I'm a big fan (as many are) of the VST baskets, and I've always been intrigued about Vince Fedele's comment that what led him to design the VST baskets was looking closely at the holes of available baskets and seeing the inconsistent hole size and shape. However, I haven't seen Vince release any photos, so I've been meaning to do my own photos to see what I found.

The argument about consistent hole sizes (that I buy into) is that inconsistent holes cause water under pressure to preferably move toward the larger holes, and thus under-extract the coffee that is over the smaller holes. Really inconsistent holes likely promote channeling too.

There might be a thread on HB about this with photos, but I haven't found it (so please point me to it if there is).

Attached is a photo, with my EOS 5d mark ii and a macro lens, of the Breville dual-boiler's basket.

I haven't annotated it much, because I didn't want to mess up the photo, but I have put arrows on two pairs of holes where you can see a size difference.

I'm not happy with the quality of the photos I've managed to take with my macro lens, so I'm ordering a light table an a 8 megapixel USB microscrope, so that I can really see what's going on. The holes appear round in this photo, but that might just be an artifact of the poor photo quality.

decent_espresso wrote:There might be a thread on HB about this with photos, but I haven't found it (so please point me to it if there is).

See How filter baskets affect espresso taste and barista technique.

Phil McKnight of Breville took some high magnification snaps of the Breville basket as well as a VST and some other well known commercial 58mm unit. He did it in such a way that the metal part was essentially black, and the holes were clear white, though not bright enough to glare. Not sure how he did it. Maybe he had access to shop or lab grade equipment because of his position?

I will try to link to them later as able.

-Peter

The breville baskets are high quality, so I wouldn't use those for a gauge on how wonky baskets can be.

I've got a 500X USB microscope on its way to me now, and a light table too, and will post an updated photo when I get it.

This endeavour is partly so that I can find a neutral way to test our own baskets against a known high quality standard.

-john

Well shoot, John. We all know VSTs reputation for precision construction, and Breville has shown to be quite precise by the folks who have bothered to look as well. I'm sure some of us with Breville machines would like to see pics from a second source besides Phil, comparing Breville with VST, not to mention your own.

-Peter

pcrussell50 wrote:Well shoot, John. We all know VSTs reputation for precision construction, and Breville has shown to be quite precise by the folks who have bothered to look as well. I'm sure some of us with Breville machines would like to see pics from a second source besides Phil, comparing Breville with VST, not to mention your own.

Paul Pratt of Cafelat told me that there are only two factories in the world that make really top end baskets: one is in Italy, and the other is in China. We're using the China one, and I'm interested to see how they perform compared to Breville's, LM's and VST's. I know that the people we're using supply some of those companies just named.

Hehe yea, eyeballing hole sizes to compare larger and smaller holes in alternating light and dark spaces would probably be super confusing. Looking forward to it. What type of lens are you using? Wouldn't it be conceivable that lens distortions could affect the measurements if taken beyond some certain level of precision?

I'm using an EOS 5d mk ii with a macro lens, and I agree with you that photo quality (lens and noise) is likely not telling us the real story, which is why I have a digital microscope camera on its way to me now (500x).

Whoops! One of those right before falling asleep moments