CwD wrote:The puck is supposed to be fully infused with water for the bloom, not just the headspace.

That's what I thought too.

another_jim wrote:I'm not sure how much soak you actually get in a soak and bloom. If you hit a fine ground puck with 9 bar and high flow for a few seconds, there is very little soak. So if you cut the pump, and there isn't much water in the head space, there won't be much soak. This doesn't mean it won't taste better; but it does mean that what tastes better is a long wait with a damp versus wet puck.

Yes, especially if you do the coin test to determiner how full to fill the basket. Really not much headspace at all, so hardly any water too.

pcrussell50 wrote:Yes, this. I did a cocktail napkin calculation of how much extra water you need once the headspace fills, based on the PI flow rate of about 1.3 ml/s. It's all pretty inexact, though. Definitely not lab grade work, here.

-Peter

IIRC, from Jake's thread/calculation (I think) there's somewhere around 35 ml water used to saturate the puck (what puck was it?!). But if that's true then you'd be running your 1.3 ml/s for nearly the whole 30s? WHat's your total volume before pump off? IS this really just 1.3 ml/s versus 1.5 ml/s?

another_jim wrote:That's been my experience too. I might be that the effect on the puck of these various techniques depends on the specific machine and basket.

That's probably the right way to start to look at this. I'm having a slightly easier time getting the flow rate I'm looking for after S&B with an IMS basket in place of the stock Bianca basket of the same marked size. There seems to be a slight improvement in complexity. I'm guessing that's because the holes in the basket are just smaller which allows me to grind a little finer and soak about 10 seconds longer at a 4 bar starting point.

I've been grinding fine enough that extractions finish under 90 seconds and using temperature to tweak the final flavor. There's probably a better way to go about it but that seems to be working well for this relative newbie.

Tonefish wrote:IIRC, from Jake's thread/calculation (I think) there's somewhere around 35 ml water used to saturate the puck (what puck was it?!). But if that's true then you'd be running your 1.3 ml/s for nearly the whole 30s? WHat's your total volume before pump off? IS this really just 1.3 ml/s versus 1.5 ml/s?

Correct. This correlates with my experience. After 17-20s at low flow I shut off the pump* for another 30s. More often than not, I get a drop or two about when I cut the pump.

* I should say that since I plumbed and rotaried it, I have been experimenting with using line pressure to fill the gaps before soak, still flow-regulated by the needle valve, to fill the headspace and basket. In those cases, cutting the pump is moot, obviously, since it was never on to begin with.

-Peter

Did you try to inspect your puck at the end of your PF to see how well saturated it is in both of the cases? Not just the puck surface, but in the core too.

Tonefish wrote:IIRC, from Jake's thread/calculation (I think) there's somewhere around 35 ml water used to saturate the puck (what puck was it?!). But if that's true then you'd be running your 1.3 ml/s for nearly the whole 30s? WHat's your total volume before pump off? IS this really just 1.3 ml/s versus 1.5 ml/s?

Sorry I'm late to the party!

It was actually Assaf who documented the volume required to soak the puck (first here and then again a few more times, as shown here), and it was 28ml.

This was the using an 18g dose on a GS/3 (18g vst basket?). The basic idea is that the puck holds it's own volume in water, plus the headspace. So it you lowered the dose, I'd expect it to take a bit more water to saturate on account of the headspace holding 100% of its volume in water and the puck holding some fraction of that...

I still have much more thinking to do regarding the merits of the OP question. Surely, there is a time and place for both approaches. The question remains as to what those times and places are?

I'm keeping my eye on this thread.

Cheers!

- Jake

Jake_G wrote:Sorry I'm late to the party!

It was actually Assaf who documented the volume required to soak the puck (first here and then again a few more times, as shown here), and it was 28ml.

This was the using an 18g dose on a GS/3 (18g vst basket?).......

Actually, this is the one I was referring to. It was also an 18g dose in an 18g VST basket but it was on my Lelit Mara.

You have serious search skills tho! Cheers!