Still new to the game. Pulling some really good Northbound American Beauty shots, which I have really dialled in on my EPC-8.

Now, this isn't just a toy and a pleasure, it's part of my work routine - breaks for espresso, etc. Having switched over from a nespresso, where I had the pace just right... I'm now over-caffeinated

Ideally, I'd have things set up so that I can choose whether to have a double or a single. However, just swapping to the smaller basket didn't work at all.

Applied good puck prep and tamping, but the moment the handle was up, water was percolating into the cup. It was a mess of a shot.

Any tips to tune/calibrate/dial in for the small basket?

Honestly I would just use the double basket and lower the dose, grind finer. Yeah not exactly the same thing but could work. I've done this occasionally and it has come out OK, even though with grand majority of beans I prefer the real double dose of 14-16 grams.

You probably have to adjust grind size for the single basket. Usually it helps if you dose more coffee in the single basket. But either way the single basket is tricky and you will probbaly get tired of always having to get the preparation right.
You may want to try to find the minimum dose for your double basket. But the less you put in the finer you will have to grind.

I've never used the single basket on my LPP.
Only the double and since I often pulled b2b shots, I purchased 3 Strietman 18 gr. baskets and have used these for years now.
I fill these with 10-15 gr. of coffee, depending on roast and origin.

So the tip is to dump the small basket and grind finer.

Which single basket is this, pre or post millennium? They have different geometries and prefer different amounts of coffee, as far as I understand.

I've had some success dosing 8 grams in the pre-millennium (49mm) basket. It's trickier, but can be made to work. I've only tried with very traditional espresso-oriented blends so far, though. It's also difficult to pull longer brew ratios, even a normale, but ristretti work (they'll be very very small though!). Need to experiment more...

One thing to bear in mind that's not necessarily immediately obvious is that the smaller puck heats up quicker, so I'd advise shorter preinfusion times (if any at all) and maybe starting with a cooler group head to begin with.

This is a post-millenium machine.

Sounds like "same grind, basket swap" is not a realistic goal... :-/

Be aware that there are two types of stock single baskets for the post-millennium europiccola - parts # 327057 and # 327054 :



The 327057 on the left is ESE pod compatible. The 327054 is probably a better bet for making singles with ground coffee. At about 6X the price you can get an IMS single that is shaped similarly to the 327054 on the right.

I have the one on the left. OK that's great info, I can splurge USD$7.

henri wrote:It's also difficult to pull longer brew ratios, even a normale, but ristretti work

I probably should've specified that the problem here is that my single shots on the (pre-mill) Pavoni blond extremely early. I'm not sure why exactly, though I suspect channeling / detachment of the puck from the basket walls. Cutting the shot before blonding, the espresso tastes fine but the yield is very small, like one sip and the beverage is gone.

The double basket is definitely easier to work with, though I can only fit about 11-12 grams in it (again, this is a pre-mill), so it's kind of a single by modern standards anyway... This suggests that switching between the single and double baskets while retaining the grind size may not work in a simple 1:2 conversion in terms of mass - since I need to dose about 8 grams for the single and max. 12 grams for the "double", the double is in fact a 1.5x shot in terms of inbound coffee mass. So, if you're willing to be flexible on the size of the double and let the single basket dictate the grind size, then I'd start from finding a grind size that works with whatever is the optimal dose for the post-millennium single basket, and then find what double basket dose this corresponds to - it may well be less than the nominal double basket dose.

I have an old LP from 1973 and I exclusively use single baskets. I dose 9 grams and grind very fine with a 45 second passive pre infusion by the end of which there are usually a few drops of espresso in the cup and then I pull the shot.