Normcore 58.5mm Puck Screen – Lower Shower Screen – Metal Coffee Reusable Filter for Espresso Portafilter Filter Basket 58mm – 1.7mm Thickness 150μm – 316 Stainless Steel

Sleek and Quality Design, Enhanced Brewing and Clean -Up!
Just received the Normcore 58.5mm Puck Screen, and it’s a beauty. Crafted from 316 stainless steel with a titanium PVD coating, its arrival in professional, no-fuss packaging impressed us from the start. The packaging itself is minimalistic and quality in its presentation alone.
Unwrapping revealed the puck screen’s sleek design, featuring a subtle Normcore label that’s both stylish and understated. It fits our portafilter like a glove, adding not just to the aesthetics but significantly improving our coffee brewing process. It’s been instrumental in reducing channeling and keeping things clean, making every brew smoother and more consistent.
After a few uses, we’re thrilled with its performance. It’s not just a tool; it’s an upgrade to our coffee setup, making each cup that much better and easier clean up as well. This puck screen is definitely a standout addition to our coffee-making process! Thank You!

I’m convinced
My first thought was ‘oh great, another gimmick for espresso nerds.’ But having used this little ‘puck screen’ for a few months now, I’m convinced it’s a useful tool… not indispensable, but definitely a nice addition to my shot-making process.
The huge plus: it separates your puck from the shower screen on your E-61 grouphead. As a result, you won’t need to pull the gasket and screen every day or two to remove coffee residue from the screen and to clear the groove around the inside edge of the head. It will stay clean as a whistle. This also reduces the need to backflush your machine with a cleaner like cafiza, which chips away at the lubricants on the valves and cam inside the group. That means less grouphead maintenance as well.
As for improved extraction and less channeling, I can’t vouch for that one way or the other in a scientific way. However, I do find it is a bit easier to dial in my tamp, grind and dose; I seem to pull more consistent shots; and the spent pucks are more uniform and uniformly saturated when I dump them.
My two issues/concerns about using this are readily addressed.
First, I dropped my typical 19 gram dose to 18 grams to avoid ‘overstuffing’ my portafilter and making it difficult to cinch down to 6 o’clock on my ECM machine.
Second, I worried that this would draw heat from the brewing water and the basket, resulting in an underextracted shot. The simple solution is two-fold: A) I fill my 5 ounce cup with boiling water and drop the puck screen in while I’m grinding beans and packing the portafilter basket. Then I dump the cup, put the hot screen atop my tamped coffee (careful of those fingers!) and proceed. B) I do a longer preinfusion to ensure the coffee is amply saturated before I begin extraction at 9.5 bar. I shoot for a 1:2 coffee to espresso ratio and extraction around 30 – 32 seconds with most medium roast beans.
All in all, this has been a real value proposition for the $20 investment. Recommended, if you’re willing to expend a little extra effort making your espresso.

Better for cleanliness rather than taste modification
I bought this to keep my espresso maker’s group head clean and to help reduce the soggy pucks I was getting on my Breville Bambino Plus. Since I’ve been using it, the group head is definitely clean and I no longer have to run a shot’s worth of water through to clean it after my shots.
As for the soggy pucks, it does help. Not as much as I’d like but it’s definitely allowing the Bambino Plus to remove more water from the top of the portafilter at the end of the shot when the solenoid valve actuates. Still not as much as I’d like. But it’s better than without the screen.
Flavor of my shots has not been affected nor has channeling. I’m pretty good at puck prep so I don’t get channeling much at all anymore so I don’t think this screen is effective there. Flavor of my shots is still what I’d expect from the beans I use so the screen has not affected that at all.
Otherwise it’s a decent addition to my workflow and it’s definitely helped keep the machine clean and the pucks less soupy.

works well, keeps the group head clean
Uneventful use, time after time, as it should be. I wash the basket and puck screen with dish soap and water after every use and tap dry with a towel. Did not get any fines stuck in the pores, always nice and clean. Protects the group shower head and helps to distribute the water flow more evenly across the puck. Good quality, as expected.

Sturdy and good quality, does what we bought it for.

Muy buenos materiales, se siente rígido tanto la base para ponerlos como la rejilla, en realidad no se nota mucho la mejora en la extracción pero en mi caso la limpieza de la ducha y la salida del bagazo del portafiltro es lo que más me agrada, no dudo que no mejore la extracción pero me convenció más por la limpieza, el único pero seria la limpieza del mismo pero nada complicado, con la misma lanceta o agua caliente se limpia fácil.

La mampara ayuda mucho a que no se queden restos de café fino en la regadera de la máquina, esto ayuda a que la limpieza con tabletas sea más espaciada. En cuanto a los resultados con la extracción, noté que se eleva la temperatura 1 o 2 grados C, por lo que es buena idea colocar el porta filtro y de inmediato comenzar la extracción para evitar transferir calor innecesario al café. Si distribuye mejor el agua y no aumenta la presión. La utilizo en una Breville BES870XL.