I did pull shots with both the breville and the VST .. I felt the VST delivered a more flavorful shot ( more oils in it). I did weigh out 18 grams for the VST and 16 grams for the breville due to the portafilter basket volume.
I did pull shots with both the breville and the VST .. I felt the VST delivered a more flavorful shot ( more oils in it). I did weigh out 18 grams for the VST and 16 grams for the breville due to the portafilter basket volume.
by accounts, (my experience and others), 16.0g is not nearly enough for the Breville basket, especially with it's tapered walls. I experimented with 17.0g, 17.5g, and settled on 18.0g. it should be no surprise that your results at 16.0g with the Breville basket were subpar. i weigh every shot, both dose and extraction.
Jon, apparently richard/bubbadude DOES have a VST basket, from which to base his opinion:
BubbaDude Said:
I've gone back to the stock double basket because it gives me better control over three day post-roast beans than the 18 gram VST that I also have does. If the double basket is gushing for you, the VST is only going to make things worse. I suggest you address the problem with roast, grind, and tamp that's producing gushers, the Breville basket is not to blame unless you happened to get a defective one.
do that if your money is irritating you and you simply must be rid of it, or you want to sound cool in your second post in a thread full of newbies. otherwise, the Breville baskets are at least as good if not better than VST's, so you can simply get busy making espresso with what you have and save your money and the hassle.
this notion that you need VST baskets to make great espresso with a BDB is tiresome at best, and a misleading disservice to less experienced BDB'ers at worst--especially since the Breville baskets in particular are extraordinarily good. guys like jon rosenthal (very experienced baritsta without a BDB), and bubbadude/richard (who has a BDB and VST baskets and has switched back to the Breville baskets), can run out and buy VST baskets knowing exactly what they are doing and why, with the knowledge that one is not better than the other, just different. Sometimes you need a Phillips head, sometimes you need an Allen key. One is not better than the other and it is misleading to say otherwise.
I am enjoying the debate regarding quality and qualities of the different baskets. It would be interesting to hear about other baskets as well. but don't slam someone's choice. as someone who has chosen the VST baskets i end up being belittled because of my choice! I'm sure others feel the same way. There is no definite answer and I grow tired of judgements.
I just had two unbelievable cappuccinos and a fantastic espresso using a fresh kenyan coffee from Phil and Sebastien from Calgary. coffee in a Vario, ground into a VST 18g basket, tamped with a RB (I know that the BDB tamper works, but I really enjoy the aesthetic of the RB on the counter and in my hand), naked portafilter placed into a BDB pumped with Town of Golden RO water/tap water mix and poured into gorgeous Inker cups (yup.... another aesthetic choice, I can't get over the colour and I support 49th parallel). This is what my journey has led me to so far. My choices are not superior in anyway to anyone else, but this is one journey that's working. Although, I would love to have a barista superstar come through Golden BC and influence my coffee journey. I offer a world class mountain experience in return.
I read all the posts on the BDB threads and got the VST 18g. and used it for probably 100 shots at 18 to 18.5 g. And was getting good shots with correct times, etc. Then when Peter and Bubbadude said they liked the stock basket better, I went back to that and found it easier to work with. I could see no difference in flavor, but I am doing a number of different roasts at any one time so it would be difficult to detect unless there were something huge.
And like Peter I don't think you can get a decent tamp in the Breville baskets with 16 g. The tamper hits the taper in the basket. Even at 18 g I often bottom out on the taper. As I remember Phil said somewhere that he thinks he uses more like 19 to 20 g though he doesn't weigh. There is certainly room for more than 18 g in the Breville basket.
Jon, Speaking as a confused newbie here, I have to say that your battle to the death with Bubbadude, etc. seems to have little or nothing to do with the BDB and certainly confused me about what I needed when I first read it. Perhaps you could start a separate thread on the quality of baskets. I really don't care, and doubt that many do, which basket has the best, most patented holes. The Breville just works really well, even in comparison to a VST. Defending the VST's here gives people like me the impression that they need to spend another $60 or so to do good espresso after they have already spent $1200 for the machine. It just isn't necessary and your posts and arguments obscure that.
(I also found an application for a quality system that baffles me -- it sounds like a process outlined by almost every practitioner/guru of Quality since Deming, and the "not obvious to one skilled in the art" part is eluding me.)
I'm interested in trying the VST baskets, if only to further experiment with updosing. I realized that one reason I had fairly good luck with the Breville single basket was that I was updosing compared with the double -- I was running about 10-11g of coffee in the single vs. 18-19 in the double. This not only gave me similar extraction times, it gave a slightly richer flavor to the single shot. Obvious, I suppose, but I didn't realize what was going on until I more carefully measured the shots.
I am under the impression that bubbadude/richard does NOT have any VST baskets or he could have looked at the holes himself and he would know that the unlit pictures don't show that the top and bottom of each VST hole are very round and precisely formed.
This is incorrect. As I've stated, I have both the 18 and 22 gram VST baskets and don't find them to perform any better than the Breville basket does.
Looking at the two baskets under a magnifying bench light, the holes look exactly the same from the top and the bottom with only one exception: the VST has more holes than the Breville. The two baskets have different weight, 27 grams for the Breville vs. 34 for the VST. And no, I'm not going to count the holes.
"I've Scaced many HX/E61 machines, seeing shot variances of up to 8-10F or more. [The BDB] stays within 1F." - Mark Prince
There are plenty of threads on the VST baskets and almost all of them fall into Pickering debates. VST baskets IMO where not made for us home users, they where made for busy cafe situations which have far different needs then we do at home. I have them and they are certainly the most sturdy and beautiful baskets I have every seen, they will last for thousands and thousands of shots and the tolerances they are made with means 1 basket is almost identical to every other one. In a cafe this means a basket will last a long time and multiple baskets in rotation will allow grinders to give almost identical shots across all baskets in rotation. What does this mean to use home users? Well I have a bunch of baskets and when comparing measurements and holes of baskets from the same manufacture they vary a lot and baskets from different manufactures compared are very different, to load up 3 of these baskets to make drinks ,eams the grinder would need adjustment to make the perfect shot from each basket. I have 58mm baskets that measure 57.2 to 59.1.
Quality made baskets are great to have especially when using more then one basket in your daily rotation. The Breville baskets sound great, the VST baskets are great so are espresso parts HQ baskets at 1/3 the price of the VSTs. I use constantly rotate between HQs and VST depending on the beans I am using.
Jon, Speaking as a confused newbie here, I have to say that your battle to the death with Bubbadude, etc. seems to have little or nothing to do with the BDB and certainly confused me about what I needed when I first read it.
Hi Jim, Apologies if anything I posted has been confusing to you. I'm not sure why you'd call me out and not the others who also have been posting about the VST baskets (including Peter, Richard, and Phil), but I hope for this post will be my last words on the subject here in this thread.
I know it doesn't help that I wanted to withdraw earlier, but I felt compelled to respond when Phil posted misleading pictures that seem to make it appear as though VST basket holes are not round. This simply is not the case and even Richard noted that he could not himself discern any difference when looking at the holes under lighted magnification (even though earlier he asserted that the VST holes were not round based on Phil's pictures).
I have no trouble seeing the features I've talked about. The views from above and below are starkly different for most types of baskets. The hole through a basket is not a cylinder (in most cases) but rather it is a cone. meaning that the view from inside should show the cone shape while the view from outside. Old-skool baskets were made by punching the perforation using a die to raise the pattern from inside and then grinding or machining off the outside to take off the cone peaks and that would form the holes.
Anyone who wants to know more specifically what the features are and how they are different may feel free to contact me offline, but I will not post that information in public per request by the manufacturer. In fact, I've probably said too much already.
germantownrob Said:
VST baskets IMO where not made for us home users, they where made for busy cafe situations which have far different needs then we do at home.
Very good point. I'll say that I also like the idea of uniform geometry and extraction characteristics guarenteed by specific measurements, so that if I am comparing notes with my friends in Australia or California or NC then we all know we are using exactly the same reference point WRT the baskets. And again, I also like that I can vary flow and taste by making small adjustments to dose instead of adjusting grind.
Taste is subjective and some may "feel" they taste a difference while others may feel that the do not taste a difference. I say do what you like and if you are happy with your results then that is the whole point to making esptresso at home IMO.
The extraction measurements made using the coffee refractometer show consistency for VST baskets across a wider range of brewing conditions and this was the purpose for the LaMarzocco / VST study and presumably the reason for them using VST as standard for the LM commercial machines (consistency in commercial cafe wide scale application).
Of course that "advantage" is meaningless for home users who can tune the conditions/parameters to get shots they like for thier own setup.
I know it doesn't help that I wanted to withdraw earlier, but I felt compelled to respond when Phil posted misleading pictures that seem to make it appear as though VST basket holes are not round. This simply is not the case and even Richard noted that he could not himself discern any difference when looking at the holes under lighted magnification (even though earlier he asserted that the VST holes were not round based on Phil's pictures).
Hold on. Phil's pictures aren't misleading and my eyeballing the baskets doesn't "contradict" the impression they create. The pictures were simply taken under higher magnification than my bench magnifier. Under low magnification, VST and Breville baskets appear to have comparable holes, but under higher magnification the holes in the BDB appear to be more uniform. That's all the evidence we have right now, so until we see some counter-evidence that's where the sweepstakes stand as far as I'm concerned. As far as secret hole making technology goes, if there's a patent application for it, it's not secret.
I wonder if so much fuss has ever been made about punching holes in sheet metal before.
"I've Scaced many HX/E61 machines, seeing shot variances of up to 8-10F or more. [The BDB] stays within 1F." - Mark Prince
You apparently will not address my statements directly, instead making up arguments about stuff I didn't actually say. You may assert whatever you wish, but available information contradicts your views (i.e. please research VST hole circularity)
Still, you have every right to your opinions and views.
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