IMS Big Bang Precision Filter Basket made for Breville Sage 54mm bottomless portafilters, double espresso (h25.5)

Improved the quality of my espresso on my Breville Bambino instantly. Best used with medium and dark roasts.

This is an excellent filter basket! I use it with my Breville Touch Impress espresso machine and it works great. It's a bit too deep for the stock Breville portafilter, so I purchased a new bottomless portafilter and this Big Bang basket works great with that set up. Despite owning numerous filter baskets, this has definitely become my "go to" filter basket. Highly recommended!

When I briefly toyed with a Breville Barista Impress, I found the stock basket to be quite limiting and hard to dial in. Since the Breville machine is more of a beginner's introduction to espresso (but still capable of making excellent shots), the addition of a precision basket like the IMS Big Bang can only help in one's extraction. You may have to fiddle with grinder settings to dial in, but once you do, it will be a worthwhile upgrade.I would say this is a well-made precision basket that would be great for anyone looking to upgrade or replace their stock baskets.

This is my third IMS basket on my third machine (a Breville Bambino for my office) and it's what you expect from IMS. It fits my 54mm MHW portafilter excellent. As others mentioned it was a little loose fitting in the stock Breville portafilter but is still functional. Only the 23.5 basket fits in the stock Breville portafilter without modification. The 25.5 basket (the one you want) requires popping out the plastic diffuser using the "chop stick" method from the Breville basket head...honestly you want to throw that crap out anyway. If you have ever seen what's underneath these diffusers you will conclude as most do that this piece is a health hazard. The compression to the group head is tighter than stock filters because of ever-so-slight raised ring, but this was probably intentional to guarantee a better seal. This is common with other baskets I have used from IMS and VST. The machine is new and the gasket may break in a bit, but as-is, I twist it on about 80% of the distance the other baskets allow, with the handle between 6 and 7 o'clock.I use the goodbrothers 909 filters with this. Their filters, size H, fit perfect.I have both the 909 and the regular chemex-paper-sourced filters, and its probably down to my grinding or tamping technique, but whatever it be the tighter weave of the 909 filter with the pattern and diameter of the bigbang basket holes provide just the right amount of flow to extract 40 grams from 20 grams of espresso in 30 seconds from my counter culture light roast ground and sifted to 250 microns. I could not dial in the chemex-paper filters without adjusting my grind, although those filters work excellent for my IMS Precision 58mm basket in my Rancilio Silvia. Having used the same beans, grinder and sifter for years, I wasn't going to adjust how I grind and prepare espresso and wanted a solution that works across my machines at home and the office. Using different filter basket papers is much easier than altering the grinding process. The bambino double shot timer had to be manually calibrated as the stock setting was too short. I often hold to do it manually and watch the scale as numerous variations associated with extraction result in pulls that are slightly under or over 30 seconds in the event I tamped a little too soft or firm. Even things like temperature and humidity which fluctuates a lot here in Chicago can alter extraction times so for consistency I just use a scale instead of pushing a button and walking away.This is probably the best 25.5 filter available for the Bambino. There aren't many 54mm options (I'd like a MHW 3BOMBER so I could make tea in the Bambino) and while I haven't tried many, I tried the Crosscreek 54mm filter first because it was cheap and it choked the machine with or without paper filters at 250 micron grinds. I suspect the same would happen with the IMS All In One, which is even finer. While the pump and regulator in the Breville provide a lot of pressure, it isn't enough, and newer Breville machines are difficult to modify compared to the older ones like the Duo Temp, Infuser and Dual Boiler.And the reason I went with a Bambino and ended up down this path with a 54mm group head simply comes down to speed: The Bambino is the only machine on the market you can walk up to, power on, and pull a shot from in 3 seconds. It's simply incredible you can have a foamy, properly extracted espresso shot from a cold machine in under a minute.

I own several IMS baskets, and this one is **extremely** loose in my portafilters compared to all of the others. It's totally unusable as is, and to use it I'll need to buy another portafilter and adjust the spring specifically for this basket only. (And that's less than ideal, IMO.)

Literally no water was coming through the basket. Caused machine to have issues from the back pressure and I bad to send my Breville in for repairs.

The media could not be loaded. Check out this beautiful shot from my Breville Barista Express with the newly installed Cafelat Gasket and IMS Precision Shower Screen. Due to the size of the basket I can't use the portafilter that comes with the Breville so that kind of sucks if you prefer that one over a naked portafilter but I love it. Due to the straight walls on the basket the pucks don't knock out as easily as the factory baskets but the design and quality are amazing. One other thing, with the factory single wall double shot basket I was pulling great shots with 18.5 grams of coffee with the machine grinding as finely as possible. With this basket I had to increase dosage to 21 grams to get to the necessary pressure range and tamp super hard.

Another good filter basket from IMS. I also have the IMS precision baskets that I have been using for some 2yrs now and it seems these big bang ones have quicker flow so I can actually go down to a finer grind on my Breville smart grinder pro with Bambino Plus espresso machine. I would consider these to be the go for Breville machines when you need more flow to get your grind down further.I also use 51mm Ikape paper filters, then add espresso and use the Normcore ultra thin screen. These other two items have REALLY helped me become more consistent with the Bambino Plus.Portafilters shown are the older Crema and a knock off from "timberrain/YOUQI-US"