>>7019022>coats them in coffee oils according to the guy who showed us.Which does what with regards to the extraction? (what I'm getting at is that it does not change anything at all).
>The real reason for pulling at least a shot after a backwash, at the start of the day, etc. seems to be to get the temperature of the pipes and filters up,Sensible reason. But no need to have coffee in the basket. Just run 10 seconds or so of water through with no coffee in the basket. Less wasteful.
>He also said you should look for a stream that breaks into droplets about half way down, wait for the stream to start wiggling, wait 2 seconds then shut off the extraction.Ah, so either this lesson was many years ago, or he was really not informed. No professional worth their salt at this point would tell you to do any of those things. Espresso is so incredibly sensitive to every variable that if you don't weigh every dose to within 0.1g and every beverage yield to within 1g, you are not going to be consistent. Shutting off the extraction manually with only visual feedback is pretty well useless. Expecting that each coffee should have the same flow rate (and that it should be such a slow flow rate) is also silly.
TL;DR: I appreciate that you were taught by a professional, but they were wrong and seasoning is meaningless (if it is happening).
