Basket

The basket is the perforated metal cup that sits inside the portafilter and holds your ground coffee. Its fine holes act as the filter: they let brewed espresso pass while holding back the puck of grounds. The basket is small but decisive, because its size and hole pattern set how much coffee you can fit and how evenly water flows.

Why it matters: baskets are matched to a target dose. A single basket holds roughly 7 to 12 g, a double around 14 to 22 g, and there are larger triple baskets. Overfilling or underfilling for the basket’s design leaves too little or too much headroom, which throws off extraction and can cause uneven flow. Precision baskets, such as VST and IMS, have tighter, more uniform hole patterns and better tolerances than stock baskets, which promotes more even extraction and fewer flow faults.

Pressurized (dual-wall) baskets force coffee through a single small hole to fake crema, handy for pre-ground or coarse coffee but less responsive to grind changes. Single-wall (non-pressurized) baskets are standard for dialing in fresh, well-ground coffee.