I have yet to look for naked portafilters here in the UK, however I'm interested in reading the various distribution methods mentioned through the thread. Where can one read up on them?

The Resources page lists several articles and videos under Extraction Diagnosis. If you find other noteworthy articles that I've omitted, please let me know.

Silly me, of course Dan. As my bookmark goes straight to the forums I tend to overlook this. Looks like I have plenty of reading to do and I need to re-bookmark. Thanks.

I rotate my PF on the fork of my Mini while dosing. I hold the handle 90 degrees to the left, first dose falls in, rotate the PF 180 degrees so the handle is now to the right, next dose, then back to center to finish, sweep level, tamp and go. It made a difference for me. When the grounds drop into the basket in one spot I think they tend to compact from the drop and impact from each subsequent dose. By rotating the PF with each dose I seem to get better distribution. I also give it one or two light downward taps onto my tamping table prior to the leveling and tamp.

dosing makes them all difference. let me share my observation.
1. the speed of flipping the flap. on mazzer mini, the faster you load, the more ground will be on the left. either compensate it by vary the speed of flipping the flap or turn the pf around. the way the ground falls different from machine to machine.
2. here we don't really have static, so i don't know how to handle that. but when i do something dark, i'll wait for the ground to fill 2/3 the small bucket in the dosing chamber before swapping. it really helps.
3. i aim for a small hill and tap it down, the more i tap, the more ground i put in. try to be consistent.
4. level it off and tamp.

Dose directly into the basket, not the P/F. Keep the P/F in the machine at all time. As you dose, rotate the basket 360 degrees. About every 2 pulls of the mini doser, rotate the basket 1/4 of a turn. Tamp into the basket. When you are ready to pull your shot, just drop the basket into the P/F.(You must remove the spring from your P/F to use this technique). You may read more about that method here: Barista Technique Used in this Review

Keeping the PF in the machine while you dose and tamp your basket will keep the PF at temp, but shadowfax is using a bottomless PF (as do I). Doesn't the lack of bottom mass in the PF limit the functionality of this method? Or do you do this strictly for dosing reasons?

I use this method regardless of the P/F. With a bottomless, there is less of a heat sink to deal with, and the benefit is mostly in better distribution, and preventing premature cooking of the coffee grounds.

Actually, I have yet to see any real evidence that dosing into the basket outside of the portafilter has any positive results and, in fact, have seen some negative results in many instances (unsettling of the bed, grounds on the bottom of the basket, etc.).

In most cases, I would predict that subtle improvements in barista techniques will bring better results.

On a related note... it seems like a lot of the things people do in coffee that seem odd are attempts to work around barista weaknesses rather than work on them.

malachi wrote:(unsettling of the bed, grounds on the bottom of the basket, etc.)

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What exactly are you referring to there?