Features 58 mm VD Standard Pro coffee leveler
- Brand VD
- Standard Pro Series
- Diameter: 58 mm
- Color: Black
- Material: Food grade stainless steel/ polyamide.
- Country of Origin: Ukraine
- Depth adjustment
VD coffee leveler
The VD Coffee coffee distributor is designed to evenly distribute coffee in the filter . The three angled grooves effectively and correctly distribute the coffee, creating a dense tablet. This helps to avoid lumps of ground coffee or the formation of “voids” (channels).
What is a coffee dispenser?
If you do not distribute the coffee in the basket well, the drink will turn out unbalanced and tasteless. This is due to the fact that due to the different channels and lumps in the coffee, it will brew unevenly. To avoid lumps, first of all, you need to use the right coffee grinder, and a special distributor for ground coffee will help you minimize this effect.
Baristas often smooth the surface of the ground coffee with their finger. But this does not help much, as the coffee is distributed only in the upper part of the tablet, and the lower part will remain with lumps and cavities. This will most likely lead to the formation of channels, so it is better to use a specialized device for leveling the ground coffee in the holder – a leveler.
How useful is a coffee dispenser during preparation?
There are many options to distribute the ground coffee more evenly. For example, tapping the side of the holder with your palm, WDT needles, but all of these options cannot provide as much stability as a leveler.
A leveler will be most useful for novice baristas to make consistent espresso. An experienced barista can make a delicious drink without it, but it will be a little more difficult to do. Such a device is especially important in coffee shops, where a large flow of guests and repeatability of taste are very important.
Can I do without a leveler?
A delicious espresso cannot be made without an even tablet. Therefore, it is not enough to grind the coffee in the holder, it must be evenly distributed and then tempered. With the help of a leveler, this can be done quickly and easily.
Research has shown that hand tapping is a good dispensing method when used by experienced baristas. A less experienced barista will do a worse job of it – and therefore their espresso will be unstable. Therefore, in this case, it is better to use a special leveler.
We recommend experimenting and finding out from your own experience whether this tool helps you in your work.
Baristas sometimes encounter the following situation: the first espresso was within the profile, and the next one deviated from the recipe in terms of time or volume of the finished drink. One of the reasons for this is channeling.
What is canalization?
Channeling is the process by which water, passing under pressure through coffee, finds the path of least resistance and forms channels.
If the coffee is tempered unevenly, the water will find a spot with lower density and, under pressure, will pass through that part faster. The coffee will be overextracted in that spot, and underextracted in other parts of the tablet.
The result will be an espresso with a watery body and a lack of balance: excessively bitter and acidic at the same time.
Why channels form
Uneven distribution of coffee in the holder is the main cause of channeling . Coffee can clump during grinding due to obstructions in the outlet channel, static, the characteristics of a particular coffee, or blunt coffee grinder burrs. At the same time, the absence of lumps does not mean that the coffee is evenly distributed.
In coffee grinders with direct grinding, clumping is almost always present. In dispensers, it is eliminated by the dispenser. If you use a coffee grinder with direct grinding, distribute the coffee more carefully in the basket. Because the main and dust fractions of the grind do not enter the basket in uniform proportions.
Causes of coffee canalization
- Composting is quite often the cause of canalization.
- Uneven tempering. This can be affected by the design of the tamper. Its radius may be smaller than the holder basket, which means the tamper will not press on the entire area of the coffee tablet – this will lead to uneven tempering.
- Improper tempering. If a coffee tablet is tamped at an angle , more water will only pass through the part with lower density during extraction. Tempering at an angle will result in a coffee tablet with a non-uniform density.
- Tap the side of the holder with a tamper. In the past, many baristas did this to make the surface of the coffee tablet look nice and clean — without any extra coffee particles. But knocking causes cracks to form in it. And re-tempering will not fix the situation. Do not knock the temper on the side of the holder
How to understand that channels have formed in a coffee tablet
- The first indicator of a breakdown in a coffee tablet is the sudden jumps in the jet and its rapid lightening.
- No cream or pale cream.
- Flat and dull taste with unbalanced acidity and bitterness.
- Sharp deviation of espresso parameters: rapid spillage or increase in the volume of the finished drink.
- Holes in a coffee tablet.
- Visual observation of unevenness on the bottom of the basket during extraction when using a bottomless holder.
