Your ultimate WDT tool - Page 2

Beginner and pro baristas share tips and tricks for making espresso.
day
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#11: Post by day »

This is sifdis. 3 brothers working on them, one of the brothers actually makes an incredible line of wood eyeglasses by the way, incredible stuff.

Met Kirby at the SCAA nice product, still working out some kinks of course

http://www.sifdis.com/?page_id=48
Yes, i you per this on an iPhone

Bob_M
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#12: Post by Bob_M »

John I meant blind shaker.
[img]

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sweaner
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#13: Post by sweaner »

decent_espresso wrote:I like the idea, but what would it look like, how would it work? like the above "tangle teezer" but as a 59mm circle? Shaped kind of like a push tamper?

Like this?

<image>
I was thinking something like the OCD tool (https://onacoffee.com.au/shop/ocd-ona-c ... stributor/) with the needles as well.
Scott
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wearashirt
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#14: Post by wearashirt »


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Eastsideloco
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#15: Post by Eastsideloco »

Dissecting needle (the original WDT tool):



When you are finished stirring, you can use the wooden handle to level the bed. Works great.

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decent_espresso (original poster)
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#16: Post by decent_espresso (original poster) »

sweaner wrote:I was thinking something like the OCD tool (https://onacoffee.com.au/shop/ocd-ona-c ... stributor/) with the needles as well.
Ah, great minds think alike. Yes, I'm thinking of that too, but not to tamp, just to break up clumps and distribute the grounds.

As an experiment, I bought a cheap hairbrush during lunch, and cut the tines I didn't want.

I then ground a 20g dose, and pushed the brush into the grounds a few times. I didn't rotate. I ended up with an evenly distributed "waffle". Tap-tap-tap and the grounds look pretty good.

I'm going to make a fugly 3D printed version of this idea, shaped like the OCD tool, and see if this idea has any legs. Will report back.


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Fausto
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#17: Post by Fausto »

Hey John, I hope you're still working on this project, any progress?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately and have a few ideas to share (I thought about pursuing these myself but I'm too out of my depth).

I can imagine a pure WDT tool two ways:
1. Take the top of a salad spinner

and shrink it down to portafilter size and add some needles to the bottom. Preferably made out of metal and geared so that it doesn't go nearly as fast as a salad spinner, but I really like the idea of putting this device on top of a portafilter and literally pushing a button to WDT. Instead of needles you could also try a cylindrical helix of some sort like this:

The width and depth of the basket and with the right grooves to get the grounds moving
I'm not an engineer so I don't know if any of that is feasible at that size, or cost effective if it needs high end bearings or little gears, but it would work wonderfully. I suppose it could have some sort of leveling mechanism on the other side, but I think the grounds would stay pretty level.

2. This is a more manual version and similar to what you're thinking with the shower comb. In my head it would more like half of an "herb" grinder like this one:

It could have a flat top or a portafilter style handle, and the protrusions would need to come down farther, but hopefully you see what I mean. I think this would be just as effective as the needles, but a whole lot more durable. One more idea - you could use some teflon (like on the bottom of computer mice) on the rim to make it spin better. Of course this style could work well with my first idea as well.

I think these are good ideas, I've had them in my head for a year at least- instead of fooling myself that I'm ever going to make money off either of these, maybe sharing them with someone who can potentially make them happen is the next best thing. Let me know what you think!

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caldwa
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#18: Post by caldwa »

Eastsideloco wrote:Dissecting needle (the original WDT tool):

<image>

When you are finished stirring, you can use the wooden handle to level the bed. Works great.
tbh I use a meat thermometer to break up clumps while grinding and then level the bed. Same idea.

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TomC
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#19: Post by TomC »

Well, if you're talking about the ultimate WDT tool....


"And Saint Weiss raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O LORD, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine large clumps to tiny bits, in Thy mercy."
Join us and support Artisan Roasting Software=https://artisan-scope.org/donate/

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decent_espresso (original poster)
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#20: Post by decent_espresso (original poster) »

If you're using WDT with a spouted filter, you may be causing more harm than good, because you can't see what effect you're having.

At Coffeefest portland, my employee Haroldo was pulling shots using a wooden coffee stirrer for WDT, and Ray anecdotally told me that the shots weren't tasting as good as mine (I wasn't using WDT). We were using a spouted portafilter, and so couldn't see what the effects of WDT were as far as evenness of the shot extraction goes.

These past few months I've embarked on trying to make a well functioning WDT too, and I've used
- dissecting needles,
- thermometer probes,
- a toothbrush with the tines mostly cut,
- a hairbrush with the tines cut off

and always with a bottomless portafilter, and a slight over-dose, so that the slower flow rate makes it easy to see if the extraction is truly even.

I can tell you that in most cases WDT makes things much worse than nothing at all. Leveling, according to Scott Rao, is usually a bad idea, and that's been my observation too, with bottomless portafilter shots.

With all the tools tried above, WDT consistently made worse shots than nothing at all.

By far, the most effective way to do WDT is to grind into an intermediate vessel, shake the vessel and dump the grinds in all at once. A funnel is usually used. This technique breaks all the clumps up and provides a consistently observed even distribution. I've seen lots of cafes do this, and there's a reason.

Now, as far as WDT tool goes, I've found that a single dissecting needle tends to create areas of local compaction and more chanelling.

My current experimental tool is a wine cork, stuffed into a tamper handle with thin sewing needles in it. I'm trying various combinations of numbers of needles, and distance between each.

At this point in time, 3 needles, about 1cm apart from each other, works the best. However, I'm still not getting consistently even shots, so I'm still experimenting, though this tool does generally make better shots than no WDT.

A wine cork and needles works great to experiment with, so I WOULD LOVE IT IF OTHERS TRIED THIS TOO, and together we could figure out what design makes the best WDT tool.