The Naked Bottomless Portafilter. What is it and what use does it have for baristas? In this video Luke talks you through it's usefulness not only as a prop for some amazing photos of coffee extractions but also as a tool for assessing extractions and faults that may be occurring within them.
Thanks for watching our video we hope it helps you and take your skills to another level.
Unedited Transcript
the naked bottomless portafilter why
would you use one
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good everyone i'm luke and welcome back
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today we're looking at the naked
portafilter or the bottomless
portafilter
so why would you buy one well firstly
coffee coming out of this thing looks
cool there is no doubt
you're going to get a huge following on
instagram if you start putting these
kind of photos
up and about of your extractions it just
looks amazing
so you'll see how cool they are with all
these
cone shapes the lovely drips the
ooziness it's just beautiful to watch
but there is so much more that you can
get out of this
in how you're developing a better
extraction getting better distribution
even coffee grinds throughout the whole
puck and generally just a great
assessment to make sure that your
espresso is perfect every time
so there are a couple of different types
you've got things like
a standard lamo zoko one which is a
properly engineered one
there's a lot of these retrofittable
style timber ones
and there are some hacks to be honest a
lot of people will get out there with a
grinder
and cut them so if you're going to cut
one
you want to make sure that you don't
have this big issue occurring here
so what will happen is the coffee will
actually retract back down the handle
and it won't work so be sure to invest
those couple of bucks and get yourself
an original or a good copy
and you won't have that concern so when
you've got your coffee machine
you're going to have a portafilter with
perhaps a single spout
and a double spout now there are a range
of different
portafilter handles and they have a
slight um difference
in their design now if you have a look
at this one right here
you can see it starts straight and then
actually tapers in a little bit
now this is even though it's a double
spout you can see we can't fit a
straight wall basket in there
and that's an 18 gram basket now
commercially we
like to use these 21 gram straight wall
baskets you can buy them as a
as a copy or you can get the cool vst
ones and there's some really nice
baskets out there on the market
but they actually won't fit into a
standard handle
because they're so straight it will
actually knock
on this curve and not go in so
you can then buy another handle with a
double spout on it or a single if you
like
that is actually a little bit deeper and
you can see here
that there is a very big difference
between the design there
now that allows it to have the bigger
baskets
so okay that's going to fix one problem
by putting a big basket
into a handle like this but what's that
going to achieve
essentially when you get the coffee
coming out the bottom of a basket
it's going to end up in the little well
here and go down that hole
and simply if you've got a double spout
it will just split it to the left
or the right hand side and most of the
time that is going to be an issue if
your machine's not
level not about how you're tamping or
other issues that you've got going on
it can also be because you've actually
got some water in here
and one side of these spouts is wet and
the coffee will naturally flow down the
wet surface
rather than the dry spout side so
that's pretty much what's happening
inside that basket you don't know
whether it's a good extraction
it's even there's been channeling you've
got a high pressurized spurt coming out
of here
you really have no idea because you
can't see what's happening inside this
basket
you're totally relying on that liquid
coming out and
dripping or pouring at your preferred
recipes
time frame so to learn more about what's
happening
we want to see what happens at the
bottom of this basket
and that's where the bottomless or naked
is going to be our
hero in this part so essentially we can
see
exactly what's happening on every
extraction
right there live while we're using it
so it's going to allow us to see if it's
i'm showing some stainless steel holes
here first with our extraction
and the coffee is only coming out one
side and that might be because you
haven't tamped nice and level on your
coffee
we're going to start to see some really
dark drips coming on one side of the
basket
and very light on the other and that's
because
the light side is actually maybe got
some more coffee in there
and it's slowing things down and the
right hand side
has some really nice fine grinds and
it's getting more out of that actual
coffee
so it all comes down to your
distribution of your coffee grinds
in your basket you can start to analyze
those
by seeing what is happening on the other
end
so it's a really great tool for you to
make sure that you're consistent in your
dosing
consistency in your grind and most of
all your distribution of your actual
grinds
to ensure there's no channeling and no
defects in your puck so it's a great
visual
so you can see what's happening with
your extraction now a lot of people also
look about timing from the first drip
that comes out of the bottom of your
spout
now is that great well how long has that
water
actually been infusing with the coffee
before it's made its way into the bottom
of the basket
and then made its way out so you can
easily see
with a naked when that coffee has
actually started to process
through your coffee park so really is
that the right amount of pre-infusion
time that you're chasing
or is it time it took from the bottom of
the actual basket
to get out the handle so again some
refinements there in time
that you can play with but essentially
you've now got
a better understanding of things you can
measure
so the other thing you can gain when you
get yourself a new
naked portafilter is a better ergonomics
when you're actually grabbing your
handle
so a lot of the older handles actually
come straight off
from where your groove basket actually
fits into your handle
and newer handles are actually tapered
so that is a far better more ergonomics
when you're grabbing onto the handle and
locking it in
so there's a bit of an added bonus there
if you've got old handles versus
new ones you should be able to see that
difference there
now the other great thing is when you're
getting into
large size mugs or bigger takeaways
sometimes there isn't enough room
under a coffee machine from these spouts
to fit your cups
so you can see now with a 12 ounce
we can't get under there we have to tilt
that cup
and come in under an angle and we can't
always see what's happening inside that
cup
so if we get ourself a naked
we'll be able to lock it straight in
and get us a lot more room so a couple
of the other drawbacks is it's very hard
to extract
a coffee out of this into a small
espresso cup
you literally have to hold it all the
way up and make it sort of seal
so that it is going to give all of that
extraction into
the cup it doesn't always drip in nicely
you'll get drips all the way around the
outside so there's a bit of a challenge
when you're doing espressos
so the question is do we use naked in
our shop right here
the answer is no because
we need to be able to split shots now
in main service we will have a double
shot in this one
and we may have a 16 ounce which is
larger and we will split
from this side into two cups and we'd be
splitting that into
some little piccolo glasses and popping
that into a cup
and then adding another double shot on
top so
it may not suit what you're doing in
your cafe on a day to day
do we use naked's to assess coffee or
use it as a training method to be able
to
get people to understand what's
happening in instructions definitely
so thanks very much for watching i hope
this has helped you understand why you
would buy yourself a naked
aka a bottomless portafilter for home
or in your shop thanks guys for watching
have an awesome day
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