LOL
The technique is basically "puck it fast and keep it pucked," with the challenges of introducing successive doses of water without disrupting the puckage. I have a gizmo in mind that could help with that, but I need to fab it. Bother.
The bottom-up pre-wet is simply mounting a grind-charged AP to a cup that's darned full of hot water, allowing the water to perc upwards through the grind by capillary action as the water rises gently through the disk's perforations. This allows the grind to expand at just the critical point where, otherwise, dry fines would rush through the disk if water were introduced in a turbulent way.
After a brief pre-wet, the conveniently pre-heated cup is dumped and the brew begins with a zero-velocity pour. I'd rather spray boiling water in a fine mist, truthfully...
The combination of pre-wet grind expansion at the boundary between puck and cup, and zero-velocity pours with relatively quick and forceful partial presses (withdrawing the plunger after each each short-stroke press before it descends deeply enough into the column such that withdrawal draws up and disrupts the puck or sets it up for disruption with the next pour), seems to create a heckuva good cup.
I'll say something I've said before, though: not all roasts/origins are equally improved by an oil-to-the-cup, this-cup-is-a-bit-turgid approach. IMO, darker roasts come out worse. My prevailing notion is that lighter oils -- volatilized in darker roasts, leaving their closer-to-tar cousins to predominate -- taste better as a rule. Once their salt-of-the-earth presence is no more, the residual darkness seeks to dominate all.
If I can contrive the gizmo I have in mind, this method will be a single press instead of the two to four that seem to do well by it just now in its non-gizmofied state.
