La Marzocco Strada basket
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I purchased a La Marzocco Strada Medium, or 16 - 18 gram basket. I always weigh my dose to 18 grams for a double shot, and I never have enough grounds to form or shape, or level the dose before tamping. I level it while I break up the clumps with a toothpick or pin, and then tamp. I get a little channeling and spurting. I am getting good pulls, and they taste good, but the pucks are pretty wet, and do not hold their shape when I dump them. Am I doing anything wrong, or just how the new basket works? I have a Rancilio Silvia and a Super Jolly.
- HB
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If you're concern is wet, sloppy pucks, there's no need to worry. See previous "wet puck" discussions for more details. Below is an excerpt from one of them.
cafeIKE wrote:Finer grind and lower doses = wetter pucks.
We tend to worry about the taste.
HB wrote:Ian's right, there has been a rash of posts expressing concern about puck appearance. I will add it to the FAQs. Below are some previous discussions:
Wet, glunky pucks
How do my pucks look?
Wet pucks: Do beans make any difference?
I've not discovered a correlation between the appearance of the puck post-extraction and the taste of the espresso. Moreover, there's nothing inherently wrong with small puddles of water on the puck's surface, though it should be consistent from shot-to-shot. That is, if you see big puddles one time, dry as sand the next, that's a problem. But if the puck's surface looks and feels basically the same each time, I believe you've exhausted the value of "puckology."
That's why I am wary of claims that one can see evidence of channeling on the puck's surface. Afterall, most espresso machines have 3-way valves and they depressurize from 130 PSI to 0 in an instant. I think that any fissures are as likely caused by rapid depressurization as channeling during the extraction.
Dan Kehn
- shawndo
- Posts: 1015
- Joined: 14 years ago
If it tastes good, don't worry about it too much. But in the spirit of experimentation, I would try and up the dose just to see how the taste changes.Mochamaker wrote:I purchased a La Marzocco Strada Medium, or 16 - 18 gram basket. I always weigh my dose to 18 grams for a double shot, and I never have enough grounds to form or shape, or level the dose before tamping. I level it while I break up the clumps with a toothpick or pin, and then tamp. I get a little channeling and spurting. I am getting good pulls, and they taste good, but the pucks are pretty wet, and do not hold their shape when I dump them. Am I doing anything wrong, or just how the new basket works? I have a Rancilio Silvia and a Super Jolly.
I would get channeling and a wet puck with a low dose in a strada basket, but it was also underextracted, so didn't taste right.
Strada branded baskets should be marked with a dose weight on the side. They come in 7,14,17 and 21 denominations. Does it actually say "17g" on the side ?
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra