After being away from the forum for over 10 years, coming back was an upgrade hole free fall for a while. Lots of theory applied changes. I looked at levelling distribution tools but the cost to value and lack of really good evidence as to the effectiveness of them held me back. Dosing with weight instead of volume and WDT (with a home made tool) did take my extraction quality consistently to the next level with all roasts. Maybe the new precision showerscreen and baskets I broke down and got helped. With what's working for me I don't see how a surface leveling tool would improve anything.

Tap to level and settle the fines, WDT to break up clumps and fluff, level tamp to compress and seal the edges and enjoy.

pandoobus wrote:I'm familiar with the socratic coffee article stating that levelers are worse than doing nothing to the coffee in terms of EY, but are there any studies comparing EYs for pucks prepared using WDT + levelers?

I believe Sprometheus did a YouTube video on this very subject. He looked at several different methods to distribute the grinds around with corresponding EY values. If I find the link, I'll place it below.

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I found the video you were talking about.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxxD-ZI03 ... bMhYi57uuU[/youtube]
It's only 3 samples per combination but surprising that even with WDT, the leveler is still lower in EY.

You found it!!

I think a leveling tool can be useful. Using more as a groomer prior to a level tamp.

WDT grounds, ending with as flat a surface as possible.

Thump as evenly as possible to compress and knock out air pockets. Up to five times.

At this point there may be more grounds on one side of the basket. You can just go ahead and tamp or use a leveler/groomer to even out that top layer.

Tamp. Prefer using a self leveling tamper.

ira wrote:And I will point out that in the end, we have no actual idea how uniform the bed it, the goal is just to get it as close to uniform as we can and hope that's good enough. Not to say all the gyrations don't help, it's just it's unclear how to measure in a way that would give meaningful answers. Maybe a scale that balances the edges of the basket on 3 points that shows how the weight balance changes between empty, ground, raked, leveled and tamped. That might give us an indicator of actual overall distribution, but not of localized distribution.

+1

Clumps are ephemeral. Just try to pick one up.

Coffee itself is not uniform. No amount of machination is going to make it so. Blends are worse and more components only make it more so. The video is not enough samples to arrive a strong correlation. "Fooled by Randomness" should be required reading for budding baristi.

I can walk into Barista in Portland, OR and get a great shot with no fuss or muss. Grind, tamp, pull. Yumm. Different barista, different coffee.

It amazes me how much falderal some people go through.

I think grinders make a big difference. That is why the workflow is faster at a cafe. They have 3k+ grinders that gently lay the grounds into the portafiler.

Since I switched to WDT, bump, and tamp my shots have been incredibly consistent. It is fast, easy, and a cheap set up. When I had my Ceado E37S, I didn't need the WDT to get great consistency. The grounds came out pillowy and well distributed. A quick shake and tamp then I was on my way. With the Niche I have to use WDT due to the dose cup. Really depends on the workflow and equipment IMO