THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING... (Wdt, Autocomb, Moonraker, NCD, etc) 

If you enjoy the work I put into these and any of my content, please consider hitting the like and subscribe if you haven't! Those two things help my channel massively thank you! EDIT: Before saying "you should've used a more clump prone grinder," consider the results. The BEST method is exactly the one that actually ADDED clumps and caked grounds. You're working from a completely unproven baseline of WDT is necessary for declumping. This has never been proven. Even with clumps and caked grounds, the shaker was the best. Tamping seems to alleviate clumps. This was hypothesized years ago by Perger and even more recently by Samo Smrke, the university professor of Chemistry whom I consulted in this video. Cheers

Maybe the real distribution tool is the friends we made along the way

It's kind of hilarious that shaking grounds around in a jar does a better job than some Rolex looking complex wdt thing

Is this video medieval? Because I like Lancealot.

i really like the new direcction of the videos. Feels concise, just as informative, but way more to the point.

Lance why are you such a gift to the coffee community?

How James Bond of you Lance. “Shaken not stirred” 🍸

I've always maintained that WDT is more significant the less consistent the equipment (grinder) is. These results seem unsurprising and logical to me. I think a much more interesting experiment would be to do this with an entry level grinder (ESP, SGP, etc.) and maybe a baseline home machine (Silvia Pro X?) and see how the different methods compare, perhaps including grinding direct to the portafilter as well.

Excellent Video! Time also flew by, loved the presentation and the way you made your "biases" perfectly clear as in what exactly you did and how it might affect others (grinding directly into the portafilter) differently. Great Job Lance!

Fantastic. Thank you. I am a data person and really appreciate the effort, time and analysis that you put into these videos. Though many variables are in play, you make an effort to keep the experiment as pure and consistent as possibke through out. That's great. Keep the great work. Hope your channel grow a lot!

I appreciate the format of the last couple of videos (method, data, explanation) while streamlining the delivery. This is very well presented as usual. Thanks for the effort!

This is fantastic Lance!!! The results are surprising yet not surprising. I've often wondered if all the "things" we do to try to get the best results are counterproductive or doing nothing at all. This proves, at least in your controlled testing, that may be the case. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into these tests, and for putting yourself out there knowing the coffee community can be less than receptive to information that my counter their current views. Keep up the great work, and nice job on the camera work and edit Hugo!!

Wow, revelation! Love it. Would love to see follow up video that hones in on the weber shaker with ocd, surface wdt, and nothing. Thank you Lance!

You produce awesome content. So much information with so much emphasis on communicating the important facts. Thank you for putting your content out.

Just bought the Blind Shaker. Been asking myself this question since I first started as a Barista. And Lance always has the answer. ♥

Thank you Lance for all these recent brilliant uploads. This in particular, relived me from massive frustration that I was going to change my grinder. I was directly grinding into portafilter and getting really skewed results. All fixed now, thanks to a few shakes before dosing!

This changes everything! Love that you really go through your methodology and that your graphs show all the data points. Guess that I have to find a blind tumbler instead of the WDT. Also a quicker step than WDT before every shot.

Lance, your timing with these videos has been unreal. I'm currently saving up to upgrade from a 53mm machine to a 58mm, so researching what accessories I want to buy to accompany this. Your tamping and distribution videos have both changed my mind on what I am getting, and I love you for it. Keep up the good work legend

Lance, your content is excellent. I love how you refer to experts when needed. This video once again hits the mark. Excellent work, and good on you for not being influenced by popularity. It is a breath of fresh air, and makes us realise how sometimes over complicating our espresso is not helping.

Wow Lance there so much work has gone into this video. As a newbie your videos are a fanatic source of information you’ve really helped me improve my espresso. This morning I tried a good old shake before transferring to the basket and really just sorted out the puck surface with the WDT tool and double tamp. All the espressos were a significant step up from where they’ve been, extractions were way more even . Wife said her coffee this morning was a life time best ever. Basically you and your teams vid just justified all the money I’ve spent of a coffee kit. I owe You big time!

Love the video. I rarely comment on anything, but that transition from 6:37. Man, that was beautiful

Wow Lance there so much work has gone into this video 👏. As a newbie your videos are a fanatic source of information you’ve really helped me improve my espresso. This morning I tried a good old shake before transferring to the basket and really just sorted out the puck surface with the WDT tool and double tamp. All the espressos were a significant step up from where they’ve been, extractions were way more even . Wife said her coffee this morning was a life time best ever. Basically you and your teams vid just justified all the money I’ve spent of a coffee kit. I owe You big time!

Lance, you are killing it. These highly informative videos with super surprising findings are the bomb. I loved this one and the AeroPress video, making me rethink what I think is true about extraction.

Very insightful experiment! Thanks for your dedication Lance!

Crazy work... And mind-blowing results ! Thanks (once again) for that.

Good on you. For being so upfront with your personal stuff. ❤

Thank you so much Lance for giving us an excellent base line to further test against. 🎉 I need to up my patreon donation. Surely you’ve more than earned it.

Lance, thank you for this video. I've been holding off a WDT of some sort for years, not thinking much of it and grinding direct to portafilter. After this video it points me in the right direction and I'll try out grinder direct to cup, shake, then portafilter.

Thank you for this! I have been grinding straight into my dosing cup for some time because I found the most consistency.

Good info. Thank you for your dedication Lance.

I have to say that music added to the video is a nice touch! Great work Lance, thanks 🙏

Thank you Lance for the great Video and your insights! Really awesome how you generate that much data!

Thanks Lance, your focus and dedication to the detail is appreciated.

Great video @LanceHedrick! Really enjoyable content and nice work rocking the boat.

Really really liking the style of these last two videos. Snappy and informative. Really great stuff here

Amazing and thank you. Love the data driven approach.

Thanks you so much for the video, my 78s Sculptor grinder is finally acting seasoned:) Shaking and tidying the top is working a treat.

Great video at the perfect time. I've been struggling with one sided extraction no matter how much I use the wdt method. It was only the day before your dropped this that I pondered whether it was caused by sitting the portafilter on the grinder holder as it was throwing the grinds towards the handle. Simply holding the portafilter and moving it around proved the plausibility of the idea as i had back to back perfection extractions after this. This video has expanded on that and filled in the blanks. Can't wait to play with some shaking. Cheers dude

Lance, you are the only channel on YT that has outdone the Hoffster for me. It's incredibly rare to find someone in any passionate community who can step back, avoid biases as much as possible and rely on the scientific method and that's exactly what you're providing here. I love it, please keep up the amazing work, it's extremely valuable to us coffee nerds.

YES FINALLY!! Great vid as always man! Love your new style of vids as well! Keep up the good work

Wonderful to share! I made a tool using an old spirograph toy. I just like using it. Once i tested skipping it, and the coffee seemed worse, but it could be confirmation bias. Having seen this video i will definitely try the test again.

Glad I found this video! Lance, you’ve come along way since the Brevelle espresso days in the beginning!!

Mind blown, thanks Lance!

I grind to the Sette 270's cup. I shake it a bit. Throw it into the basket. Gentle tap. Wdt. NCD like distributor. Tamp. Puck screen (i don't like the concentrated water flow of my machine). Extraction time.

Thanks for the hard work Lance, amazing data!

Brilliant Lance. Enlightening. Thank you.

Being obsessed with work flow I often thought about these different tools. I preferred the dosing cup and shaping before so much info came out and that being one of the earlier barista tools to be around. It’s nice seeing some data supporting that tool. If I ever get behind the bar it’s nice to know I can stick to simple tools without the faf

Very helpful video, thank you. I appreciate the effort you put into this

Fascinating; I wouldn't have predicted that, and would've assumed that shaking would cause a bit of clumping despite distributing the grounds. Guess I need to buy one of those blind shakers!

Another great video! Keep up the fantastic work!

Great video Lance. 👏

I’ve seen significant improvement in the evenness of flow since watching this. I shake a few times with my dosing cup against my portafilter and then lightly tap/WDT to get the surface even. Even if the surface doesn’t look perfectly even, this has taught me that the evenness of the bulk matters more than the surface.

That’s bloody interesting, Lance. Since getting a EG-1 I used its Blind shaker, then WDT and usually after that a tool like the one you used with the fins just because I liked how consistent the top layer looked after it. Never thought about doing harm to the great work the shaker already was doing, so thanks for this video! Maybe I’ll get the Moonraker for the two extra spins as you mentioned Doug said to you. Could, of course, just as well just adjust my use of the WDT tool I already have, but the Moonraker looks so awesome haha.

Dude, this is great! To echo everyone else, nice and concise 👍. Bought the level tamper based on last video. I think I'll stick with manual WDT with a more aggressive rake since i dose directly onto PF. Keep it up!

Love the B-roll shots from Hugo. Also in the French Press Video. Great job!

Awesome video, super fascinating. Knowing what we know now from the data, would have been nice to include a dosing cup in the testing. I use a niche so a dosing cup is part of my workflow and I noticed that sometimes grounds can pile up on one side when you flip the cup over. Typically I don’t bother w/wdt unless the grounds look uneven post dosing into the portafilter. Glad to see that this supports that wdt isn’t always necessary.

Always raising the topics covered one level Lance, it's a pleasure that you share these experiments!

Interesting results and insightful speculation. As one of your many viewers, thank you for the effort you put into these projects! It is truly appreciated and valued.

Morning Lance, I really liked the style of presenting your findings! In the future it would be helpful for me personally if you'd make a little colored mark in the finding sheets when you talk about specific points in your results. Specifically shot time and extraction sheets were shown for a few seconds and then your got to the next subject. You might argue: pause the video and so on, but I don't want to. You got an interesting subject, you present very good, but with the speed you have I am getting a bit behind comprehending and would like to see the sheets a bit longer and some highlight markers over the current subject. Content wise it really helped me. I use a sage expresso grinder, cheaper than the weber and it really helps not choosing to grind into portafilter and try the shaking the grounds in the container method. Thank you for the effort! Gratings for Germany. ❤

Awesome work! Makes absolute sense when you think about it: Shaking homogenizes the grounds so that fines, boulders and everything in between is distributed as randomly as possible and thus giving an even flow through the puck. Clumps don't matter as they are smashed by tamping. What WDT in contrast does, is distributing a significant "mass" of grounds around the basket. While not necessarily bad, it is not actually "mixing" all the differently sized particles around at random, as the shaking does. So there will be areas with more fines and slower flow as well as areas with less fines and faster flow and basically channeling. So even though the "mass" of grounds is distributed around in the basket evenly, the particles themselves are not mixed evenly. If done excessively (and depending on consistency of the technique) it should probably even cause the fines to separate and migrate to the bottom.

Some great experience shared in this video. I will have to try the shaken cup instead of WDT.

14:15 was a great lightbulb moment for me. I have a Cafelat Robot and a Timemore 064s, and the dosing cup fits perfectly into the portafilter. I'll be trying this out, no needles this week.

Fantastic video Lance, really appreciate it!

I find grinding into a glass container and giving it a Good bang and a stir with a Wooden cocktail stick,then pouring into my portafilter and a next tappetey tap then tamp with spring tamp + puck screen (no water added to beans) Using a niche zero,I believe the destat is essential 😺

Looking back and actually putting things into perspective, I’ve always shake the coffee grounds in my dosing cup and shake it again in my portafilter and did a surface level WDT. This has been the most consistent method for me. I’ve used the OCD tool to kinda make it an even ground but I found that those shots tend to be the most inconsistent. This video was great ! Thank you for the thorough explanation and willingness to experiment for all of us!

Well done! Thanks a lot!

Ha, fantastic! I have done pretty much that (shake shake shake) from when I first got my Robot about 4 years ago. The beauty of that deep basket makes it possible to be pretty aggressive without excessive spillage.

The video editing has always been amazing but this video is so well done.

Nice! I'm interested in the WW blind shaker and Moonraker to add to my collection. For the moment i'm pretty happy with my regular WDT tool + Pesado Gravity Distributor + Tamp. I'm getting nice shots with this combo...

Great video! Interest results, I would like to know if the shots were also tasted to check which method pulled the best tasting shots. Just curious because higher extraction doesn’t always mean better tasting shots, so the combination of this data would be more helpful I think

Appreciate your research! God bless!

These last 2 videos have absolutely killed it with the quality of data and practicality. Thanks man

Laance you're on your way to revolutionize puck prep, we need to get to the bottom of this 😊

Really interesting results, counterintuitive at first but makes sense. The bottom of the bed is critical and a quick shake works better than all the fancy tools that disrupt a simple process. Thanks for doing the testing to teach the community

great work here. I've been using the blind shaker cup open with wdt stir for years as I didn't like the "caking" look that the blind shake gave--seemed like it would make the problem worse. I like the story of the bottom layer in the portafilter being the most important and thus the blind shake giving the best result there. going to try that for awhile.

This is fascinating! I have never done the WDT because I felt my dosing into a cup and shaking it in the cup then into the portafilter was doing good enough. But had been thinking about one of the orbital type wdt tools. Now I think I will just save my money....

Incredible research

I wanted to try this out after seeing this video. I have a hand grinder and I put the receiver cup with ground beans on my porta filter with a dosing funnel, gave it a shake, did a little manual WDT just to get the top surface flat… and honesty best cup so far!!!! Thank you Lance!

Thank you for all the effort you put into this. Since most people don't have a Weber shaker the results won't help unless we all get a Weber shaker :(

Very interesting results! At the end of the day I think you are correct in saying that we are over doing things. Like any hobby people always seek methods to improve the process, but sometimes the best way to improve the process is to do less (remember the KISS method). This also shows that for some the goal isn’t necessarily better or improved extractions, but more as a flex to who has the most expensive tools and keeps up with the current and popular trends. Me personally, I just want the best cup of coffee possible and at the same time enjoy tinkering. 😀 Thank you for another great video, I always enjoy your content.

As always this is well presented, entertaining and informative!

your best video yet, incredible content with great editing, shots and voice-over

Holy shit the editing and pacing in this video is insane. Well done

Fascinating video and observations. Thank you.

Just a great timing, just did a latte with a manual wdt tool and I can enjoy a new video from Lance. After watching the video, the observations are interesting. Im not sure that I will change my routine tho, but I might be more careful with the bed and manual wdt.

Epic video and great work. I got a similar feeling of surprise and wonder to when I read the Gange's The physics of Filter Coffee. This is foundational work!

This is wild. I’ve been doing the shake up with our little black Fellows cup and it’s looked really good. I’d shake it up with the portafilter cupped on top and then shake it down in there. Made sense to me. Interesting to see that’s the way to go.

Im so happy about your video. I just had a discussion about how the moonraker is a game changer, but i did not see any improvements at all. but its a long time since i ground the last time directly in to the portafilter, so i know i have to watch out for inconsistencies😅

6:36 Great transition there 👌

Great video, thanks. It echoes my experience with coffees from very light roasts to neapolitan in my la pavoni europiccola manual lever and I thought I was doing something wrong(likely I was using WDT wrong). I have a 0.3mm 9-needle wdt tool and a small (4x4cm) tupperware container. I always get the best results when I grind into that tupperware container, I shake it a bit, I put grounds into the portafilter and I only use WDT on the very top ~2mm of coffee to distribute it evenly. Then I give it few taps on the table and tamp. This is my most consistent, best extraction ever technique. Every single time I WDT'ed the entire depth the results were worse. My observations go even further, I use Eureka Mignon grinder and it doesn't clump much. I noticed, especially with very light roasts that I grind very fine (they are prone to channelling with slightest unevenness in distribution if not pre infused a looong time) when I ground directly to the portafilter I got much better results just using the WDT tool to distribute the very top 2~3mm of grounds than "going all the way". I'm glad to see my subjective experience validated scientifically by your video :-)

Awesome video, nice and concise. Would love to see the same experiments in a direct to portafilter format (which i guess is what most of us do). Cheers! Love your content

Great work! Thx!

Like you said, context is key. Super interesting that maybe just shaking with the dosing cup and portafilter gets the job done, but it tends to leak fines from the basket for me (and you can see it does in the video too). I may do a little experimenting to see if I can notice an improvement that’s worth a little extra mess compared to WDT, but will be fun to try either way!

thanks...now you gave me a bunch of work to test this myself

I've been practicing the "grind from my Niche into a tight fitting portafilter cup and shake, shake, shake, cheap Amazon Ikape Spring Tamp 1x and twist" method for a while because I was too lazy to do anything else. Turns out that could be as good as any gadget I could buy or 3d print. As a chemical engineer that is a slave to the scientific method, i always trust your reviews more than others. In god we trust, others bring DATA. Thanks Lance!

That is actually really interesting. I don't have any of the fancy equipment you're using here but I can see how I could try this with my setup for myself (if I had the time, which I don't). I have a Baratza Sette 270 and that comes with a big catch cup, so I'm curious to see if just shaking the grounds in that and then adding it to the portafilter is significantly different to WDTing as I've been doing so far. I dunno, I'd have to go by taste, really, and I don't think it'd add too much but it's definitely something to think about for myself. Thanks for the intense work, Lance, you're a legend!

Amazing video Lance as always. I’m still so so so tempted by the Unica Pro. Markus seams a lovely guy at Unica. I still absolutely love the engineering of the moonraker.

This is absolutely a breath of fresh air. Ive been going nuts trying to justify buying a 3d printer for a Umikot or just buying a Moonraker. Knowing that just SHAKING my grounds in my dosing cup will simplify my morning workflow so much. Definitely trying the shaking method first thing tomorrow morning

Knowing all of these and the tamper, would love to see one about different types of espresso baskets and group head shower screens!

This is gold dust Lance, I’ve been using WDT (0.35mm) for a year with my decent de1 and didn’t notice a huge difference but have always ground into a dosing cup. Part of me wondered if I was just pushing the grounds around with WDT rather than improving distribution/declumping. Your hours of work here is super helpful, thanks again. 👍