I learned quickly that my new Cimbali Casa prefers ample head space above the puck, and so lately I've been grinding/dosing more in the Italian standard range, or ~14g, with good success. It seems to allow me to skip much of my old preparation rain dance and cut down on prep time, while making better shots on a much more consistent basis.

The problem is, I've only been using marquee blends and SO's (CCC Rustico and Apollo, and the Daterra Reserve from Caffe Fresco to name a few), which all share a common requirement for high dosing...something to which the Casa does not take kindly--at all. When I take these coffees down to 14g, the shots extract more evenly and taste much more balanced, but unfortunately are somewhat lackluster in flavor profile. I'm pulling them to blonding point, which seems to be around 27-33 seconds, depending on the ratio I'm going for. Turns out to be ~1-1.25oz in the cup. I'd really like to find a great coffee that fares better at these standard doses.

Any recommendations?

Use a bigger basket. The VST 18g basket works fine with an 18-18.5g dose. I think the Strada baskets are pretty much equivalent to the VST baskets. You can buy even larger baskets (eg, 22g) , but you'll need a bottomless portafilter to use them.

I have an 18g VST, which worked OK down to 16g, but after that results started to go downhill (I know these are dose-sensitive baskets, but I was just experimenting). I've also tried several downdosed 18g (yikes!) shots in my LM triple, aiming for that 'third wave' vibe, but that turned out to be only so-so. It seems that lately I've kinda been stuck on the old tried-and-true Italian way, at least for now.

The basket I've been having good results with is the HQ 14g from EspressoParts. That seems plenty deep to me, and I figure since it's called a 14g basket, using a 14g dose would be...well, it'd just make sense right?

For now I'd really like to keep my dose around 14g...something tells me the Casa just was not designed to handle much greater.