It's interesting yet what do you do with the knowledge once you learn where you want your fines? It's not that anyone is going to sieve their grounds out in fractions....I'm all for science (working in that arena) but it should be practical, if you find Too much WDT gives a certain behavious with a specific grinder/coffee/roast combination that's one thing but it's hardly going to be a universal thing IF you can draw conclusions from the few experiments we can do at home...but that is just my opinion, and I sure am interested in the mechanics behind it.

Anyone capable of analyzing grounds fractions at home?

Marcel the technique I would employ is the gently shake the basket side to side several times with the expectation the finer particles are sifted down to the bottom... if that were the best option. I have not had a chance to extensive validate this this however that has been my MO when directly dosing grounds from my HG one. I can't say for certain though if doing this actually resulted in all the fines being at the bottom. I can say with certainty though that it works consistently to prevent spritzing and that the resulting spent puck is particularly rough on the top surface and smooth on the underside--more so than a normal prepped puck.

O don't get me wrong pls, I meant to comment the fact that wo particle analysis there would be little science in the experiment. I don't fancy digging up the upper layers like an archeologist and then analyzing them under a microscope but hey, that's why I don't work in a lab

As to shaking, perhaps we could differentiate further by using vibration of some sort to agitate the grounds without making a mess and compare that with no shake or tap and regular wdt(thinking electrical toothbrush here, but a lab tube agitator would probably be ideal). That way we would have three pour times groups. Also think we'd have tp give the grounds some thoughts as 1g (or perhaps less already) off would spoil the results as would a heating grinder or different water temp or differently staled grounds (perhaps best to grind a whole lot take a midstream sample and age that half aday or so to take out that variable.
There also will have to be some folks to rate the spritzers and some (not the same as seeing a spritzer is likely to bias taste results) with an ultra high caffeine tolerance to blind taste and score samples. Pls keep in mind we'd also need to use more than one grinder and several coffee varieties, but let's work on a small proof of concept studt first.

Working title:
Three arm single blind coffee grounds investigating the effects of shaking vs stirring on distribution by measuring pour times and spritzers and taste confirmatory proof of concept study.

I'll work out the rough budget after the synopsis has been approved by the HB TAC (Trial Approval Comittee) and we have some timelines for the project.

Marcelnl wrote:I'll work out the rough budget after the synopsis has been approved by the HB TAC (Trial Approval Comittee) and we have some timelines for the project.

TBH I don't think this is even possible to measure under scientific scrutiny unless methods are developed to take measurements within the an acceptable period of time, as it is commonly understood that the moment beans are grinded they start to degrade; that the window of opportunity for optimal extraction is so narrow (15-30 seconds?) that the mere act of measuring changes that which is measured.. did I just described schrodinger's cat?

I reasoned that if you wait long enough for the grounds to have gone uniformly stale any difference would be due to particle distribution...but that indeed needs some research too....anything like an hour or so would mean that the effects of aging differences between pulling a couple of shots will be small..