Coffee Data Science
Freckle and Dimple Shower Screens for the Decent: Water Flow
A repeat test with new hardware
A few years ago, I did a unit test on the diffuser and shower screen for the Decent Espresso machine. I found water flowed unevenly. I recently got the new Freckle and Dimple shower screens from Decent, and I decided to test their new shower screen design. I also performed this test on the Sworks precision shower screen.
Freckles has push out pieces with tiny holes all over. Dimples only has holes on the pushed out pieces.
Compared to Sworks with precision holes, which has a smaller number of holes than the Dimples and the Freckles.
I measured the water output using a 5 mm square grid to give more resolution to what was coming out. I wish I had a deeper grid because each square can only hold 1 ml of water. The original shower screen on the Decent performed as such:
Target Distribution
The goal for even distribution would be roughly this figure.
The result from the average from let to right and top to bottom would look like this in shape:
Freckles
The freckles screen went first, and water was still uneven. This has more to do with the water being uneven by the time it gets to the shower screen.
There was evenness from top to bottom, but the left side had more water flow.
There was also a big difference if I didn’t flush the group before the shot.
Dimples
The dimples was slightly different, but there was still a large unevenness.
This one pulled to the right in flow.
Sworks
The shower screen was very strong in the water coming out, but it didn’t fix the inherent unevenness of the water input above.
From one direction, the distribution was more even, but from another, it was lop-sided.
Water input is so important for espresso, and while these shower screens are super cool, they don’t matter so much if the water coming into them is already uneven.
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Further readings of mine:
My Second Book: Advanced Espresso
My First Book: Engineering Better Espresso
