JHCCoffee no water is not bypassing your coffee grounds, it’s still going through your coffee grounds to get to the filter at the bottom. It tastes weaker because it requires more puck resistance, the same logic behind why you need to grind finer with precision baskets than with regular ones. The paper filter isn’t creating the problem, the basket design is, which funnels water through the middle rather than the entire bottom surface.
The idea is that water will take the shortest and easiest route to get out, either to a filter directly below the coffee puck then out of the basket’s holes (after extracting more of the puck first) or alternatively straight to the holes that surround some but not all of the basket in the middle, bypassing some of the edges of the puck in the process.
I don’t think this is a YouTube bandwagon as it was something Decent espresso/Home Barista forum users experimented with first. While I shared your scepticism I was won over by the research that shows higher and more even extractions. Again not for everyone as you need to find what suits you, I think this favours lighter roasts that are inherently harder to get more out of anyway.
