I think that this method has a lot of promise. If nothing else, it has the advantage that if you have your machine and grinder around anyway, then you aren't creating more clutter by having to have brewing equipment to drag out. Also, as you say, Tom, cleanup is almost a delight.

To give an example of what I am doing, I currently have a filter coffee that I think is more or less making good espresso at something like 94C, very fine grind and a profile that is something like 10s at minimal pressure, 8s at 12 bar and then tailing down to 3 bar over something like 15-20s. I am currently using this same coffee to make a filter type brew by using a VST 15G basket to put about 15g of coarse grind coffee in it with a paper filter in the bottom and extracting about 120g of liquid at about 88C brew temperature and 2 bar pressure, which takes about 30s. On my grinder so far, this yields a brew of about 2.6% TDS/22% extraction. I'm still exploring grind settings.

Here's a technique that I don't think anyone should overlook: don't forget that bypass brewing is a possibility, in the same way as is possible with stuff like professional fetco brewers. The 120g of 2.6% TDS liquid isn't anything to write home about ... but dilute it to 1.2-1.5% TDS and all of a sudden layers of aroma and flavour emerge that were hitherto hidden by the intensity of the 2.6% TDS brew, and which I struggle to get through other typical brewing methods (other than actual cupping). Dilution also has the considerable advantage of getting you to basically exactly the drinking temperature that you want immediately, since you control the temperature of the added water. With the decent, I imagine that you could simply tell it to dispense the correct volume of dilution water at the correct dilution temperature, making it even easier than it is for me with my machine.

TomC wrote:I've been using the DE1Pro for filter brewing occasionally and thought it would warrant a discussion here. I know soon folks will be able to buy a simple blind basket with a few holes in it that will work as a distribution head for really precise controllable pour-over brewing.

Is there somewhere where I can read up with what people are developing on the DE? I'm not sure if the forum is open to the public or not - I have an invite to Slack, but that doesn't seem to be it. Given that dilution works so well, I'd be interested in reading what the thinking behind developing a new basket is. I recently stumbled across this gem of an article from Jim a while ago, where he and Andy established that most of the soluble flavour compounds extract quite early and that later parts of the brew (in the case of espresso, at least) are basically just diluting what is extracted early on, so if we can get good extraction from existing baskets and dilute to the result we want, I'd be interested in knowing what the point of the filter basket is. Or have I totally misunderstood and are you saying that the blind filter with holes in it is going to be a gadget to disperse hot water dispensed by the DE so that you will stick something like a V60 underneath the DE and brew through that (as opposed to putting the grounds in that filter)? If so, sorry!

TomC wrote:What I've done in the mean-time is take a page from Andy Schecter (as always) and place an Aeropress filter into the bottom of a 25g VST basket, grind my dose directly into the portafilter and use the pour-over function.

I'm not sure if this will be relevant to us for the filter type brew method, but Jim pointed out that light roasted coffees do better as espresso through smaller doses and finer grinds. I have found the VST 15g to give much better results for espresso type extractions for light roasted coffees and I wonder if the same will be true for filter type extractions through an espresso machine. [EDIT: This was a silly thing to write, and is probably incorrect, since the volume of the filter type extraction is not really a constraint.]

I picked up a second hand refractometer, so I might play around with a few things and see what results I get.