I'm looking for some feedback regarding taste vs. grinder feed methods and was wondering if people out there with motorised conical grinders could do this quick experiment and share their views here:

1. Adjust the grind size to pull well with a full hopper (or half full, or quarter full with a tamper on top), do 1-3 shots and taste, take notice of how well the shots are pulling and if you need WDT etc.

2. Take the hopper off, clean everything well and and adjust the grinder for full single dosing, again do 1-3 shots and taste, take notice of how well the shots are pulling and if you need WDT etc.

3. Leaving the hopper off, adjust the grinder to pull well when bean feeding the grinder (don't drop the whole dose in, but instead dose single beans slowly as the motor is running). Do 1-3 shots and taste, take notice of how well the shots are pulling and if you need WDT etc.

How does 1 / 2 / 3 compare on taste? how well did the shots pull?

I know this has been mentioned before loads of times, but I'm curious how this force-feeding / single dosing / single bean dosing affects the grind quality. My guess is there's loads more fines being generated when force feeding (ie. hopper feeding), less when single dosing and even less when single bean dosing. I've got no way to do LPA (Laser Particle Analysis) on the grind samples, but that would probably be a good eye opener.

Cheers,
T.

I haven't tried the experiment, but I can answer some of the questions on the K10 WBC. On 1 and 2 I do not need the WDT ever. Going from with the hopper to without the hopper I haven't been able to decide if there is a major difference in taste. It takes enough adjustment to the grind that even with this "quick" experiment you'd need two grinders to be able to compare subtle differences in the shots (ie there is no way I at least could pull this off quickly enough that I could taste the shots head to head.

I don't think feeding a few beans at a time would be something I'd like on the K10 because even though it doesn't have a ton of popcorning, there is enough that it would be a bigger mess than I'd want to deal with (for example I'd never single dose without a cover of some form).

Because I can pull shots easily that I think taste good in either way 1 or 2, the factors that push me one way or the other tend not to be the taste of the coffee... I get a little less waste and can change beans more quickly single dosing, but like the convenience of a hopper and thus sometimes opt for one and other times opt for the other. Lately the burrs on my grinder have been getting jammed fairly often if I use it with a hopper (not sure why) so that has been the factor that has pushed me to single dose.

Yup read that, but it doesn't really match what I'm seeing on my grinder and the L1 I'm currently using. Grind setting differences are pretty big, around 0.08mm of burr distance change for the same bean, but the flow (not the speed, but how steady / calm it is) also seems different.

T.

Here's another one to try if you are interested in single dosing, all you need is a flat / conical grinder which allows single dosing and three cups marked A, B, C.

1. Measure out your standard dose, lets assume this is 18g, drop that into the burr chamber, no beans on top, no weights, tampers etc.

2. Now this might be tricky on fast grinders, turn the grinder on for a brief moment so that it only grinds 6g, drop that dose in a cup A.

3. Do another 6g dose and drop that in cup B

4. Grind the remainder (should be close to 6g) and drop that in cup C.

5. Repeat points 1 - 4 two more times, so that you end up with roughly 18g in each of the A, B, C cups.

Pull shots with each of the cup doses and observe what happens. Do they all flow / extract the same, or is it all different?

T.

I will give it a 'shot' once I get through this red harraz I am on.