I have a 41mm 7 gram basket and a matching tamper (both bought second hand, not sure which brand). This combo works great but I need to grind much finer than normal. The resulting espresso (7 gram in, 14 grams out) is excellent.

boren wrote: This combo works great but I need to grind much finer than normal.

Yes! Thank you for reminding me...another reason I gave up the 7g single is the need to grind finer. I have a Monolith Flat and the beans kept getting stuck in the chute prior to the burr chamber. The advice I was given was to updose and grinder coarser.

If you have the tamp-through funnel, you can actually updose quite a bit with the single basket. My standard dose is 9 g (similar grind fineness as VST 18g), but I've occasionally updosed to 10-11g (depending on screen clearance). At 10g, they will start looking a flat top mountain after tamping but will pull just fine and behave just like an updosed puck. Give that a try!

Auctor wrote:Yes! Thank you for reminding me...another reason I gave up the 7g single is the need to grind finer. I have a Monolith Flat and the beans kept getting stuck in the chute prior to the burr chamber. The advice I was given was to updose and grinder coarser.

I have a Flat and haven't had that problem. That said, mine doesn't have the safety cap. Maybe you're using too much RDT water? Or, do you have the Shuriken burrs? They can take a *long* time to grind some beans, but eventually get the job done.

Back when I had SSP burrs I had some beans, mainly Centrals or SAs that I couldn't grind fine enough for a flow-profiled single at 450 RPM, and had to go to 650+ RPM. That's where I've got the RPM for the Shuriken SLM burrs.

Note that I usually pull light or medium-light roasts with long, slow preinfusion, so the grind has to be very fine.

I'm not wild about updosing a 7g basket. With my IMS 7g basket the puck stick up quite far above the basket depression, and I have some concern that this could lead to water getting under the edges of the puck and causing channeling. My VST 7g basket depression is deeper, so I can dose higher with that one.

Denis mentioned something about the beans feeding properly. To be fair, I did try a few different RPM settings, but also didn't push too hard because I didn't want to purchase a new setup (basket, funnel, dedicated tamper) on a flier. It's a bit pricey for that setup, and wasn't worth the bean savings since I've yet to perfect the process of keeping beans fresh for more than a week. (So basically I save the beans by using a smaller dose, but they taste terrible, so what's the point) And once I found that 12 grams worked in my existing basket, I shrugged and accepted the additional caffeine. I used the same logic to updose my drip coffee beans to 13 grams.

I use 57mn convex tamper for my single basket dosed 7-8 grams. Works great!

Black-Wolf wrote:Here in Portugal the 7g is also the norm. If you ask for a "cafe" anywhere you will get a 7g espresso

It's part of the culture, every meal ends with it

Same here in Dalmacija/Croatia, I am going now straight to best coffee bar to see what they say...

will report back...

Just started to use the Decent 7gr basket and it works very well. Had been using the IMS and I had to put 9gr in to get a decent tamp. Decent is 7gr dead, tamp with 58.5mm tamper, went a size finer on the grinder. Works!

So, checked the bar and they are using 9grams, Marzocco, single basket, with 9.5 grams coffee for italian style ristretto some 15-20ml coffee. Tamper is 58 flat.