Does anyone have experience with dropping their dose down to anything lower than 16g and using a ratio that would still produce a 34g+ yield? I’m waiting on some parts to arrive (15g VST baskets and IMS shower screens) so I can do some experimenting but I’d really like to hear if anyone else had already done this.
It’s easy to do the math and come to a caluculated guess as to what will happen based off of resources readily available however I’ve always found human experience more valuable. Cheers in advance for any help!
Did you drop your pump pressure?
Did you get smaller dose baskets?
Did you grind a lot finer?
What machine did you use?
What grinder did you use?
PuqPress or manual tamp?
Precision tamper or basic tamper?
How much money did you save?
Worth the effort?
Was there a substantial difference in taste?
Any info hugely appreciated and I’ll post up some results when my parts arrive.
We’re a cafe that’s more focused on flavour over caffeine content and I’m asking because the owners want to cut costs in ways that won’t affect wages and other silly things. Also to potentially help our equipment (burrs mainly) last longer.
I think you would be better off running at lower pressure (~6 bar) with lower doses (I believe Maxwell-CD has a similar set up in his cafe). At full 9+ bar of pressure I think you will struggle with channelling
we also added a 10 second “pre infusion”. It increased the run time by 3 seconds compared to 0 preinfusion and is so far reducing channeling that comes from poor distribution, and slightly increasing sweetness!
Lower Dose: if you keep all of your other variables the same (time, yield, temp) it will increase extraction% and lower tds%, due to the water to coffee ratio being higher.
Lower pressure: will increase your extraction %, but it’s mostly done because it improves consistency and reduces channeling. check out Michaels blog post here
Did you drop your pump pressure? We’ve done it both ways - 9 bars and a flow restricted version that topped out around 6 bars. It’s workable either way but things tend to have a wider sweet spot at the lower pressure.
Did you get smaller dose baskets? Yes, 15g VSTs.
Did you grind a lot finer? Yes, but not as much finer as I expected to have to.
What machine did you use? Slayer V3 two group, GS3, Breville Dual Boiler, Linea Classic.
What grinder did you use? EK43, Peak, Forte BG, K30.
PuqPress or manual tamp? Manual
Precision tamper or basic tamper? Precision - the barista hustle tamper
How much money did you save? we moved from 20g to 15g and thus saved 25% per shot
Worth the effort? Certainly. Cleaner and more expressive espresso and huge cost savings. Win win.
Was there a substantial difference in taste? I believe so, yes.
