ping279 wrote:It is possible I never noticed, hard to say. But I do feel as if it has gotten worse recently. It's also possible that the beans I've been using in the past several months have exaggerated the problem as compared to before.

I just say that in terms of my experience, it took me a while to realize there is a difference in first and second due to the stale coffee.

Doesn't mean there is something else going on though. Maybe try purging a single dose for a week or so before the first shot and see if you can tell a difference from 1st to second shot and see how it goes. If consistently significantly different, then prolly something else going on.

Maybe a silly question, but on this machine, if you let the grinder run until it starts running freely because there are no more beans to grind, is all the coffee out of the grinder at this point, or is there still a bunch of it stuck in the chute somewhere? I can't really tell.

The way I've been doing it is that I take 16g of whole beans and toss it in the grinder and run the grinder until it starts to run freely and no more coffee comes out. Then I repeat if I need another shot. Still, I am noticing the pressure is higher and flow is lower when extracting the second shot.

The longer I experiment with this machine, the more frustrated I get. I just can't seem to be able to get any consistency out of it.

That is exactly what I do as well. At first I would weight going in and out, but the retention was so low that I stop weighting output of the grind.

No frustration here... this is the machine that I still use everyday. Turns on and heats up fast... easy to use for me. The ones that I am struggling with are the other two now.

I just ordered three more bags of Vivace Dolce beans...

wachuko wrote:I just ordered three more bags of Vivace Dolce beans...

I just ordered some Brazil Sweet Blue, based on your recommendation.

I really like that one as well. More on the Dark Chocolate side. It will be a permanent coffee bean in our cabinet. Once you try it, I would also suggest the Vivace Dolce... wow... more of a caramel/milk chocolate... I have not been able to get a bad shot of the Dolce even when I forget to change the grind settings.

Let us know how you like the sweet blue... I need to look at my notes, but I think that I do Grind setting at 6 with 16 grams in, using the double basket. I can confirm the dose when I get back home. I put anywhere from 2 - 4 grams of sugar in either one...

Here is a pull from this morning with the Dolce... I forgot to change the grind setting (I had made Sweet Blue last night)... Dolce requires a finer setting and higher does (using 17.5 grams in), but still came out tasting great.

wachuko wrote:Let us know how you like the sweet blue... I need to look at my notes, but I think that I do Grind setting at 6 with 16 grams in, using the double basket. I can confirm the dose when I get back home.

Do you recall what grind setting and amount you ended up settling on when using Brazil Sweet Blue? Thanks!

I confirmed with my notes: 16 grams in and grinder setting at 6... I do 24 grams out for me but a longer shot for my father in law, 30 grams

I am wondering if this issue is related to my issue: Why is my first shot in the morning always poor compared to the second one with no changed settings?

wachuko wrote:I confirmed with my notes: 16 grams in and grinder setting at 6... I do 24 grams out for me but a longer shot for my father in law, 30 grams

Thank you! This worked great.

What are your settings for Vivace Dolce?

Ohh... you are going to enjoy the Vivace Dolce even more...

17.5 grams / Grinder setting at 5 (and you can even push it to 4 if you wanted to... ) - and again, output for me is 27 grams and I let it go to 36 grams for my father-in-law.

I need to order more... we went through it so fast...

This is the kind of information that I was looking for from other forum members... so if you try another coffee bean that you like and found the right settings for the 870, share it!!!