So I have a profitec pro 600 and recently purchased a 20 g nanotech basket after reading rave reviews. I consistently found I had a hard time getting good flow and shot output, and many thought it may be due to the larger dose. So I went back to my stock basket. With some credit I had, I purchased an 18 g nanotech basket, and this too seems harder to dial in. I think it's the flat bottom versus the kinda conical bottom of the stock basket.

Any tips for using these flat bottom baskets to pull great shots are appreciated.

What kind of flow problems are you having?

This is with the Niche Zero, correct?

Yes, this is with a niche zero.

Well, for starters I noticed just changing the basket results in me needing to grind my beans significantly finer to get within the shot parameters. Almost 3.5 steps downward. However, even then, rather than one, nice stream of espresso I find the flat basket results in 2-3 coming off the bottom, and I get some spray as well.

I've found that VST baskets do often require a finer grind than old-school baskets, or some like the EPNW HQ. If this is a feature or a problem depends on your perspective, coffee, grinder, and extraction profile. They also tend to be less forgiving of unevenness in puck prep. I think this is due to the different flow behavior and often a thinner puck compared to tapered baskets.

Never a bad thing to work on puck prep, even if you decide that, for your coffee, grinder, and patience, this class of fancy baskets doesn't help your overall enjoyment.

I thought the idea with these fancy VST baskets is they produce a more consistent, tastier cup?

Bummer, I may have flushed like 50 bucks down the drain just to go back to the old school tapered basket ha ha.

Are you already using RDT and WDT?

RDT and WDT?

As I remember the rollout, it was first around uniformity in a cafe setting. Since each "18 g" one flowed the same, you got much closer to the same espresso out of every group on the machine. Bulk grinders with dosers meant that different sizes could be selected for dose control by swiping across the top of the basket.

There's a lot of talk and even a tiny bit of actual experimentation going on around when the high-flow, VST-style baskets make sense and when a precision, lower-flow one might be better. I've run into personal experiences with both situations. Day to day, these last few months, I use VST with the medium and lighter roasted coffees I generally prefer and my conical grinders. Some of the lever machines and modern flat grinders ship with a basket like the EPNW HQ 14, from what I have heard. I don't think there is a "best" basket out there. I've used and re-try VST, LM, Strada, DE, EPNW and IMS. No "powerful magic" in any of them. Even the old-school generics can pull an enjoyable shot.

I switched from stock basket to BaristaPro NT 18g basket on my Profitec Pro 500. My shots ran a lot faster and I had to grind quite a bit finer to make up for it. Once I did that it worked fine - no other problems dialing in.

I didn't taste much difference with the BP basket, but it's much easier to eject the puck and clean it, due to ridgeless design and NT coating.

Wigglesworth2.0 wrote:I thought the idea with these fancy VST baskets is they produce a more consistent, tastier cup?.

Consistent across baskets ... the idea being a cafe could have a bunch of baskets and get the same results with any of them without changing the grind (assuming that baskets have the same amount of wear). I'd argue that this consistency is nice, but pretty much irrelevant, for most home usage cases.

Consistent between baskets ... so you can use switch between baskets of different nominal doses and not have to adjust the grind ... although the taste may change. I do like that I rarely have to adjust grind settings when switching between single and double baskets.