smuseby wrote:Is this the same thing as the 'Scace 2'?

No. The Scace is used to measure temperature and/or pressure for a simulated shot, but cannot be used during an actual shot. The EricS adapter lets you mount a thermometer where there is currently a bolt on the front of your grouphead, to measure brew water temperature during actual brewing and should help you figure out a flush routine that'll let you hit a desired target temperature.

WDT - ? Don't know what that is.
I weigh the beans on the way into the grinder, and run it until everything is ground. I press the basket with about 5 pounds, knock it on the edges a few times, and then apply 30# (with my clicking tamper), polish it, and remove the loose stuff on the edges. It is definitely level.
My scale registers 1g increments, so possibly two shots of 17.5g and 18.4g respectively are making the difference. Cranking the basket on with mechanical advantage provided by both the screw and the lever on a slightly overfilled basket would tamp the coffee with a lot more than 30# - maybe this is the culprit.
I just took a barista class this past weekend, and the pros poked the basket after the extraction, and the coffee was a little soft; mine is hard, which suggests that I may be using a bit too much coffee.

smuseby wrote:WDT - ? Don't know what that is.
I weigh the beans on the way into the grinder, and run it until everything is ground. I press the basket with about 5 pounds, knock it on the edges a few times, and then apply 30# (with my clicking tamper), polish it, and remove the loose stuff on the edges. It is definitely level.
My scale registers 1g increments, so possibly two shots of 17.5g and 18.4g respectively are making the difference. Cranking the basket on with mechanical advantage provided by both the screw and the lever on a slightly overfilled basket would tamp the coffee with a lot more than 30# - maybe this is the culprit.
I just took a barista class this past weekend, and the pros poked the basket after the extraction, and the coffee was a little soft; mine is hard, which suggests that I may be using a bit too much coffee.

Grind a couple of grams first shot to clear the detritus.
Weigh a few doses n the basket to make sure input = output
Don't knock on the side. Give a gentle side to side shake to level, then tamp gently.
IMO, 30# is a myth. It's easier to make a lighter tamp and there's less likelihood of can't

Some are fans of nutation
some are unconvinced

Yeah Robert, I'm struggling with similar (though less drastic) problems right now. Getting your dose and distribution right is a PITA.

First thing I would do is grab a .1g scale. I use the American Weigh SC-2KG (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001RF3XJ2) and it's made a big difference.

Think of it this way. A scale with 1g of variation will register everything from 17.5g to 18.4g as 18g. If you're using that to measure espresso, that means you have an inherent, built-in margin of error for your dose of around 6%. Basically, you could be updosing 1.1g and not even know it!

After you have improved dose consistency, look up the stockfelth moves, nutating tamp, Weiss distribution technique, and all the other fun distribution and tamping methods on this site. There are nearly as many methods as there are baristas, but there are a few rules of thumb.

1) Make sure the coffee is evenly distributed inside the portafilter (IE not all pushed against one side or the other)
2) Make sure the coffee is level in the portafilter before you tamp.
3) Be sure that your tamp is level
4) Don't knock the portafilter. It seems to shake the puck loose from the side of the basket, and leads to side channeling.

Master_Hobbit wrote:A scale with 1g of variation will register everything from 17.5g to 18.4g as 18g

More like from 16.5 to 19.5.
Resolution ± Accuracy ± 1 count