Teflon Coated Baskets

September 28th, 2010

I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking “what would happen if you coated a portafilter basket in teflon?”

Ok, so that probably isn’t what you are thinking, but it was clearly what Paul from Coffee Hit was thinking. Two of these baskets arrived in the post this morning for me to play with, and play we did!

I’m a fan of teflon in some places.  I like my teflon coated portafilters very much, and I like my teflon coated low flow steam tip too.  These I was a little more skeptical about.  I made a very quick, silly little film to try and document a few things:

- The cone at the bottom never really forms on a naked portafilter.  I’m not sure why.  At first I thought it was because some holes must have gotten closed by the process, but the random nature of the patterns you get underneath seem to dispel that theory.

- Channelling is even easier than before.  (No surprises)

- Cleaning is, er, very easy! (No surprises there either!)

- The shots taste odd.  Odd in a way I can’t quite describe.

I’ll keep playing and report in if I find anything noteworthy! Enjoy the film!

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  • Colin Harmon

    I’m thinking a million things about this but can’t prove any of them.*

    *i will still say I told you so

  • http://whyyoushouldhatecoffee.wordpress.com Keith Mrotek

    Hmm…

    my first thought, was about how RainX dispells water on a windshield, and that this is possibly happening here?

    the Teflon breaks the surface tension between the streams “trying” to come together in the middle and create the cone.

    Maybe this is good!?

    prevents over-extraction in the center of the puck?

    Interesting!

  • Zander

    i think keith nails the cone-formation question. i’m guessing the “odd” taste has to do with either a) hole size/variation in the basket, or b) lower surface tension basket changing the amount of bubbling in the espresso, causing a different amount of gas to stay put/bubble out. c) adrenalin in the taster from the excitement with the new toy. (:P) I doubt the coating does anything to the fluid flow inside the puck.
    /often wrong, never in doubt/

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  • AndyS

    Those are some pretty nasty looking shots!
    Seems like it would be interesting to teflon coat only the sides of the basket, leaving the bottom uncoated. I think that would make cleaning and knocking out the puck easier, but hopefully not disrupt the extraction.
    Did you measure any extraction yields?

  • Edwin Martinez

    Very interesting… strange. would seem to me the channeling concept carries through to how coffee exits this thing. A lot in some places and not so much in others. I have to imagine if uniformity in size and shape of holes is important that it would be hard to coat a finished basket with teflon and end up with a uniform pattern of holes of the same size and shape. Unless holes in basket were done AFTER a blank basket was teflon coated???

  • http://utopiancoffee.com Patrick Smith

    Colin, your comments always make me laugh. James, I can’t get passed the fact that the filter basket is BRIGHT GREEN! All other oddities in extraction pale by comparison to the utterly distracting glow-in-the-dark basket.

  • http://coffeecupnews.org Jason Coffee

    Doesn’t look to promising and if it negatively effects the taste then all the benefits don’t matter.

    Maybe the science of it will come together but coating the basket seems like a bad idea for more reasons than just the one but like Colin said, “(I) can’t prove any of them”

  • http://Www.fernwoodcoffee.com Ben Cram

    Is it that hard to clean a normal basket?

  • Will Frith

    Would the “seal” normally around the puck inside the basket not form, due to the Teflon being so slick? The water would have an easy time getting around the sides of the coffee puck, no?

    Were you able to turn your portafilter over, after tamping, without the coffee slipping out?

  • http://pahni.com.ua Sisil

    This is a great mystery, which I did not guess!

  • Bluecold

    If you’re worried about ruining the teflon with steel tampers, the only source I know for high quality non-steel tampers is Thor tampers.
    http://www.thortamper.com/index.html

    –Not affiliated–