Triple Baskets?

[wantmorecrema]

I came across some old posts about triple baskets offered by Lino. Are these still available or is there another source for a good quality basket?

Thanks,
Carrie

[gdahl]

I wrote to Lino a couple of weeks ago to ask. He said that he has no plans to make any more of them. I hope we can find someone else, though, because I would really like one!

Gary Dahl

[Niko]

Yeah, count me in too!

[Weska]

Me too! Me too!

I absolutely want to experiment with one.

However--isn't there always a "however"?--it could be that the quest for ways to up-dose is misconceived. Jim Schulman in this post

http://users.ameritech.net/jim_schulman ... action.htm

seems to be saying that a shallower puck gives a more complete and rounded extraction. Why? As I understand it, because the bottommost grinds can't contribute anything until the topmost ones are spent. Why? Because the brewed water from the top quickly becomes saturated with coffee solubles so that nothing more will dissolve until the topmost ones become nastily overextracted.

If Schulman is right, then we try to compensate for our misconceived overdosing by using coffees that emphasize a narrower than ideal range of flavors that balance out in the less-than-ideal extraction.

That's a vast oversimplification, but it could mean that La Spaziale has optimized their factory baskets for the best possible extraction. I can't cram more than 14 grams into mine without causing serious compression of the puck against the screen as it swells. And that 14 grams is the Italian norm for a double. So maybe La Spaziale is making the basket match the usual Italian dose, and more would only be too deep to extract well, especially in a smaller diameter, hence deeper, puck.

This is beginning to make wine seem simple.

[gdahl]

Thanks for the link to the Schulman. His work is very interesting and informative.

Though it seems likely that the principles he describes are correct, the question in my mind is the degree of impact. Even with the tradeoff, is the taste in the cup worth it?

I suspect that it will be. You might have noticed that the owners of triple baskets around here don't seem to be too anxious to part with them!

Another thought: the answer might lie somewhere in between. The oversized Spaz baskets that were sold by EspressoParts as doubles seem to fall in this category. Niko, you have one of these, right? Maybe you can borrow a Lino triple basket from someone and do a side-by-side comparison with your Espressoparts basket. I would be curious...

Gary Dahl

[fxdxt]

I received 2 doubles baskets from EPNW today. I wanted to find out if the EPNW held more than the OEM.
I weighed each basket, each one weighed 25 grams each. I then filled each one with salt.
Each one was taped twice to allow for settling. A straight edge was used to level the surface. This was done twice and the results were recorded.
The results as follows EPNW holds 108 grams, the OEM hold 106 grams.
Of course your baskets may and most likely will vary.
If I have time this weekend I will try to dig out my scale for reloading. I believe this reads
out to 3 places.

Tom

[Niko]

Niko, you have one of these, right? Maybe you can borrow a Lino triple basket from someone and do a side-by-side comparison with your Espressoparts basket. I would be curious...

Gary Dahl

Gary, I think my basket might be a freak of nature.
But I'd love to test someone's triple if they'd like. Send 'em on over in person or by mail or by email...no wait, can't email a basket (yet).

I received 2 doubles baskets from EPNW today. I wanted to find out if the EPNW held more than the OEM.
I weighed each basket, each one weighed 25 grams each. I then filled each one with salt.
Each one was taped twice to allow for settling. A straight edge was used to level the surface. This was done twice and the results were recorded.
The results as follows EPNW holds 108 grams, the OEM hold 106 grams.
Of course your baskets may and most likely will vary.
If I have time this weekend I will try to dig out my scale for reloading. I believe this reads
out to 3 places.

Tom

Tom, baskets do vary a lot! They shouldn't, but they do. My EPNW basket is a mammoth that holds 21 grams. I think they used a worn out dye to stamp it out, so badly worn that it created an oversized basket.

[gdahl]

Hi Niko,

It might seem pointless to make such a comparison since the chances of finding more "freak" baskets like yours is probably slim, but I was thinking that in case we end up having someone make us a batch of custom baskets, it could be worth trying first to evaluate other sizes that already exist.

Your basket holds 21 grams? Do you know the capacity of the triple baskets Lino made?

Gary Dahl

[Niko]

I don't know the capacity of Lino's, however, several people on this forum have those baskets. Maybe one or more of those people will jump in and tell us. They have to be pretty big in size since he did use 2 double baskets cut down and then welded together (or something like that) to achieve that massive size, he didn't make them quad-size, he discarded some of the basket. I think some of the older original members that don't frequent this site much have the baskets so who knows if they see our posts or not.

[Weska]

I'm ready to try all directions. Schulman's stuff is well presented and carefully thought through--quite serious in all respects. But it could nevertheless be a wrong or partial picture. He himself keeps stressing that it is all quite preliminary and that his conclusions and speculations run far ahead of the data presently available.

So I'm in for a bigger basket if it can be found, but Schulman's article is a reminder that we shouldn't forget to try down-dosing too.

I must to do it all! (Spoken like a true obsesssive.)