewing espresso in many machines,
it discharges the pressure up through the group head,
and that causes the puck to expand.
The more space you have for expansion,
the looser and wetter the puck will be afterwards.
It doesn't tell you a lot more than that
so from a, again, workflow perspective,
I like to have a dry puck at the end
because it knocks out cleanly,
but if I have to drop the dose,
that's fine if I could only have one basket,
I would go for the largest dose I would ever want to use.
I might pick a 20 gram
even though I might brew 18 grams quite often,
but I can't brew 20 grams very effectively,
or certainly 21 in an 18 gram basket.
So if you're going to pick one,
go just a little bit bigger than you might need
that's my kind of recommendation,
but I understand that will be a little bit messier.
Now, if you want to assess the basket that you have,
it's kind of easy to do a very surface level assessment.
The first thing you should do is literally hold it up
to the light and inspect the holes.
If they are inconsistent in sizing,
if there are some holes that aren't completely punched
through and sadly that actually does happen
if they're kind of clogged
or you can see the hole itself is not perfectly circular,
it's kind of burred-shaped,
you don't have a well-made basket.
They are sadly very common, they are not doing a good job,
they will age really badly, they're more likely
to split those kinds of burred holes
will brew kind of differently than the ones
that are properly machined, it's just not recommended.
Espresso is hard enough, you don't need your basket
making your life harder.
You can go a little further and have a little look
with a microscope if you have one to hand
or a magnifying glass.
I think you'd be kind of surprised by what you see
with a cheaper espresso machine basket
and you compare that to one of the many precision baskets,
and it's not just VST.
I think Pullman do a nice set too,
IMS makes some nice baskets,
you'll really really see the difference.
Now, you'll see that all
of these baskets are generally straight walled baskets,
and these are double baskets designed
for at least 13, 14 grams of coffee
to pull what is a double espresso.
There are single baskets, these are difficult to work with.
Generally speaking, there are much more conical shapes
and they have a smaller open area at the bottom again,
because you want to sort of match the resistance
to having half the dose of a double basket.
They are obviously a different shape generally speaking,
the same dose, but cut in half won't match across to these.
Rarely do you see these used in homes,
but you do see them used all the time in Italy.
In fact, the kind of single basket
is, I feel like, used more often than not
in Italy compared to the double.
There are lots of different designs from manufacturers out
there you'll see some that are cone-shaped like this,
some that are almost little miniature straight walled
sort of sections in the middle
of the basket kind of dropped down,
they are more difficult to prep,
they're more difficult to brew evenly,
they're more likely to channel
or extract unevenly under most puck prep situations.
And so they're a really interesting challenge
if you're looking for one for espresso,
if you think espresso is easy,
get yourself a single basket I think
that's a good challenge.
Brewing better with it is maybe a different video
and a different topic but you should just know about
these things they're just not as easy as I wish they were,
but good results are possible.
You've just got to work for them that little bit harder.
And so that is a very quick overview
of espresso machine baskets.
I would strongly recommend
for just about every single machine out there
buying a precision basket. It is reliable,
it's well-made and it will get you better espresso
because it will let you grind finer
than most baskets will typically let you.
That higher open area is really useful
if you want to up your extraction game,
especially if you're using lighter roasts
or kind of trickier to extract, more complex,
more interesting coffees.
Don't be surprised if you switch to a precision basket
and you see your flow rate suddenly increase.
What was brewing at maybe 28 seconds is suddenly brewing
in 17 seconds, even though you didn't change the grinder,
that's pretty normal.
That's the difference in the resistance from the basket
that I think can be shocking for a lot of people.
The end result, I think, is a sweeter more complex espresso
than you would get from a cheaper basket
and a more reliable result.
And if you're in a cafe, then 100% precision baskets
so that you know that one group is brewing identically
to the other and to a third.
It's all too common with cheap machines
to have a different appearing flow rate just
because the baskets don't match and that is unacceptable
and extremely annoying.
There's a few brands I would recommend,
I'll leave some links to the descriptions down below.
I think IMS do do a 54 millimeter basket
for those of you that might have a Breville
or other machines with smaller baskets,
58 millimeter baskets are much much more common,
and there's a couple more options out there too,
but I'm not going to say one is superior to another.
I would just generally say precision baskets
are a good investment, will make your espresso better,
and now I want to hear from you.
Did you have a big change
in how you were brewing when you switched
to one of these baskets?
Did it make your espresso taste better?
I'd love to hear from you down in the comments below,
but for now, I'll say thank you so much
for watching and I hope you have a great day.