Coffee Data Science

Simple Clumps and WDT Test: Espresso

Messing around and finding out

Robert McKeon Aloe
3 min readJan 28, 2022

My grinder (Niche Zero) doesn’t cause clumpy coffee, but that might be due to living in a dry region. However, I was curious about running an extreme clump test with and without the WDT method.

I was hesitant about wasting perfectly good coffee so such a test, so I used a spent puck. This had plenty of clumps, so it seemed like it might make for a good test.

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After tamping, it was pretty ugly.

Then I made a shot where I broke up the clumps thoroughly with WDT.

I pulled them both, and the WDT spent puck had more even water flow. For the clumpy puck, it was a hot mess. It quickly donuted.

From the foam in the cup, the WDT seems more homogenous with a bit higher flow rate.

This was a quick test to mess around and find out. I typically don’t need WDT especially if I’m making a staccato shot, and I’m glad the extreme clumping exampled played out as expected.

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Robert McKeon Aloe

I’m in love with my Wife, my Kids, Espresso, Data Science, tomatoes, cooking, engineering, talking, family, Paris, and Italy, not necessarily in that order.