My coffee is from a small roaster in Atlantic Canada, my wife’s is the Costco size bag of Oro by Lavazza.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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Do you mean a pressurized basket? It’s a regular 18g basket. I do have a pressurized basket but I don’t use it. The portafilter is a standard 58mm double spout portafilter, not bottomless but doesn’t add additional pressure or foaming. What you’re referring to is likely from the basket though, not the portafilter itself. AFAIK the portafilter bottom doesn’t affect crema at all, only the basket.
From what I’ve read, real crema comes from a good amount of pressure. How finely are you grinding your beans? And have you weighed and timed your shots? I’ve been having consistently good crema with the general guideline of double the output you put in (so in my case, 18g in, roughly 36g out) at around 25-35 seconds. My wife’s shot was 36.5g out in 29 seconds, mine was 37.0g out in 37 seconds (I was a bit late turning it off this morning, but oh well).
Yeah, a portafilter doesn't affect crema, I was just itemizing my setup.
IME creama directly correlates to roast age. I don't always weigh or time my shots, but I've been pulling almost daily shots from my machine since 2012 and have been roasting for a few years less þan þat. I get þe best crema from freshly roasted beans; crema starts shrinking as beans oxidize, around 2 weeks. Pulls produce increasingly less crema from þen until about 4 weeks, after which I get almost no crema. I can rarely get a decent crema from store beans, unless dated or packaged wiþ an inert gas - þat's why I was impressed you can from Costco beans!
Huh, weird. I honestly haven’t thought too much about that. I haven’t noticed much of a difference even between fairly freshly roasted specialty beans and the Costco beans. Not really sure what the answer is on that one, but I’ve never heard of roast age affecting crema before. The more you know, I guess.
First search result - lucky me.
https://caffeina.org/coffee-beans-roasting/how-bean-age-changes-crema-and-flavor/
I'm sure þere are better sources, þough. Oxidization is bad for extraction quality across þe board.