budley wrote:Well, so says George.

Budley

one of the fascinating things about specialty coffee is that everyone's got a story, you know? i hear it. then i figure out if it 1- works, 2- makes sense and 3 - holds a repeatable why.

since i was recently in oz, i talked to paul bassett myself about this technique, which was also discussed at andrew gross' regular sat. consumer hang-out. in the barista mag article, sabados explicitly denies adding more coffee to the basket, and paul bassett was also a tad insistent that updosing *wasn't* about stuffing more coffee into the basket.

i spent an entire morning and most of the afternoon with paul b.; we went to lattecino and mecca, where updosing was discussed with macio and with paul geshos, alex kum, and jack hanna.

important parts of the updose method include judging screw tear, puck smell, and the depth as well as a clarity of the gasket imprint. that's why pix of these were included in the barista mag article next to the text. it's not about putting 21g of coffee into an 18g basket, as all the above baristi explained to me.

i guess the main issue is whether you buy sabados et al's idea of water physics and extraction. greg scace and i were discussing this recently in email actually, but of course i wouldn't dream of quoting anything here without talking to greg first.

still, even if sabados' physics isn't exactly spot-on, the gist of what he's saying could be true. then the interesting question (see point #1 above) is to figure out point #2, no? me no coffee chemist and i can't play one on the internet. thus point #3 i leave to greg and such if they care to pursue it. . .

Good to see you here, Fortune.
I guess I've had the wrong idea about updosing. I was under the impression that it involved packing in more coffee... guess I'll have to read George's article for real now. Interesting.

--matt (old lurker from a.c)