This morning, I discovered quite by accident that my wife had moved my grinder around while cleaning the counters or such and had moved the gross adjuster lever down to full coarse, unbeknownst to me. So I grind out what I think is my normal morning espresso based on the dial in I had yesterday. It looked way wrong and that's when I discovered that it had been set to full coarse.

Rather than sink the grounds and then re adjust for an espresso, I took advantage of the full programming capability Breville offers over pump control, and made what was essentially, a single serve drip brew. I set the pre infusion to run for 99 seconds, and the pre in fusion pressure here and there between the minimum and about 80, and let it run with a little six ounce teacup underneath until it was full. Made quite a nice drip-type brew. Probably more like an Aeropress, because there would have been some pressure as well, though under 1 bar. I'll play around more with pump pressure settings as I develop this technique a little further. It may turn out that this is no better than an americano, although it seems like it is much closer to brewing than espresso. 99 seconds for a six ounce brew.

Anyway, a tasty coffee. I don't like disturbing the the espresso settings on a dialed in Vario, so I won't be using my Vario any more for this type of drink. But I will for sure use one of my other grinders so I can make one of these single serve brews again.

-Peter

Every time that I think Ive figured out what my next machine is, and how I dont need to go for a BDB, you post something like this and make me think about my decisions all over again.

I have been wanting to do this sort of thing and will be trying it on my future Lelit Bianca.

I suspect that the Decent will be able to do this, and am happy to know that the BDB, a machine that I have really liked, can do it.

I'll try this tomorrow! I have a triple basket somewhere that I can stick in my bottomless portafilter. Might go for 8 oz.

Did it with Flair last week, around 0.5bar for minute and half. Coffee wasn't bad, but compared to espresso with the same coffee quite boring. It was espresso roast. Might be better with lighter one

With the flair, arent you limited in the volume out? Assuming you want something like 15:1 ratio, im not sure how you managed a cup of 'drip' coffee with the flair. Do you also own the pressure profiler attachment?

Tried it again, today. A delicious cuppa. Using a home roasted bean that came out a little darker than I like for espresso anyway.

Working on the technique, and making it less cumbersome, and trying to develop parameters. So far, still just using the same 18.0g coffee that I blundered into yesterday, and the same 6oz teacup, and aiming for roughly 90 seconds (simply because I have no other numbers yet to try until I do this some more):

What happens even with drip-grind is still something like you see with espresso in that when you first apply water, there are a lot of undissolved solids that slow the flow. So if you use the minimum pump pressure setting, the drips come reaaallly slowly. I did this and waited for enough drips to layer the narrow bottom of the teacup. Then I stopped and upped the pressure to about 70 (in the Breville display. YMMV with other machines) until I got a good slow flow. as it sped up, I stopped again and brought the pressure back down to minimum to finish. Very tasty drink.

Sounds a little cumbersome, and it is... a little. But it's super easy and quick to change pump output at each stop. The technique I did NOT try was to simply run the pump at full output and use the water knob to profile the output. I have done the (super easy and fully reversible) full range profile mod on mine, so I don't have to worry about the pump cutting off.

-Peter

kenyabob wrote:With the flair, arent you limited in the volume out? Assuming you want something like 15:1 ratio, im not sure how you managed a cup of 'drip' coffee with the flair. Do you also own the pressure profiler attachment?

Used about 8g coffee and cylinder holds about 60ml of water. Starting temperature in the cylinder was 89°C. Result was somewhere between drip and espresso with some pale crema.
Will try with different ratios and temperatures somewhere in the future.
I don't have a pressure profiler, a scale below it is sufficient for me

pcrussell50 wrote: Rather than sink the grounds and then re adjust for an espresso, I took advantage of the full programming capability Breville offers over pump control, and made what was essentially, a single serve drip brew.

Similar to what Cat & Cloud has been doing in their shop since opening.

Explanation starts ~3:00 https://soundcloud.com/catandcloud/btc-by-the-cup-etc

vit wrote:Used about 8g coffee and cylinder holds about 60ml of water. Starting temperature in the cylinder was 89°C. Result was somewhere between drip and espresso with some pale crema.
Will try with different ratios and temperatures somewhere in the future.
I don't have a pressure profiler, a scale below it is sufficient for me

Unless you add water, that's not really the same thing. Maybe close to an aeropress...

instantkamera wrote: Explanation starts ~3:00 https://soundcloud.com/catandcloud/btc-by-the-cup-etc

Im curious, pcrussell, how did the temp do over the course of the shot? Was the BDB able to keep temp the whole time?