About EPF, which seems to be used in espresso recently

One of the most unpopular things about coffee is "fine powder." This refers to coffee beans that pass through coarse filters, and is said to cause problems such as an unpleasant taste and a bad mouthfeel.

If a single ground bean with a volume of 1 and a single bean with a volume of 0.01 are soaked in hot water for the same amount of time, the 0.01 bean will be over-extracted and upset the balance of the overall flavor of the coffee, so it is recommended that you use a mill that produces beans that are as uniform in size as possible.

Coarse filters include cloth drip, French press, and metal filters. Coarse filters also have an advantage in that they allow the oils that make up the flavor of coffee to pass through. These oils give the coffee a rich flavor (I think this is what is expressed as body), and when combined with the complex aroma and flavor, it becomes more flavorful.

The darker the roast, the more oil there is in coffee. The shiny part that clings to the pitch black beans is the oil. On the other hand, light roasts don't have much oil. This causes the following problems:

"If you use light roast beans in an espresso machine that only has a metal filter, there's no oil, so you're left with the disadvantage of fine powder."

With dark roasting, you can tolerate some fine powder if you consider the benefits of the oil. With light roasting, the benefits of the oil are not there, and the disadvantages of the fine powder are more noticeable.

The solution to this problem is EPF. It sounds like some amazing technology, but it's actually just a simple idea: why not just put filter paper in the espresso filter basket? It's an abbreviation for Espresso Paper Filtering.

In fact, this EPF technique is often used in one of our most popular products: the Aeropress attachment, FELLOW Prismo .

This product is more likely to produce fine powder than a regular AeroPress, but by placing an AeroPress filter under the metal filter and extracting it, you can enjoy a "cleaner" coffee.

It's unclear to what extent the presence of fine powder affects the taste of the coffee, but it can be a bit disappointing to see powder piled up at the bottom of your cup when you're finished drinking it.

EPF has another advantage. The filter basket is just a metal plate with small holes, but coffee beans tend to get stuck in it. When it gets clogged, the ratio of holes in the filter as a whole gets smaller. When it gets clogged, the high-pressure water searches for a small exit and is released all at once. When that happens, like lightning, the coffee only has a certain path through it, and it doesn't get extracted cleanly. This is called channeling, and EPF has the effect of preventing such clogging.

EPF allows you to enjoy clean coffee with the fine powder removed while still taking advantage of the characteristics of lightly roasted beans, so we used existing paper that we cut with scissors, but finally a dedicated paper has been released.

EPF filters are sold by WEBER WORKSHOP, a brand created by former Apple engineer Douglas Weber, which has a very high adoption rate at pointy cafes. They are quite expensive at 1,200 yen for 100 sheets, but even though the paper is made in Japan, it is shipped from overseas, so the shipping fee is 4,300 yen, which is not a price that you can easily buy.

We do not carry EPF paper in our store, but it is possible to create something similar by cutting the Aeropress paper with scissors.

Cut the Aeropress paper into a roughly circular shape about a few millimeters wide.

Just pour it into the portafilter and it's done.

So, we have increased our stock of Aeropress paper . If you purchase it by itself, the shipping costs will be high, so we recommend purchasing it together with other equipment.