The ultimate de-clumper/WDT

Beginner and pro baristas share tips and tricks for making espresso.
tonythewonderful
Posts: 92
Joined: 8 years ago

#1: Post by tonythewonderful »

My mini has one major problem - clumps. With the grill it was somewhat better, but when the mini got chocked with grinds, the grill had to go, and I started getting much chunkier results.



One of the posts suggested using a flour sifter to de-clamp the grinds.


In the original post folks were taking about attaching the sifter in place of mini's funnel. The results looked promising.

However, before messing with my mini, I decided to give it a try by simply catching the grinds in some container, and then sifting them through the mini's funnel into the basket.
That worked perfectly. Just look at the grinds before and after the sifting.


It turned out that permanently attaching the sifter to mini would be a fatal mistake. The problem is that just by "twaking" its lever, not all grinds can be sifted through. Some will get stack to the sides.


So some light (and not so light) tapping and shaking is necessary to get all the grinds through the sifter.

After a few weeks of such use, the sifter's spring, that returns the lever, gave up.


Now I am using it without the spring, this makes no difference on the results.


With the clumps sorted, and grinds in the basket, the problem of even distribution showed up.
As many of us here, I've been using WDT to get rid of clumps and get a better distribution of grinds in basket.

This post suggested quite a few upgrades of the WDT tool.

Here is the option that I use:




You will need:
1. Single basket (it is probably sitting useless anyway)
2. Toothpicks
3. Some greenish goo (Power Tack re-usable adhesive)






The sticky thing goes inside the basket, and the toothpicks go into the adhesive. (do not use to many toothpicks - they will compress the grinds, and the grids will stuck in between the toothpicks, and will be lifted out of the basket).

To distribute the grinds I just gently push my WDT tool into the basket with grinds several times, changing position slightly every time, then lightly tamp, and it's ready.




So the whole technic works as follows:

1. Weight 14 g of beans
2. Grind them into a small container
3. Sift them into the basket through the mini's funnel
4. WDT
5. Tamp

Of course this is not something you want to use in a cafe setting. But at home it works for me like a charm. I rarely see any gashes or uneven extraction.

And besides, when you perform that tapping and sifting and WDT'ing in front of your friends they will be immediately convinced that you know something about coffee they don't!
And if you add some chanting and incantation to the process, you will be regarded as the ultimate coffee guru, I guarantee it.