Best advice so far came from Gagne himself. To avoid air bubbles below the paper filter wet the filter by closing the valve and filling it with water before adding the paper filter. Add the paper filter after the water, open the valve until the filter sits flush, close the valve again, add the cylinder. There should be water in between the filter and the part with the valve and no air at all. Add the water for the bloom before opening the valve again.

I did a few brews before reading this which dripped instead of having a steady flow of water.

gritts wrote:I have been very happy with my Stagg X brews lately, but they come with a lot of bypass because I'm using unfolded Kalita Wave filters.

This brewer piqued my interest and I put an order in. I will report back with comparison brews (20g each) using 1/2 recipe Third Wave Water.

I daily drove a Stagg X with Filter Smoosher for months, then added a spoon method to reduce as much agitation as possible - this brewer is shockingly different than this method, to the point where I do not think I could ever go back to the Stagg.

Lol, I'd love to hear about the "filter smoosher" approach.

High praises for the Pulsar, then! I'm excited to receive mine next week.

Unfortunately the only time I had available to watch the Instagram live video between him and Scott, was late at night and I couldn't stay awake for it, so I'll try to re-watch it this week.

Gagne also has a Coffee Ad Astra blog post dedicated to the brewer

coffeeOnTheBrain wrote:There should be water in between the filter and the part with the valve and no air at all.

How much water is that? A significant amount, like on the Clever? Or just a few ml to avoid trapped air?
Would this be necessary even if you decided to use the valve open during the whole brew?

So glad to see people enjoying the dripper ! There is not much space below the filter, something like 10 mL if I recall correctly. This is the main reason we didn't use a filter holder similar to the NextLevel Lvl-10. Getting rid of air bubbles is important because otherwise you get less surface area where water flows through the filter, reducing not only drip rate but also the evenness of flow. I know my technique to remove the bubbles is a bit finicky, but I think it's worth it.

If you have time, I'd really love it if you explained in more detail how much open the brewer is for your recipes.

I'm guessing the recipes on the website are also yours, as some of them have question marks on them. I assume even NL wasn't sure how open the brewer should be.

I've been playing around with the various ones and so far I think I prefer the wet filter recipes vs the dry ones, but I do agree that your air bubble method can be finicky.

Couldn't find it immediately, but the LVL-10 is the Pulsar's predecessor. Found this:

Black Material
Soft-Touch Food Safe TPE (Special Formulation)

Clear Material
Clear, Durable BPA Free - Tritan®