In this video Luke is talking all about the WDT barista tool. He's explaining exactly what it is, what it is used for and how to use it.
WDT is an acronym for Weiss Distribution Technique but has also become known as the Weiss Distribution Tool. Essentially the WDT is a tool with fine needles that a barista uses to stir coffee grinds around while they sit in the portafilter. Stirring with the fine needles breaks up any clumps, and evens out the density of coffee within the puck. Adding this technique to the coffee puck preparation process aids in reducing channeling, and produces higher quality and more even extractions.
We hope you enjoy the video and it helps you understand what the WDT is all about.
Video Transcript
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This is a WDT and we've been getting
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asked questions from baristas in cafes, whether it's something
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that they should introduce into their coffee puck preparation.
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They've been around for a little bit, but they're huge at the moment.
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They're everywhere on social media.
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Anywhere you look, someone is playing with coffee in a different way.
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This is one version of it.
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There's a lot of different varieties out there.
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So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about them.
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Which ones are good?
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And a bit of the technology as to why you might introduce this into your coffee
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preparation.
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So what does WDT stand for?
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It stands for Weiss Distribution Technique.
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Now, I believe that's a guy that invented this.
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And maybe lets give him some credit about it
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because it seems to be a huge thing now and everyone just calls them
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WDT and there's a lot of different types out there.
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You can get things that are sort of like an NCD and
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you'd put them in and spin them with different sized needles in them.
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There's this pointy style here or there's a lot of homemade varieties.
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Now, there's been a lot of tests out there that have started
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to really narrow down from this technique what actually works best.
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So we also want to know what the technique is about.
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The idea of using this, which is small little needles,
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is to fluff up your grind so that there's no clumping of those grinds together.
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Because if you have any grinds that are stuck together,
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essentially you're going to create, let's call it a boulder or a rock inside
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your coffee bed, which is going to flow make the water flow on a different angle.
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And we're just trying to get consistency all the way
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through your water as it goes through the grind.
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Where that tends to deviate.
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We call it channeling in the coffee industry.
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So we're trying to reduce channeling the best we can.
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These tools are designed for, I guess, home users as well,
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where you might have a lower quality grinder and the coffee's coming out
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really clumpy, this would be a fantastic tool for you.
2:01
In the cafe if you've got the other side with a really,
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you know, the side with a grinder or high end grinder
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that comes out nice and fluffy and really good.
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Well, you may not need this as much, but essentially that's what
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we're trying to do.
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We're trying to get the coffee consistent
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so that when we do tamp it, it is super even to reduce channeling.
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This is a
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homemade WDT It's just a cork from a champagne bottle.
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And it looks like a couple of paper clips that have been jammed in.
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And this is a commercially made product.
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Now, if you've got nothing and you want to start giving it a go,
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have a play with this.
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It's just a it's a way for you to start getting involved in it.
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However, there are some things you want to consider that have been proven
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not to be good.
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It's the size of the actual strand or piece of metal
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that is going through the actual coffee bed.
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The paper clip here is probably about 0.6
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or maybe even point eight of a millimeter thick.
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So that's quite large because the grind particle size is very fine.
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It's going to start to actually hit more than one
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piece of grind or two or
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three and start to move them together and actually start making more clumps.
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So what you're looking for in a WDT is something that is point
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two, point four or point six of a mill in size.
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So they call them needles as well.
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And essentially it looks like a needle and there's a different range of products
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out there.
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People are finding these things are being used in other industries.
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So if you come across them,
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you can grab that as a fat end on them with a bit of a spring.
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But these ones just sit in nice and firm.
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So essentially, you're trying to get the smallest gauged
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wire and pass that through the coffee bed to make sure that two grind
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particle sizes don't touch each other so the water flows nicely.
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So what I'm going to do is just show you how we use this.
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And I think we're going to do a lot of other videos
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in the future about the actual results from this versus an NCD.
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Are we getting channeling or not?
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That's another whole video
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that we want to cover, but we just want to cover how we use a WDT.
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So we've got our coffee group handle and we're fluffing the coffee up.
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So you really need to have some sort of collar that's going to fit
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on top of your group handle
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so that it doesn't go everywhere.
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We've already got our pre-weighed coffee here,
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and we're going to pop it in
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and you can see very clearly there
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that there are some huge big boulders and clumps of coffee.
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So if we were to tamp that now, this would be a big,
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basically solid area where the water won't pass through.
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And we would definitely see some channeling.
4:46
So there's a couple of different techniques they talk about is deep WDT,
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which is where you're going
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to get these needles and take them and hit the actual bottom of the basket.
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You can do the mid range coffee and the top surface of it.
5:00
So, look, if you're going to do these different techniques, the deep one,
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it obviously covers all of the coffee, but it can scratch your coffee basket.
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So if you've got a really nice VST or something
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and you're worried about that, it will only be cosmetic.
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But you just don't want to.
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Don't worry too much.
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If you do scratch it, it won't affect the actual coffee.
5:18
And I'm just doing some really deep right now and you can see that
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that has really fluffed up the coffee and it's sunk.
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So essentially, we're
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sort of
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tapping or tamping the coffee and it's collapsing.
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And as we go around, you can start to see that
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that will actually just get lower and lower as we go around.
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So that would be the first technique.
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And we're going to see these big clumps
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and we're going to work those into our basket.
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Now, the longer you do this, the better you do it.
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It's definitely going to have more of an effect.
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It's a little bit tedious, but if you've got yourself a really nice single origin
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or you've paid a lot for coffee and you want to get the best extraction,
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this is what I think you need to do.
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You can go clockwise or anti-clockwise, whatever you feels good
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but just be consistent in that whole process.
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So now that I've got
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all the way round on the base, I'm going to start doing the mid
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section of that coffee
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and then I'm going to come up
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and make the top look nice and nice as well.
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And just go to work.
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And you can see that's
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why you need the collar, the coffee does come up over the top
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I want to try and get those in.
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There we go.
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Okay so that should have a very even gap
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between every particle in the coffee.
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We'll remove our collar
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and I'm just going to give it a really solid firm
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tap just once, and that's just going to collapse that coffee.
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Just a little bit.
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Now, in this example, I'm
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not going to use any other tool to add onto this coffee bed.
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There's a lot of, again, talk out there about using other distributing
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tools on top of this and the effects, but we'll cover that in another video.
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We're just going to focus on this one here.
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We're going to get our tamper and again, apply nice even pressure
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to the coffee bed
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and then we go.
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We've got a couple little grinds just on the outside there
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because that's a 58 mil tamper where we should have a 58.4 or six
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and it will just catch those end grinds.
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I'm not going to worry about those.
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I don't want to tap the basket now, but that essentially
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is the best way that you use a WDT.
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Getting a nice even
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needling through the bottom, middle and top surface of that coffee.
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So before I run this extraction, I'm going to show you how great
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this tool actually is.
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We've compacted all of this coffee and the WDT
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can fluff it right up again.
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So pop the WDT in
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and we should be able to take all of these clumps that are here
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and fluff it right back up again
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and pop our little collar back on.
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So if you did have a really poor quality grind
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this tool will definitely get rid of all of those clumps.
8:31
Again, just going
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the same process all the way around.
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I'm doing deep at the moment as we go round.
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Now I'm going to come up to the middle
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of that coffee bed
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and then finish on the top.
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Now, a lot of people just talk about the top
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because they want to make it look pretty.
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But if you can get that reasonably level,
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it's only going to be better.
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So we're going to give that a tamp.
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Now let's make an extraction.
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Can you get right on to that?
9:34
What we're looking for is channeling
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how well that coffee comes through and how even it is
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and the color.
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So what parts of dark, what are light.
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So when we have a look at that extraction
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you can see it did process the water through quite evenly at the top.
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There was a little bit of channeling happening but nowhere near
10:10
as big as we might see in not doing
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some sort of distribution to a coffee bed.
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Probably went a little bit over on this extraction
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a little bit pale there as you can see.
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So it would've been good to have our scales and weigh that.
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But I'm just going to give it a taste and see
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how that comes out.
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That's actually really a little bit bright.
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It's definitely bringing through the citrus flavors into that coffee.
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It's clean, it's crisp, That's interesting.
10:39
I'd love to taste the difference between all those moving forward on another video.
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So now we've had a taste of that coffee.
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We should look at the coffee puck and see if we did get any channeling.
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And if we have a look that is a very even expanded coffee bed.
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There's a little bit one on the end there
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and it's pretty the same density all the way through.
11:01
So would I say that a WDT
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has helped channeling as when we're looking at the puck on the top?
11:09
Yeah, definitely.
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Sometimes we see big drill holes all the way through that coffee bed.
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So it's definitely had an impact on that coffee bed
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and the extraction and what we're going to get out of that coffee
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in terms of TDS, acidity, body, flavors and all those things that we chase
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when we're going to put a lot of effort into our coffee
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distributions to get a great coffee as well.
11:32
Now, where does this sit in a cafe?
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Is this something that could be used?
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And that's a question that we keep getting asked.
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It's very time consuming.
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Now in a cafe we're looking for consistency.
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We're looking to do a great extraction to make sure we've got the right dose
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and the right yields.
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To add something like this into that process would definitely slow things down.
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There are a couple of other tools that you could use that make it a bit quicker,
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but I think you'd have to really work out how much gain you're going
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to get out of your coffee to add this particular product into it.
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And I think it's going to slow things down.
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If you're in the specialty game and you had a really amazing, expensive
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single origin coffee and that customer wants to wait a fair bit.
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Yeah, bring it out. Give it a go.
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You're probably going to make an amazing coffee out of that beautiful
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specialty bean by adding a much more particular process to it.
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I think it's going to fit the home market a bit more
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where you do have time to actually work with your
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your coffee puck and make sure it is perfect so that you can enjoy
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all the different types of flavors at home.
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So that's where I feel that WDT at the moment is fitting.
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I'm sure there's going to be more of them coming out, which would be a bit quicker.
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It may replace some other distribution tools that we have in the market as well.
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If you're looking to get yourself a WDT like this one and you're
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in Australia, they're on our website so jump on and grab those.
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Thanks very much for watching.
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I hope that's help you understand what a WDT is, where it fits
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in the marketplace and is it something that you should use.
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Thanks very much for watching.
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If you got any questions leave them below.
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Like and subscribe to the channel. We appreciate it.
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We'll catch you next time. Cheers.
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