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mattgreenrocks

The relatively small amount of money I have put into my espresso setup has made a noticeable difference:

* Breville Bambino

* Niche Zero

* IMS 20mm baskets for Breville portafilters

I can get within spitting distance of most third-wave coffee shops most days.

Still a lot to learn but I can tell I'm nearing the point of rapidly diminishing returns. I'll probably look to upgrade the Bambino when it dies, but I'm not really jonesing for much more at this point.

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My flair pro combined with a high end hand grinder has led me to never having a better espresso outside of my house. It's a decent amount of manual effort (start to finish time is about 10-15 minutes) but the only reason is to reduce that effort for the same quality.

Got a flair as well and it pulls some great shots! The process is also kind of fun.

Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers... down! After years of honing my flow, the TTE (time to espresso) is 6 minutes on gas, it'd probably be closer to 5 with an electric kettle. (I use a Comandante)

A quicker kettle would help. But triple heating the flair's chamber, then clean up and it's longer than I'd like for TTE.

The trick is getting a kettle that fits the brew chamber on top, so it steams while the water boils, I use a bonavitta with a mesh strainer as it's mouth is a bit too wide, but it seems like the fellow is almost a perfect fit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FlairEspresso/comments/j53vy0/fello...

Ah, triple heating will take some time. I usually double heat if I'm brewing a bougie light, single otherwise.

Sibling suggested heating the chamber with the kettle, in my experience that has caused the silicon wrapping to deteriorate.

Do the baskets really make that much of a difference compared to stock ones?

The stock baskets for the Bambino are pressured, so yes. From my experience you can't get a "good" shot out of the stock baskets (but even crappy beans with a crappy grind produce something passable as espressso).

They are not sending good baskets with the Bambino? The baskets on the Infuser are reasonably good, just a bit weird as they are a bit narrower on the base.

My Bambino (bought <1yr ago) came with both pressurized and non-pressurized baskets actually.

There's a whole wave of innovation on baskets right now - holes all the way to the edge, hole sizes and cutting methods, reducing the amount of flex under pressure, etc. Check out Lance Hedrick's YouTube channel.

I have but a humble delonghi dedica and the only upgrade I've done so far is with the basket. It's made quite a difference.

similar, picopresso 129usd plus a normcore extra filter for 20 and at 150 with fine grounds from a third wave shop i'm making some crema lovin shots pulled from home

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