Reviewing BIT Portafilter Baskets and Shower Screens

If you’ve ever thought about changing or upgrading your espresso equipment, machines and grinders were probably top of mind. Granted, a new machine or grinder could unlock new possibilities for your extractions at home, but in this article we’ll be talking about how sometimes thinking small can be more impactful than thinking big. Before you put your coffee in your mouth, you put it into your portafilter, or more specifically, your portafilter basket.

Barista Improving Taste (or BIT) is the brainchild of Sauro Dall’aglio, Italian cup taster, product designer, barista trainer and consultant. He’s responsible for creating the Baristapro line of portafilter baskets from IMS and the Barista Improving Taste series products that we’ll be talking about today. In the case of BIT products, Sauro went beyond simply creating a high-quality filter basket like he did with Baristapro and focused on creating specialized tools to address particular aspects of extraction.

We tested out baskets from BIT to compare impact on both taste and extraction yields. If you're curious, all the results are available in tables below, but if you're not familiar with BIT's lines of filter baskets, read on.

Portafilter Baskets

Barista Improving Taste produces two main lines of portafilter baskets, Renato and BoB, along with a small handful of other more specialized baskets. Each basket is designed to affect the flavor of your extractions in particular ways, allowing you to tailor your selection to the ones that best suit your desired in-cup result whether it be sweetness or brightness.

Renato

The Renato baskets are available in 8g, 10g, 16g, 18g, and 21g sizes for single, double and triple shots. These baskets are designed with a pozzetto shape to make shots sweeter and brighter. They also reduce bitterness and channeling for an even extraction and a cleaner, smoother cup.

BoB

BoB portafilter baskets work similarly to the Renato to improve sweetness of your shots, but it aims to make coffee bolder while reducing bitterness. These baskets are available in 10g, 16g, 18g, and 21g, so you can choose to opt for a single or double shot while experimenting with improved taste. The BoB’s curved design and hole distribution also redistributes the water during the brewing process, which limits channeling and uneven extraction.

Other Baskets

Outside of the standard Renato and BoB baskets, BIT has three additional and more unique offerings. Two of them are technically still Renato and BoB baskets but different enough that I felt like giving them their own callout.

Bruno

The Bruno is a unique basket that features a similar shape to the Renato series, but a slightly altered hole distribution. Only available in an 8g size, the Bruno is intended for pulling single shots with more traditional Italian coffees.

BoB Sydney

Named for Sydney Australia, home of the headquarters of Breville Group, the BoB Sydney is a 54mm variation of the 18g BoB series basket. The BoB Sydney is compatible for use with 54mm portafilters from Breville and Solis.

Renato 90+

The Renato range also features a “90+” basket, which is a single basket made for experimentation with specialty coffees scored 90 or higher. True to Sauro’s mission to make pulling single shots more accessible, the basket can be dosed between 9 - 13g of coffee.

Shower Screens and Holding Plates

In addition to portafilter baskets, Barista Improving Taste also produces a range of shower screens and shower holding plates (diffusers) that can be installed on a wide range of popular espresso machines. Irrespective of the style of machine you have, the screens and diffusers are all designed the same way to accomplish the same goal. Sauro noticed that the screws used to hold in both the shower screens and the holding plates have a tendency to influence the flow of water and can result in larger streams that form in the center of the screen.

Shower Screens

All Barista Improving Taste shower screens, whether they come paired with a holding plate or not, feature a hole distribution pattern where the screen will have no holes in the very center of the screen, and increase in frequency on the outer circumference. The design results in greater water flow on the outside of the screen as opposed to the middle. On their own, the screens influence water flow to prevent what Sauro refers to as “double extraction” and create balance in contact time for all of the coffee in the basket. This also causes streams of espresso to “group up” more quickly during extraction for a cleaner and more even flow. Our video comparing different shower screens is an oldie but a goodie and you can see how the BIT E61 screen stacks up against several popular screens on the market.

Where things really get interesting is that the screens are designed to be used in tandem with BIT’s baskets. Both the BoB and Rentato series baskets (as well as Bruno) have no holes on the outer edge near the walls. Combined with the increased water flow along the outside edge of the screen, the baskets and screens complete one-another in accomplishing the goal of eliminating double extraction.

Holding Plates/Diffusers

In several instances, rather than simply designing a new shower screen Sauro also created a new shower holding plate to be used with his screens as well. The holding plate is sometimes also referred to as a diffuser as it is positioned between the incoming flow of water from the boiler and the shower screen itself. The plate diffuses the water and spreads it across multiple holes to more evenly distribute it across the shower screen. In the case of BIT’s holding plates, each is designed with a small pre-infusion channel and drilled with eight holes. This allows water to gently fill the back of the plate before flowing into the screen and the hole count and distribution guarantees that the plates work successfully in combination with the shower screen.

Breville and Solis

As a final note on this particular topic, I thought it was important to point out that both Breville and Solis espresso machines are not designed with holding plates/diffusers in their brew groups. When we installed the BIT kits on compatible machines from both brands, we found that by installing the plate that we were able to increase the average temperature at the group during extraction. This is thanks to the plate acting as a heat sink that we were able to preheat with a flush prior to brewing.

Testing

Now for the think you've been waiting for, I wanted to conclude this review with a bit of an experiment. I assembled John and Zach to assist me with dialing in and testing extractions from the stock baskets included with the new Rocket Espresso Giotto FAST alongside several BIT baskets. We pulled both single and double shots and used a DiFluid Coffee TDS Refractometer to calculate TDS and extraction yield. All shots were ground using the new Ceado REV Titan grinder and we installed the BIT E61 shower screen and used it in tandem with all basket options.

We picked a somewhat challenging coffee, a natural process Catucai from Fazenda Um in Brazil and got to work, starting with the single shots. One thing I want to note before getting into the numbers is that for all of the BIT baskets, we needed to grind finer than with the stock baskets included with the Giotto FAST. This is due to the baskets being produced by IMS. Compared to stock component manufacturers, IMS baskets have wider, more clean, double-punched holes that require a finer grind in order to provide the necessary restriction for a balanced extraction.

Single Basket Results

As you can see from the results below, all of the BIT single baskets we tested produced a lower extraction yield than the stock baskets that came in the box from Rocket, but yielded a wide range of in-cup flavors. BoB produced the lowest yield, while the Renato 10 split the difference more or less between the stock and the BoB. The Renato 90+ on the other hand came much closer to the TDS from the stock basket, but softened the acidity and texture for a smoother espresso.

BIT Basket Testing	Coffee: Brazil Fazenda UM Paraiso LP II Natural Catucai					Roast Date: 3/24/25	Frozen until 10/7/25
Basket	Dose	Time	Yield	TDS	Ext%	John Taste Notes	Zach taste Notes
Stock single	10g	25 seconds	19.9g	7.05%	14.03%	Cinnamon, Cranberry, Bergamot, Tart, Light, Nougat,	Yogurt, Sweet, Red Fruits
Bob 10	10g	26 seconds	20.4g	5.00%	10.20%	Bergamot, Cocoa Powder, More Tanic	Cereal, Cocoa Nibs
Renato 10	10g	24 seconds.	19.8g	6.01%	11.90%	Lemon Zest, REAL Tart in the Back, Cocoa, Earl Grey	Sweet, Juicy, Alkaline, Tangerine
Renato 90+	10g	27 seconds.	22.7g	6.49%	13.39%	Acidity is so much softer and more approachable. All Previous flavors are still present.	Smooth Texture, Pleasant Acidity

Double Basket Results

In the second round of shots we switched to double baskets and interestingly enough the TDS had increased this time around. Even so, the BIT baskets had a tendency to increase the acidity and clarity compared to the stock baskets.

BIT Basket Testing	Coffee: Brazil Fazenda UM Paraiso LP II Natural Catucai					Roast Date: 3/24/25	Frozen until 10/7/25
Basket	Dose	Time	Yield	TDS	Ext%	John Taste Notes	Zach taste Notes
stock double	18g	25 seconds	35.5g	8.11%	15.99%	Smooth & approachable, a bit muddy, chocolate milk, losing the florality	Sweet, Cherry, Tart, Dry
BoB 18	18g	24 seconds	36.7g	8.24%	16.80%	More character, more zip, still a bit unfocused but also way more milk chocolate this time. Balance of acidity here.	Funky in a good way, increased acidity, mellow cinnamon.
Rentato 18	18g	25 seconds	36.6g	8.89%	18.08%	SUPER refreshing. Nice acidity, some bitterness though. A little juicy.	Nutty, Grape-Like Sweetness

 

Final Thoughts

Ultimately if you're interested in experimenting with coffee and looking to shake things up with the shots you're pulling, I strongly recommend taking a look at the filter baskets and screens from BIT. As you can see from our testing, it's not necessarily the case that a higher TDS is always going to lead to better results in-cup. Sauro has crafted a set of tools that are incredibly accessible to the average person and it was a lot of fun getting hands-on with them.

Photography by Grace Walker

Original Article written by Cat de Laus

Shop This Blog

Related Articles