Cannot get good results with the naked portafilter

Beginner and pro baristas share tips and tricks for making espresso.
j7on
Posts: 61
Joined: 18 years ago

#1: Post by j7on »

Hi there

I just got my bottomless/naked PF for my Pavoni Pro and am not as pleased as i thought i would be, ok as a training device it is outstanding(you can see what went wrong), but i am having problems with the pinhole sprays(result of channeling?).

When the pinhole sprays start i automatically press less on the lever(if i would continue with standard pressure my kitchen needs a complete clean-up) which is not good for the coffee.

Nice tool but i am tired of the 20min. clean-up afterwards...

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another_jim
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Joined: 19 years ago

#2: Post by another_jim replying to j7on »

The spritzies show you need to work on your levelling. Everyone gets them when they first use a naked PF. Once you level correctly, no more sprtizies.

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waxnyc
Posts: 29
Joined: 18 years ago

#3: Post by waxnyc »

Jim,

By "leveling", do you mean the same as distributing? Or do you truly mean leveling out the grounds after you have distributed?

I am getting similar drops through the basket. Eventually, the drops come together to form a single stream, but at the beginning of the shot, there are drops and sprays around the basket. Any advice on how to get a steady, single stream is greatly appreciated.

The coffee tastes great, the color looks good on the pour (tiger striping and the like), the crema is the right color and stable and I am stopping the pour when blonding begins. But I am getting some stray sprays here and there and haven't figured out how to perfect the technique to get a single stream through the PF.

Barry

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another_jim
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#4: Post by another_jim »

I meant distributing - the pull will always start with separate drops appearing, ideally completely uniform across the whole basket surface. Spritzies show pinhole faults in the puck. They are far less serious than visibly uneven flow from the basket (i.e. flowing from 1 half but not the other) since they repair themselves. Nevertheless, they show the levelling was not perfect. The major change most people who were relatively painstaking make is not to tap, beat or knock the basket, especially after levelling and before tamping. The other major change is that tamping becomes far less important than levelling. You can get a perfect naked shot without tamping, providing the levelling was perfect; but no tamp on earth will save a poorly levelled basket.

There's two, maybe three, levelling styles:
1. with the tamper. Either ENWS tamps (also known as the Staub tamp for its inventor, although Schomer seems to be claiming credit all of a sudden). Or a nutating motion, like a coin settling after its been flipped; this is my favorite, since it's very fast.
2. with the hand, "Stockfleths move." Hold the PF and your other hand at your chest. Turn out your elbows. Put the fat part of the palm (at the end of the thumb) of your empty hand on top of the grounds, gently. Turn your elbows in. The 180 degree rotation levels the grounds. This move is also very fast, since it can be performed as you remove the PF from the grinder.
3. I saw the Italian barista at the SCAA, I keep forgetting his name, get perfect shots by simply doing a swirling motion on the pf without any tamp. I assume this takes a lot of practice and muscle memory, so I haven't experimented.

j7on (original poster)
Posts: 61
Joined: 18 years ago

#5: Post by j7on (original poster) »

Thanks guys!

By playing around with different levelling/tamping techniques i am starting to have some control over the "spritzies".



(It is actually very hard to pull the Pavoni lever & bend down to see what is happening in the PF combined with lifting the cup upwards so the spritzies do not mess up everything...

After my girfriend observed this procedure with me in a knot under & over the machine a couple of times she responded with: "you have to be doing something wrong, that does just not look right") :oops: