Just curious if anyone has used their triple baskets and dosed a normal 16-17g dose in them on an E-61 style machine? Did they feel there was any benefit from the added headspace above the puck? My 17-18g doses generally swell enough to just barely touch the bottom of my screen.

I'm going to play around with it for a bit now, but just curious if anyone else felt there was a benefit to doing something like this. I never bother to use these triple baskets, yet somehow I've acquired 3 of them with the various gear over the past year or so.

I did 18g in a 20g VST for quite awhile, in an attempt to keep my shower-screen cleaner than it was with the 18g VST. It worked somewhat, but the extraction didn't seem much different. Distribution was a pain though.

I do it all the time. I have a triple in my machine all the time but on my machine you need headspace. Completely different dispersion block design than the E61's. To get 17-18 gram doses I have to use a triple. Once of the benefits of using a Titan class grinder is the lack of fuss in distribution. I dose around the perimeter of the basket as I grind so I end up with an even bed of coffee and not a mountain that needs re distributed. A light nutating tamp and I am good to go. If distribution is an issue because your dose is below the rim of the basket you could use the bowed finger method or get yourself one of those flexible roll up cutting boards and cut yourself some scrapers from it to fit your basket.

After reading this thread I tried it again.

All my pucks are soaked when I use 15gr or 18gr in the VST 15 and 18. When I use around 15,5gr in the VST-18 the puck doesn't touch the shower screen and is dry. This seems to give me better tasting espressos and extractions seems to flow better with less chance of channeling.

It all depends on the machine and design and isn't an abnormal thing to do. When you're used to "downdosing" the distribution will be easy again. It just takes a different way of distibution.

I'll probably buy the triple VST to put 17-18gr in there and never use the VST-15 again after doing this test .

I thought (and am still thinking) about doing this also. I believe this thread would be a good read :
How filter baskets affect espresso taste and barista technique

The data set is reproduced here for convenience.



along with an explanation of the chosen units by John Weiss -

Basket diameter is the linear distance across the open hole area, measured by ruler or micrometer on the bottom of the basket, given in tenths of millimeters (e.g., 430 = 43.0mm).

Average hole size is the mean hole diameter in micrometers (microns). This is computed from the individual hole areas and assumes hole circularity (visually, a reasonable assumption).

Hole "variance" is the standard deviation of the hole diameters in micrometers (microns).

Total hole area is given in square millimetres (mm2).

Did a test yesterday and without changing the grindsettings the flow/brew ratio was the same using 15,5gr versus 17,5gr of coffee in the VST-18. It seems that the expanding puck not touching the shower screen creates more resistance then a higher dosed shot where the puck touches the shower screen.

One would suggest that this difference of 2gr would give a much slower flow and higher brew ratio but with my machine this isn't the case. Also the last part of the shots seems to flow better with lower doses and less chance of channeling or twister cones. This would suggest that the puck expands more and more during the shot and in the end touches the shower screen enough to mess up the flow.