For me the SS elbs taste just fine, but there is a better material, titanium. Titanium elbs would be more durable, better flavor that some may or may not notice at all, and also you can clean them with a torch. Just torch it until it is glowing red, allow it to cool and tada brand spankin new.
The problem with making an ELB out of titanium mesh is that it would require a complete redesign. Unlike stainless steel, which is readily welded, titanium is a much more reactive metal, and, when heated to a thousand degrees of molten fury in an environment containing oxygen, instead of flowing politely together like molten steel, molten titanium prefers to erupt into a blinding, white-hot, unquenchable inferno. No welding means no welded titanium mesh exists (normal stainless screens are welded mesh). If you want Ti mesh it has to be either woven (expensive, and also it frays), or expanded (where they die-cut lots of parallel, offset, perforated lines in a metal sheet, then stretch the sheet to open all the little holes from the perforations). The expanded stuff is either really large-gauge mesh, or very fragile if fine, so also not ideal. Plain old perforated sheet would work as screen material too, but it offers the worst airflow performance of all. Also consider how a stainless ELB fits together; the mesh is welded together at the bottom, and also welded to the pressed metal cup at the top end. Both not options with titanium.
A titanium ELB would have to take a totally new approach, with no welding. Maybe somethng like the elbow screens in the Arizer Extreme Q would work, where the mesh cup is pressed from a sheet of mesh rather than cut and welded together, and then the shape is retained by a rivet ring around the top instead of welding to a pre-pressed cap. Might be hard to make a full-size ELB this way, but maybe the occasionally-discussed "mini" ELB would work.
I wonder if it'd be worth all that effort, though. I'd like to propose a simple experiment. Take your Cloud, and hit through a water tool, with water, everything as normal, only no ELB in the Cloud. Really examine and savour the taste of the draw. Then, place an
empty ELB and repeat the test. Can you detect the added "taste" of the ELB? (And if you can, can you still do it when you get a friend to help with the experiment and not tell you whether he's put the ELB in or not for a few trials?) I doubt anyone could pick it in a proper double-blind test.
