To Spout, or not to Spout

[sam]

All weekend I was thinking about the debate "to crotch or not to crotch my pfs". I was the first person in Canada to do away with spouts, the morning after chris posted his findings in the old BGF from Zoka. I have been a convert since. I have shown people the benefits of crotchless for a few years now and can see how quickly that it has spread. Most people that I know use naked filters now. All except a few gurus whom I have assumed have been stuck in the mud. Now I see a bigger picture...
On Saturday I pulled a few shots at Habit on the old Hines 5-group with Hines 'spro through pour spouts. I was very impressed at the shots. For the first time in a long time I was impressed with a shot of espresso made elsewhere (in Victoria), and it was with spouts! That got my mind squarely back on the long standing debate. By Sunday night in a fitful sleep I determined that I was going to go back spouted. I have a two group Synesso and have recently been playing with one group spouted the other naked, but now I am going to go for it...All Spouts!
The results were impressive right away. The acidic high note were muted to create a more balanced shot. The sometimes sour acids that come from the Yirg and the Kenya in the blend were turned into a sweet aftertaste that did not detract from their flavours. You can still taste the qualities of all the coffees. The body of the espresso is much nicer with the spouts. It is denser and has a flatter like the crema has been bruised or condensed through the spouts. This is as opposed to the naked which has an airy light quality about the crema that at first I loved as a novel mouth feel.
What has changed to make me want to go back to spout? I have started to roast my own coffee, develop a better palette and have gained allot of Barista skills through training other people. Using the naked pfs for so long has been very good to me in the sense that it taught me a lot about espresso (taste and process). When I started with the crotchless, I was using other peoples coffee and found that it made the coffee taste better. It gave it that creama and profile that I wanted at the time. When I began to roast, I never thought that my coffee might be better with spouts. It just never occurred to me. It seem to me now that there is room for both systems in an espresso program. It is going to come down to a few factors though:
The blend
The desired profile
The skill level of the Barista
The machine
I think that by using the spouts now after so long of using naked pfs, I will focus more and keep the pfs as clean as possible. There is so much to write about that I do not have the time (not that it has not been written about already. Questions... what does the nickle have to do with the neutralizing of the acids?...how does temperature adjustments vary from naked to spouted... and can one come up with a crotchless blend that mimics the profile of a spouted pour?
Right now I am going to play with my espresso blend to make it more geared towards the spouts.

[Jimmy Oneschuk]

I can't comment on everything you referred to Sam, but in our shop, we've been spouts on since day one, for the reasons you mentioned: it somehow mutes the perceived acidity of our blend.

Just yesterday, I was pulling some Maui Mokha - a very mild coffee, and found myself leaning toward the bottomless PF, again for this very reason.

I've given up on saying which is better. I use each for different reasons. Since we run different sized baskets for different sized drinks, the bottomless pf is handy when switching, because all I need to preheat is the basket itself... in this sense, with a 2group machine, it's a godsend.

[sam]

the fact is that I like both styles. Jimmy, your right, using the crotchless as an enhancer to a selected coffee is a great idea. When I swap out my two group for a three group I will have two spouted pfs and one crotchless. Then depending on the request and the drink and the coffee, I will be able to switch it up at will. That realy will solve my problem, but I have to wait a few months.
Jimmy, do you have any pics of your cafe and machine set up on line?

[Dave Stephens]

I shuffle back and forth between bottomless and spouted. I tend to prefer the crema that a single spout produces. With my bottomless, I get more crema volume but at the expense of texture. With the spout, I get slightly less volume but a finer, silkier texture in the crema that I prefer. With a new blend I go bottomless just to see what is going on, then back to the spout most of the time. It is difficult to explain especially since it is so subjective. Personal taste is just that, personal. The best option is the one you like the best.

Dave

[Daniel Humphries]

Sam:

Interesting post. You refer to "all the debate" on this issue. I certainly know a lot of people who have decided to go naked because of the purported (and nebulously defined) benefits. But yours is the first detailed analysis I have seen of exactly <i>why</i> someone would do this or not. Thanks for bringing it up... I'm wondering if others could throw in their two cents. I am very curious.

Several baristas I know have done away with spouts from a sort of vague desire for purity. The thinking (I believe), comes from viewing the spouts as an unnecessary mitigator between the puck and the cup. The idea is that the only purpose of the spouts is to channel the espresso from pf to demitasse... unnecessary if you are attentive and precise. But I've also heard grumblings about a lack of temperature stability in a naked pf; that the bottom on the pf (not necessarily the spouts) helps the pf and the puck in general retain heat. What about this?

Haven't done any earnest investigations in this direction, but you have just inspired me to do so.

Well, people, what do we think?

[Goatherd]

I've been wanting to yank this thread out for a while and have been waiting for some time to pass since our shop opened to have a better working opinion.
We are currently naked at our shop (not ashamed of our body). After a lot of experimenting we've decided that for our blend, the flavor profile we're shooting for is more easily achieved sans spouts. We get a noted decrease in brightness which is key to the initial impact of our blend. I have also found that similar (NOT the same...but similar)things happen to the taste (excessive balance?) with 1)spouts, 2)using a triple basket (with our usual 20g dose) (we currently use ridgeless doubles) and 3)an 18g dose in our usual ridgeless doubles. My thinking is that the increased headroom is somehow achieving a similar effect on the blend as spouts.
I am currently interested if anyone has found any correlation between spouts/no spouts and other taste characteristics or effects?
I am about to take a fresh look at spouts where our SO espresso is concerned. We have (up till now) used the nakeds and the same basic dosing for our SO shots and I know they deserve thier own attention.

on a side note: We have been offering 'Misty Valley' Idido as an SO espresso for the last two weeks or so and have found it to be one of the most forgiving coffees I've ever used as an espresso. We try to take advantage of 'bad shots' to get to know, by taste, what over/under extraction or early blonding or channelling tastes like. But with the Misty it seemed like we really could not screw it up. It has pretty much tasted different and awesome no matter what we do to it (within reason of course ). Anyone else had this experience with the 'Misty' or another coffee?

[barry]

I am about to take a fresh look at spouts where our SO espresso is concerned. We have (up till now) used the nakeds and the same basic dosing for our SO shots and I know they deserve thier own attention.

make sure, when sampling spouted vs chopped, to pour shots of equal mass, not volume.

[Kevin Cash]

I tend to prefer the crema that a single spout produces. With the spout, I get slightly less volume but a finer, silkier texture in the crema that I prefer.
Dave

Well said Dave.
We use all single spouts here for the same reason. My naked pf seems to fluff up the crema too much. I like the compressed feel of the crema since mouthfeel is so important.

[MarkG]

I prefer the mouthfeel of a naked shot, the perceived (on my part) enhanced viscosity does it for me, but I totally agree that a single spout is preferable to a double when using a regular p/f for the reasons of silky mouthfeel mentioned. A straight shot from the twin spout doesn't really do it for me anymore when I know what the naked/single can provide.

Having pulled tighter and tighter ristretti style shots for some time now, we have recently also been playing around with the 10g size 'LM single' that is in reality about one and a half. I mention it because some of the 'single' espressi pulled with this basket and the single spout have been exceptional. It is the one occasion when I do prefer the spout and appreciate the slightly thinner mouthfeel.

[gscace]

the fact is that I like both styles. Jimmy, your right, using the crotchless as an enhancer to a selected coffee is a great idea. When I swap out my two group for a three group I will have two spouted pfs and one crotchless. Then depending on the request and the drink and the coffee, I will be able to switch it up at will. That realy will solve my problem, but I have to wait a few months.
Jimmy, do you have any pics of your cafe and machine set up on line?

I revisited spouts a couple of months ago when results for pressure profiling update number 2 were being obtained. Nick Cho turned me on to the idea that crotchless wasn't necessarily better. Since then I've decided that spout / spoutless is another tool with which to influence taste, like changing basket sizes.

But none of it matters with spouts if the spouts and the pf bottom are dirty.

-Greg

[phaelon56]

Speaking of spouts... have any of you played with the "nozzle" spout?
ESI stocks them as part # "nozzle". It looks a bit like the nozzle end of a firehose and eliminates the path that espresso takes across conventional single spouts. In theory - if distribution and tamping is good - might this help retain heat by having the bottom covered yet still allow the espresso to drip directly out the bottom having minimal contact with the portafilter assembly itself?

[Jason Haeger]

Personally, I don't much care for the "nozzle" spout.

I've used it. The espresso doesn't "flow" out of it like it does with a normal spout. It just looks like the espresso is being mistreated.

That doesn't mean much, but it's less "neat". So maybe that's just me being fussy about how it looks.

[phaelon56]

Personally, I don't much care for the "nozzle" spout.

I've used it. The espresso doesn't "flow" out of it like it does with a normal spout. It just looks like the espresso is being mistreated.

That doesn't mean much, but it's less "neat". So maybe that's just me being fussy about how it looks.

I haven't tested one yet but I'll do that this weekend. From a logical and theoretical standpoint it doesn't seem that it would "mistreat" the espresso any more than a bottomless PF. To be certain - the first few drops that come out before the stream concentrates in the center of the basket (assuming good distribution and tamping) will likely just drop out of the nozzle in a way that's not aesthetically pleasing.

Is that your real concern or issue with the nozzle - the aesthetics?