Curious to hear about other folks' experience with singles on their various levers. When I was first learning on my '80 Europiccola, I found the single basket to be very challenging - relative to the double basket, it was difficult to get a good shot. Two years later, I find that my single baskets deliver some of my best shots on different levers - Sama Export; Caravel Ursula; the aforementioned Europiccola; Brunella. On other levers I still struggle with the single basket. Clearly there is a learning curve involved, but I was still surprised upon revisiting these how much better the shots could be.

What have others found?

I haven't tried a single basket in my Faemina yet, but have use the single basket in both my PID La Peppina and my Gaggia Factory. For the La Peppina, I found that I needed to limit my pre-infusion to five seconds with a single instead of my normal ten to avoid over-extracted flavors. With the Gaggia Factory, I think even five seconds pre-infusion was too much and I had the best results with a fairly immediate pull.

I credited the difference in required techniques to the differences in temperature of the two, the La Peppina is an open kettle and I have it on a PID so there was little risk of cooking the coffee in the basket while the Gaggia Factory is a closed boiler with a pressure stat that I would control the temperature on by a lowered pstat and a cool portafilter to cool the group between shots. I imagine that the Faemina would act more like the Gaggia Factory in this respect.

I really liked playing with singles on the La Peppina, since this allowed me to prepare on the order of six different singles at different temperatures to discover how the temperature affected the coffee flavors. I can't drink six doubles but six singles are more doable. With the Gaggia Factory and Faema Faemina, I don't have the level of control to be able to pull off six different shots at different temperatures, and usually pull doubles. The shot volume on the Faemina is pretty small with a single pull anyhow.

My Caravel "single" basket comfortably holds about 12g, so it is definitely verging on a small-ish double. Maybe a "1.5" basket would be a better term?

But with that caveat, I do love the shots I pull using that basket. They have a bit less body than my 15g doubles, but added clarity. I also like the fact that I can skip all the Fellini business and just do a single pull of the lever.

Doubles for the morning and early afternoon, singles for the evening!

every once in a while I try the single on my lusso. It always leaves me wondering why I attempted it.

Luckily my Gaggia Factory baskets fit the Faema Faemina, so I think I'll try a Faemina single.

I do agree to the added clarity of singles, but the La Peppina has a lot more clarity than my other levers in general.

Single baskets? what are they?

fuggedaboutit...

though- recently Ponte Vecchio made a new super tiny- (8 gram?) half size basket. I tried it out a few times- was actually fun- making tiny thimble sized single pull no fellini micro shots... then I put them in the drawer. I think they are for those cloth pods?

if you want to try small baskets maybe you should go all the way:

http://translate.google.it/translate?u= ... t&ie=UTF-8

Alright, so I pulled out the single basket of my Faemina and went to work. I have never used this basket before. The basket looks new so I gather the previous owner shelved it as well. It didn't help that I was working with a fresh batch of coffee, as I hadn't dialed my grinder for it yet. I ended up going up 4 steps on the grinder as I was severely choking the machine. I can fit 11 grams of coffee in the single basket; more so if I really pack it in. After attempt 3 I decided to go way lower and tried 8 grams. I got something half drinkable but I didn't quite care for the taste. I realize it will take more practice. The profile was rather flat. I didn't get the citrus/fruit flavours I normally get out of this coffee. I probably should have kept coarsening the grind while keeping the dose the same. I might experiment a bit more with it.

Single baskets are a whole other beast. My main issue early on was that I always choked machines trying to use them. You definitely have to dose less then you think with them, and the tamp is even different than with a double basket on the same machine. When you find the sweet spot with single baskets, though, I have found that they can deliver a great deal of clarity and, dare I say, a delicacy that is somewhat counter-intuitive with espresso.

because I'm a weakling and can't tolerate much caffeine at all, I always use the single basket when
I'm pulling straight shots that way I can have 2 of them (different coffees or slight variation in pull).
10g from the Pharos is usually spot on for me. After 2 singles, I need a beer or three to calm down...

I use single filters when I make a single cup and double filters when I make two cups.
It can be tricky, till you figure it out.

First, I don't overdose singles, they are designed to carry from 6 to 8gr (I use 7.5gr in a LM style filter).
You got to get the grounds in the middle, were the holes are, that is the coffee that is going to be extracted, and nowhere else (grounds out of this limit will make leveling much more difficult).

Second, get a smaller or curved tamper, that allows to press better that part of the filter.

Third, adjust your grind, it may need a finer setting than you normally use with doubles, specially if you overdose.

I use a jam funnel to get the grinds in place and the 56mm curved plastic tamper, attached to my Macap grinder, that works perfectly well.

There is a German guy that sells (quite pricey) specially made sets of funnels and tampers, for different filters, that allow to get the grinds and tamp in place very easy and consistently. Works very well, however I never needed that.

There is another detail, I find the LM single filters, that have a "top hat" format and fewer holes, are easier to tamp than the flatter filters with more holes, such as the standard Bezzera single filter, that require finer grinds.