A few newsletters ago I let you know that I had purchased two cutting edge portafilter baskets: the WAFO SOE Spirit and the Weber Workshops Unibasket.
Both are designed with similar features: machined from billet steel which stops the basket flexing under extraction pressure, holes right out to the edge of the basket, vertical walls so that the outlet diameter of the basket is the same as is the inlet diameter, and more holes than standard baskets. They're designed to accentuate fruit flavours in coffee.
I found that when compared to my standard basket I had to grind much finer than I was used to which led to a relatively bitter extraction using the new style baskets. You may remember that my machine has been customised so that I can start espresso extraction with a low pressure pre-infusion at about 2 bar and then move the pressure to full 9 bar extraction when I want to. My process is to pre-infuse for 20 seconds, which means that I grind relatively fine even using standard baskets. When I changed my grind setting for the new age baskets to only slightly finer than for my standard baskets and I reduced the pre-infusion time, I then found that the extractions worked well.
The bottom line is that for those of you without pressure profiling espresso machines I think I've found a way of producing similar flavour profiles using a new age portafilter basket but without needing to employ extended pre-infusion! So instead of spending a ton of cash on a super fancy machine, you can spend a much smaller ton of cash on a super fancy portafilter basket and get a really similar result!
I have a slight preference for the WAFO over the Unibasket as I find the workflow a little easier (the dosing funnel fits better). I also found that using an espresso paper filter below the coffee puck and a puck screen (the two other items in the photograph) had little effect on my extractions.
Good luck!
To read about the Slayer shot click here
To read about the coffee love affair which is Gesha click here