I recently took delivery of a bottomless PF and decided to try out this weekend. Yesterday was my first try with it. Grinding straight into the PF (with a funnel on), WDT, tamp, and then lock in. While I got not spurts, I did get 2 clear small areas where the water was clearly just avoiding. Today I ground straight into PF like yesterday, but no WDT and just gave the PF a shake around to even out the bed, then tamp, and lock in. Though not perfect, it was a considerable improvement over yesterday where there were no obvious areas that the water was avoiding. Taste wise, definitely better today. Thoughts?

DrForinor - I find a lot is dependent on the coffee. I WDT all the time, and sometimes think… but what if I don’t…. And surprisingly, it works well. And then, at times, it’s horrifying. So I stick with WDT…. Personally, my goal in life is to remove unnecessary steps from processed and routines. If you don’t need WDT… then don’t do it. 👍

MediumRoastSteam That’s honestly what I was thinking. I am trying to streamline the process as much as possible and if that means I can skip a step (a variable) then I’d prefer to do that.

Learn to tap instead if you find WDT isn’t working. I tried it and it’s not for me, too much faff and inconsistency if you don’t do it thoroughly enough. Saw no real improvement for meticulous wdt vs tapping even if the shot looked marginally better for a second as it came together. Tapping is quick, so you lose less heat from the portafilter and basket, and does a good enough job to prevent channeling.

Rob1 Tapping is quick do you mean distribution by tapping? https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/how-to-distribute-by-tapping/

Rob1 In regards to tapping, if I shake the PF to even the beds, and then tamp without tapping, how does that compare to shake, tap then tamp?

No idea, I’d imagine shaking can compact the grinds a bit more.

On paper everything about WDT should improve things but for whatever reason I also just seem to get consistently better results from a quick tap on the side to level and tamp. I’ve tried WDT a few times and don’t notice really any improvement at all in what ends up in the cup.

Ernie1 I don’t bother with WDT once the coffee is in the PF, just a few bumps with the heel of my hand to level. I do use a chopstick to give grinds a stir in the Niche cup, but that’s mainly to kill the static completely.

DavecUK That’s a great idea! I use the Niche cup on the Mazzer as it’s such a brilliant design but didn’t think to take care of the odd bit of static before tipping it into the PF.

Chopstic is perfect, because you can wipe around the sides of the cup.

Better result without WDT?

DrForinor

tompoland I’ve tested rest duration a lot. A caveat: most people don’t like it and will disagree with my conclusions but then again, most of them won’t have tested day after day like I have.

Light roasted beans are bit peak flavor after 30 days post roast.

With many batches of City roasts (Medium/Light) they have hit peak at 28 days or thereabouts.

It’s funny you come to this conclusion.

Both my sister and I have tested resting periods fairly extensively and that was our result also!! We assumed it was because we were using a bean to cup that it was different.

Rob1

JHCCoffee Question: What’s the right amount of headroom? Is the “nickle test” still true or passe? Or does the right amount of headroom result from a basket loaded to + or - 10% of basket rating, with neither sloppiness or the puck sticking to the shower screen? Or?

The ideal fill height is related to shot quality, not whether or not pucks stick to the shower screen or knock out sloppy. You’re making espresso not pucks. A sloppy puck or one that is stuck to the shower screen doesn’t tell you anything about the shot.

Doram

tompoland DrForinor I’ve tested rest duration a lot. A caveat: most people don’t like it and will disagree with my conclusions but then again, most of them won’t have tested day after day like I have.

Light roasted beans are bit peak flavor after 30 days post roast.

I tend to use what I consider to be medium roasts, and find that the coffee starts to peak at around 14 days, so not surprised that light roasts take longer. For me the golden window tends to be from ~day 14 until I finish the batch, so probably days 14-30. I usually don’t have anything left beyond that, so don’t know what happens after, but during that window I don’t feel any deterioration (I store the beans in vacuvin containers and pump the air out). When I see people say they start drinking on day 5 (considering that by day 14 the coffee could be gone), I think that they don’t know what they are missing.

(But this is a thread about wdt, so not the best place to discuss resting times. :))

Rob1

Regardless of when the flavor peaks I’ve found it takes a very long time for the coffee to actually go rancid. I ran several batches through the Amazon and drank through a few kilos over a period of months. Flavour peaks were found on immediately opening the back after resting for a week, but then the next day it wasn’t ready to drink. The next peak came probably two-three weeks later and then another after 4 weeks. Same again for about 6/7 weeks. The reason for these different peaks was I found different flavours coming through and rising to dominance at different times, and some seeming to appear from out of nowhere as they were undetectable previously. Depending on the flavours you want you might interpret the peak differently. I can’t remember exactly how it was but I’m fairly confident floral notes were the first to go. Fruit became prominent after around 4 weeks and then tannins (black tea notes) and chocolate from 6/7 weeks with fruit that slowly died down over the next month or so. Floral notes then seemed to magically reappear but that would be a freshly opened bag. I was drinking coffee roasted at the start of August into December and was probably happiest with the complexity of flavour around October-November.

wilburpan

I use a toothpick for WDT. Works great in my hands.

My sense is that it’s not the WDT that’s the important thing. It’s winding up with an even distribution of ground coffee by whatever means so that you have a better chance of getting an even puck after tamping.

A little while ago I tried an experiment where I deliberately distributed the coffee unevenly, tamped the heck out of it to overcome the unevenness, and still got a great shot of espresso. At the very least, this shows that WDT isn’t required for great espresso. Having said that, doing WDT with my toothpick and then tamping is a far easier way of achieving that result, so that’s why I do it.

The fact that people seem to be able to achieve great results with a variety of WDT tools is another sign to me that the end product (reasonably well-distributed coffee) is the important thing, not how you get there.

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