I'm new to my Vario (and my Classic). I'm trying to figure out what grind will work best for my Classic. I had a basic setting that was decent, without having much time to play and experiment I just left it as is. I had some free time tonight and started playing with grind sizes... I'm wondering if there is something wrong with my Vario. The difference between the finest of espresso grinds on the Vario vs. the coarsest French press setting are just about indistinguishable. I'm wondering if my Vario is not responding to my dial settings?

Can anyone shed some light on the difference in grinds from finest to coarsest? Or has anyone had issue with non-responsive dials?

This photo might not be very descriptive, but I'll at least try and show you the difference I get. French press/Coarse is on the left, espresso/Fine is on the right. To the touch and close inspection, they seem VERY similar.


The results, regardless of where I put the dials seems to be an 11 second double. The only variation seems to be my tamper. But I've gotten it quasi-consistent.

Thanks for any input!
brad

Something is definitely off. When sliding the micro adjust, it will be hard to see much difference, but the macro adjust should give you a much greater variance in size.

I'd try pulling the top burr out and replacing it. Just to make sure it's in there properly. Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest, besides phoning Baratza. I've never seen this problem before.

The Vario can easily produce a seriously fine grind that would feel like a flour if not just downright powdered sugar, and needless to say choke the crap out of your machine so that you don't even get a drop in a minute. If your picture is showing the range of grind sizes your grinder can produce, it looks like you have a damaged/disengaged adjustment knob. You could play diagnosis for awhile if you want. For example, you might unplug the grinder, remove the hopper and the upper burr carrier and actuate the right (coarse/macro) lever and see if you get any movement on the bottom burr. You should be able to see some movement. I imagine there are some other things to try, and you may be able to fix this yourself. Someone here might be able to help you, but at this point I think your fastest bet would be to take Keith's advice and contact Baratza Customer Support about this via phone. If you do, please let us know how it goes.

Here are 2 observations based on what ya'll have suggested.
1. One the finest macro and micro setting, I'm still pulling an 11 second double. Based on Shadowfax's "you don't even get a drop in a minute" I've got a problem.
2. Feeling for movement between the burrs, I feel nothing, I see nothing. Seems I have a malfunctioning grinder.

Considering I've only had this equipment ~3 weeks, maybe it never made any adjustments... only now that I've had some time to play with it am I noticing these small nuances.

Ok, so a call to Baratza is in order tomorrow... unless someone has any ideas on how to "engage" the switches?

Thanks for the quick input.

Ok, problems solved. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with Kyle (from Baratza) and we hashed through a lot of stuff. Come to find out I had powder on the reference surface. As he explained, espresso powder even at a mere 250 microns added to the reference point of the burrs is going to make your 250 micron grind equal 500 microns. So I gave it a good cleaning as he explained with the Vario they prefer the use of Grindz instead of taking the thing apart. Before the cleaning we pulled 2 shots:
1. Macro all the way up, micro at the mid point - 5.5 seconds for 1 once
2. Macro and micro all the way up - 11 sec
Then the after-cleaning pull:
3. Marco all the way up, micro at the mid - 16 seconds.

So learn from my mistake. Don't take the grinder apart, or if you do.... clean the reference surfaces THOROUGHLY before reassembling.

Gotta go make a cappuccino before I have to get to work!! Thanks everyone, and thanks again Kyle!

Brad

PS - Man does Kyle know his machines, and couldn't be any nicer!!! I think he was actually expecting my call this morning based on this thread. Never have I seen a company so in touch with their clients.

Huh, paint me confused. Your shot timings are still a way from espresso timings, and it frankly sounds like you still have a problem. What coffee are you using, at what dose (how many grams)? You're using a Gaggia Classic, correct?

Are you getting a significant visual difference between the coarsest and finest settings of the grinder now? For reference, here's a sample of what that should look like:



That's the finest setting on my Vario, on the left (right sliders all the way up, left one about 2/3 of the way up), and the coarsest on the right (both sliders down). That left sample is so fine I would get hardly a drop out of my espresso machine, and it would be a pretty putrid drop...

shadowfax wrote:Your shot timings are still a way espresso timings, and it frankly sounds like you still have a problem. What coffee are you using, at what dose (how many grams)? You're using a Gaggia Classic, correct?

It's probably a difference of dose. It's also likely that your grinders are just calibrated differently. (Also consider, different machines, location, humidity, age of burrs, position of the moon, etc... )

Keith, that's possible, considering he still has a number of notches to go finer. The deciding factor is whether Brad is able to get a coarse french press grind to be very coarse as pictured above. If he can't get that, something is still very wrong.

Let me first clarify. Those timings are based on pulling a double shot through a double basket. I was using ~15 - 16 gram dose. So in my mind the last timing wasn't bad... double that 2 oz in 30-32 seconds.

But your photo is quite interesting. Let me grind up some more tonight and snap a better photo. I'll compare mine to yours as well. At first glance, your finest grind looks finer than mine and your coarsest is much more coarse. I'll also show you a test Kyle had me try, which is take the grinds in the palm of your hand and squeeze it.... espresso will clump like clay and French press grinds will fall like sand. I'll snap photos of that and share.

I agree perhaps I'm back in business with espresso but have no idea where I'm at for coarse grinds.

More tonight!

Brad, sounds good. You're right, 1 oz. in 16 seconds is correct timing, assuming this is just a flowrate test and not a shot pulling test (i.e., presumably you're not blonding after 1 oz.). I missed that the 1 oz. measurement applied to the other 2 tests you listed as well. That's good, and you have adjustment range to go a bit finer to continue tweaking.

I'm still curious what coffee you're using and how old it is. In general, older coffee will pull faster than fresh coffee, so this is another factor that can skew your results towards gushers in any case (and so you shouldn't use stale coffee as a gauge for whether you need to tweak the grinder's calibration).

Good luck tonight; I hope you have your full grind range back.

I received 2 bags of coffee with my grinder from Whole Latte Love,
WholeLatteLove Buzzopolis
WholeLatteLove Monaco Espresso Whole Bean
I burned through the Buzzopolis last night with my "what's going wrong, this was working before?!?!" tests. Today I busted open the Monaco while on the phone with Kyle. I know nothing of these 2 beans, other than they were free. I have a fresh bag from Klatch Coffee waiting for me once I figure out what's going wrong (which I hope to have figured out soon, else that fresh coffee won't be fresh).

Are either of the 2 bags I have old? I don't know... they haven't been in my possession for more than 2 weeks. (maybe that's old?)

I don't know anything about those WLL coffees either; What'd you get from Klatch? Belle Espresso? That should be good, or any other espresso blends from Klatch for that matter. Intelligentsia is probably my favorite roaster; I'm always coming back to them, and you're certainly reasonably close to the Silver Lake Coffee Bar, or Venice. I imagine you could easily pick up some world-class espresso there if you're ever in a pinch. Looks like Klatch isn't too far from you, either, so that makes you a lucky SOB in my book.

2 weeks might be long in the tooth, flat-out dead, or just around the end of prime for a coffee, depending on the roast level and the beans used. Of course, if the bags don't have a roast date on them you have no way of knowing how old they are, so I'd say if you have any trouble with them you're better off forgetting about them and working with something you know is great and fresh. But of course it's your time, and I can't taste the coffee with you, so it's totally your call...

The reference surface is merely the white (plastic?) harness that you twist the top burr into. Its that white surface and the opposite metal surface on the top burr that you want to make sure are completely clean. Reference surface was the term Kyle used to describe the piece, it is essentially a known distance that the lower burr can move closer to and further away from to make a certain grind. If you have particles or any debris that sets the top burr further from the bottom burr, you are changing the reference point in which the machine uses to make different size grinds. Did that makes sense?

brad

Ok, so I played with it a bit more tonight. Wife and I could visually tell a difference between coarse and fine. "Is the fine fine enough? Is the coarse coarse enough?" I'll just have to try them out. With the fine setting, I know how to determine what's proper... 14g dose, 30lbs tamp, 2 oz liquid, 26 seconds (or there abouts). But how do I know a good French press grind or auto-drip grind? If I get grinds in my cup? Wish I could mail someone my grinds for inspection, at this point I think I'm just playing mind games wondering whether everything is ok or not.

Here are my photos... what do you think? I do see a difference, I'm just wondering if I see enough of a difference. Left = coarse, right = fine. The camera setup was on full manual and I changed nothing between the 2 photos except the subject matter so that should element most variable.



brad

Right side looks good. If you can pull a 2oz 26 sec shot at 14g and still have some room to go finer, you're laughing.

Left side looks way too fine for FP. See Mark Prince's photo for reference.

http://www5.flickr.com/photos/coffeegee...924460370/

IMO that's a poor reference for French Press to some extent:

Mark Prince wrote:These grounds have been sifted of "dust", primarily from chaff but also from fragments of the grinds that come off because of friction (and not the burr cutting, per se).

That is, sifting out the fines/coffee 'dust' from the grind product will make things look very different. You can't get anything like that from the Vario without thoroughly sifting it. Unsifted press pot grinds will look dirty with a lot of finer particles, like the right hand side of my sample above.

Brad, your sample does look a touch fine to me, but it's hard to tell; spreading the grinds out would help a little, I think. I can certainly see some good-sized particles in there, which is a good indication.

I agree with what you are saying, there are some good size particles in the coarse grind. But I feel like there is a lot of the fine-level grind mixed into the coarse grind.

This morning I pulled some decent shots with the macro 1 level down and micro near middle. Keep in mind, I'm still uneducated in terms of what's good/decent/bad. But based on the timings and weights, etc, the 2oz shot extracted in 25 seconds.

Brad, did you end up getting to one of Intelligentsia's cafés? I can't recommend strongly enough that you go to Venice and look for Chris/M'lissa Owens or Kyle Glanville, or probably just about anyone on staff there, and hit the 'slow bar' and ask them about espresso--what makes it great, different flavor profiles, what over- and under-extraction tastes like, that kind of thing.

I haven't been yet, but a very good friend of mine just gushes about his experience there. Talking about coffee only gets you so far, especially when you've never been exposed to 'high-end' espresso. The best thing you can do for your coffee education is TOTALLY getting someone else who knows coffee well to walk you what great coffee/espresso tastes like as they prepare it for you to actually drink it while you hear about it, and a great bonus would be if they can walk you through common extraction flaws and how to correlate those with preparation errors. To get the latter you may need to either pay for some training or hit the slow bar when business is slow, but you can at least try some good shots to gauge your own against.