I mean, I gave up. I really tried, I swear. Honestly, I feel like I'm the last barista on Earth who finally started using only double portafilters, while all the other guys already did a long time ago.
This is why I admit that I knew the single-basket portafilter had been excluded from specialty coffee because the shape of its basket leads to inconsistent extraction and makes it really difficult to pull good espressos consistently.
I was aware of the issues, but we were still using them, not to make a drastic change, but rather a step-by-step change. So when we finally said goodbye to the simple basket, I wanted to make sure everyone understood why.
We all work with single-serve portafilters, and we never thought it would be a problem. It's something that theoretically makes sense. One espresso = less coffee = single basket, two espressos = double. It seems perfectly logical, and it shouldn't cause any problems at all; on the contrary, it should help us manage our workflow. That was the original idea, I suppose. And it just didn't survive the specialty coffee wave.
Nowadays, the idea of using 7 grams for a single shot and 14 for a double, like the idea that an espresso is necessarily a 30 ml beverage extracted in 30 seconds, is a thing of the past. Some of us still remember these times (in fact, I entered the coffee world at the time when David Schomer's book was a barista bible, and I'm sure I'm not the only one here); the lucky ones have only heard of them. Never mind. Things have changed dramatically in the last five years, and they're going to change even faster in the future (in the direction of greater automation, as we all understand).
Back to the simple baskets. I'll tell you what I experienced and how I decided to stop using them. I know that many baristas who came along after the "30ml days" simply didn't use them, because they were considered defective in the first place. I wasn't one of those. And there are still many people who continue to use them.
To put it simply, with all the tools in use, it became extremely difficult for me to come to work every day and strive to ensure that our single and double shots had the same ratio, the same TDS, the same flavor, and all of that consistently. One espresso after another, all day long.
As I was saying before, consistency is key. Regarding the food, regarding the service, regarding the coffee.
And now imagine that battle. Not only do you want your double portafilter espresso to be the same, every shot—you want your portafilter with the single basket to produce the same espresso. Same weight, same flavor, same TDS. With the different geometry of the baskets. With the coffee trapped in the grinder. Because even with direct grinding, without using the dosing chamber, you'll have roughly 1g of coffee there—1g that's coarser or finer than you need—when you're switching between single and double.
So, goodbye to consistency. Or not. But you grind a little coffee each time you switch between a single or double shot. Extra work, extra waste, extra time.
Many people are concerned with the question, "What should I do with the other espresso if I only have to make one?" But I started asking myself at that point: How much coffee do I waste by adjusting that portafilter with the single basket, and then constantly switching between single and double portafilters throughout the day? Could it be more than two or three wasted espressos? What is the cost of one espresso to you?
Is it probably not as big a problem as we'd like to see it? Perhaps we end up losing more by insisting on using them than by actually switching?
When I said earlier that the simple baskets didn't survive the specialty coffee era, I was partly joking, partly not. Because it's only now, when we're starting to think, first, about numbers in coffee, and second, about specialty coffee as it is (look here the definition of specialty coffee that I adhere to) we discovered that they are actually lacking. Before, everyone was very happy with them.
And now, when we have more consistent grinds, when we roast more lightly and know how to cup better, and not only that, when we finally throw away the 50 ml measuring jug and buy the scale and refractometer, we discover that the portafilter with the simple basket has been letting us down all along. We only discover it now.
Is this a time for change? And… Is this goodbye?
