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I have an IMS and I’d say definitely worth it. Easier to clean but also imo almost as important as upgrading your basket. You can make sure your puck prep is perfect in your precision basket with perfect hole size distribution, but if the water through the shower screen isn’t even across the puck then that can cause pitting and lead to channeling.
If you’re the kind of person who thinks it’s worth upgrading your basket, and the kind of person with a bottomless portafilter, then you should get a precision shower screen too.
IMS shower screen is definitely worth it. It will make it much easier to dial in, increase consistency from shot to shot, boost extraction, and also nicer to clean as mentioned. For $30 it’s a no-brainer. Probably the cheapest thing you can do to improve your coffee drastically!
I’ve found the water flow to be much more even across the shower head with precision shower heads. I’ve upgraded a breville dual boiler with an IMS CI 200 IM and a profitec pro 700 with the E&B lab (subdivision of IMS) E61200RNT and both improved the water dispersion from what I could see and it felt like it was a little more forgiving on puck prep. YMMV but also easier to clean with less coffee sticking to it.
Bought and tried a Pesado Competition shower-screen in our Dual Boiler E-61 machine a couple or three years ago. Made absolutely no difference in the cup that I and others could detect. Was a waste of money really...
Probably worth it from a Competitive Barista point of view, as it is much more ruggedly manufactured than the standard E-61 s/c and would therefore last a hell of a long time over several competitions, no doubt.
My IMS Showerscreen arrived a few days ago and I must say my pucks are a lot cleaner. I am seeing less channelling and would say it's worth the $30 investment.
I recently installed an IMS nanotech on my e61; the old shower screen would just have a stream of water straight down the middle and I could notice indents in the centre of my pucks. The pattern of the new screen is very well dispersed however it does spray from the edges which is odd. As to whether it's making a noticeable difference in the cup has been hard for me to tell but the pucks look much cleaner and even
Good to know, I've been thinking of trying the IMS too, relatively cheap mod, just not sure if will improve anything since in a happy place already.. so thinking not particularly worth it for now
Bit late to the party here
ECM Synch here. Just upgraded to IMS nanotech screen and changed the gasket to a red cafelat from all stock. It was all brand new (even machine) but he new gasket allows me to lock the PF into a perfect 6 position whereas the stock I was between 7-8 position. Who knows what difference…
Anyways had my shots almost perfect before, grinding on NZ at around 17 and getting about 32-35g between 25-28s
Since putting the IMS screen on I’ve had to grind to a 20 with the same beans (same batch), it’s a much slower extraction and the puck is soupy as hell, there’s a reasonable amount of water on top whereas with the old one I think most would get sucked out through the release on turning it off
Thoughts? I figured this would improve things….doesn’t seem the case!
I wouldn’t be too concerned? You’ve had to go coarser so you now have more range to go finer if needed. I own a sync and a niche with the ims shower screen and cafelat red gasket, locked perfectly centre and my niche is dialed in around 11. I wouldn’t stress about this change at all. The shower screen is just producing a more even flow usually and should make cleaning it easier than the stock one. The gasket will last longer in comparison to the stock
Wow 11? My Niche is set at around 17-20! I’m having major issues dialing in my shots recently. 20g dose in a Pullman 19-22g basket ground at 17-20 on the niche. I’ve been getting nothing dropping out of the PF till almost 10-15s….
Yeh, mine's is dialed in at about 11 (+/- 1) as well. But differences in 'numbers' across grinders don't matter. As long as your calibration ring is not slipping between doses, there's no problem.
I didn't come down in the last shower (screen), but now I'm hearing that if you want a better extraction, better taste, none or less channelling, even a better looking puck...then just change your screen.
What happened to the traditional...basket, grind, distribution tamp?
For those with the IMS screen that say it is easier to clean - are you popping it out of the group head to clean? Or do you mean cleaning whilst in the group head? I pop my shower screen out once every week to get rid of coffee build up on it, the standard/stock screens have a nice little ridge that makes it super easy to pop out with a couple of tea spoons. But the IMS one was so difficult to remove, I ended up going back to stock for ease of regular cleaning.
Wipe the screen when you’ve pulled a shot (purge then wipe) I wouldn’t bother pulling the screen off once a week, just do it once a month or every 2 months, it barely gets that bad ( I make 2-3 coffees per day)
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