Naked photo and video!

Naked. Finally.

My naked portafilter, which was designed and machined by “espressme,” one of my talented contacts from home-barista.com, finally arrived today after four days in limbo for “sortation” from Canada Post- it arrived from the US (specifically the great S of Wisconsin) on the 16th but I only got my hands on it today.A “naked” portafilter is a portafilter that’s had its spout and the bottom half of its bowl removed. I know this sounds like those poor kids in The Golden Compass being separated from their daemons, but trust me, this is to increase the amount of beauty in the world. With the lower part of the portafilter sawed away, the espresso comes into contact with nothing en route to the cup, and the barista can observe the extraction in detail to fine-tune his or her preparation procedures. It’s a very sexy diagnostic tool, and this one (which is sized for lever machines with 49mm portafilters; mine is one of them) is a real beauty.

Here’s a shot to help you understand what I’m talking about.

One the left is the stock pf, which has two spouts on the bottom. Normally making it “naked” just entails sawing or otherwise milling the bottom off, but Elektras have this slightly curved shape that help it to withstand the rigour of being mounted in the machine, and supposedly, cutting the bottom off makes it subject to warping. On the right is the new pf, which as you can see is basically a hoop of brass. The handle, by the way, is something I fashioned from an ice-cream scoop; I know it looks good but it’s strictly a workaround until I get a proper one made.So of course I went nuts pulling shots this afternoon and made a video of one. It’s not perfect but does show what the naked pf is intended to show. Here it is:

Ideally the “cone” of espresso would be coming out of the centre of the filter, but this was only my third try and I’m happy with it.