What is the difference between a bottomless espresso maker and a diverter handle? What handles should I use for single and double powder bowls? Which handle is suitable for extraction and concentration?

In the past two days, well-known coffee bloggers have talked about the handle of the coffee machine, believing that the bottomless handle is more suitable for espresso extraction than the shunt handle. The so-called coffee machine handle is a tool used to support the powder bowl for extraction. Whether it is the single powder bowl that Qianjie talked about yesterday, or the double powder bowl we commonly use today, it needs to be stuck on the handle before we can have the ability to resist the pressure of the coffee machine and extract espresso.

So the question is, do you know why bottomless handles are more suitable for espresso extraction than shunt handles? The answer to this question actually has something to do with the birth of bottomless handles, so we might as well take a look at why bottomless handles were born.

Bottomless handle since the invention of pressurized coffee machine, people have been using a handle with a diversion port at the bottom for a long time. This kind of handle is mainly divided into two kinds, one is the one-way diversion handle for extraction single concentration, as the name suggests, it has only one diversion port. The other is a shunt handle for extracting a double concentrate, which, as the name implies, has two diversion ports at the bottom, which can divide a coffee into two portions.

Until later, people found that each extracted espresso will have a certain change in taste, sometimes it is normal, but sometimes there will be obvious negative taste, which bothers many people. So in 2004, Chris Davison, co-founder of the American Barista Association, and his colleagues developed a bottomless handle to more visually detect the state of concentration in the extraction process by removing the entire bottom.

Then, it is found that there is a sputtering phenomenon from time to time in the process of concentration and extraction, and these sputtering phenomena always give the coffee a certain negative taste. As a result, people launched a survey around this point of view. In the end, it turns out that this sputtering phenomenon is indeed the core of the problem of taste change, and it is now known as the concept of "channel effect".

So we can know that one of the biggest advantages of bottomless handle is that it can directly see the extraction state of espresso. Of course, the advantages of bottomless handles don't stop there. They also have the following advantages:

There is no time difference when the shunt handle is in use, although the coffee liquid has been pressed out of the powder bowl, because there is a large shielding space at the bottom, the coffee liquid can only be seen by us when it flows out of the diversion port. To put it simply, its discharge time will have an error of 1 to 2 seconds with what we see. The bottomless handle has no bottom, so it can be captured directly by us when the coffee liquid is pressed out, which is very important for our time calculation. Therefore, if you are a friend who uses a shunt handle, be sure to adjust the effluent and collection time of espresso.

Retain more oil because coffee extracted with a bottomless handle does not have to go through a longer diversion channel, so relatively speaking, there will be more oil retention. This will be more friendly for milk coffee lovers! After all, rich grease will perform better whether it is used to make hot and cold stratified Dirty or for coffee flower drawing.

The bottomless handle is easier to clean, because there are few dead corners, so even if you don't remove the powder bowl, you can clean the handle itself. But the shunt handle is different, due to the existence of the shunt, it needs to remove the powder bowl for cleaning. In addition, some complex shunt handles also need to use small cleaning tools to clean the channel, the whole process will be relatively more cumbersome.

As a result, most coffee shops nowadays use bottomless handles for extraction. But this is not to say that the shunt handle has no advantage at all. it can separate espresso faster and improve the overall extraction efficiency. So how to choose, or according to the needs of the store to make a decision, the order varies from person to person.

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