Day 1 with the Baratza Vario[apologies in advance for the horrendous photos. It was a cloudy, nasty day, and my flash wasn't handy.]
Well, I got home this morning and quickly began setting up and dialing in the Vario. As I believe I mentioned earlier, another little pearl I just got is a Gralab 450 darkroom/photo enlargement timer, courtesy of Ian Eales, who's letting me test it out. Space is getting a little cramped here, and I've been forced to relocate my knockbox:
Oh dear!I've started out today with PT's Gizmo Espresso, which is a pretty dark roasted coffee. At 6 days post roast, degassed in the sealed bag, it's eking out a few stray drops of oil. My first attempt at grinding it in the Vario was with the right (coarse) lever all the way on the finest setting, and the left (fine) lever around the middle. It was pretty immediately obvious to me that this setting would choke my machine, but I went ahead and verified. I was also initially worried about the clump-balls. You can see a closeup below:
WDT Posterchild?I leveled this with a finger-chop towards the upper right (from the high point to the low point), tamped, locked, and loaded. It was about 10 seconds till the first drops even appeared on the surface of the filter basket, and I killed it at 30 seconds after about 0.2 oz. of "espresso" had eked out. Can this grinder go fine enough? Check one.
After a second choke, I discovered that this grinder's left-hand adjustment is indeed quite fine--I haven't measured clicks yet, but it's very encouraging. I had to adjust one full click on the
coarse side to get the proper flow rate. Here's a sample of what this looks like:
A little clumping...
If memory serves me correctly, this is with a very light downwards tap... the few clumps just settled from that.[Full photography disclosure: these are not the same doses of coffee. in fact, the first photo above is from a later dose than the second photo. A lot of pictures didn't come out today, and I'm just trying to illustrate the general effect of a light tap that I've seen today.]You can see that clumps dissipated significantly from the powderized shot pictured first. This was my experience throughout today, and it's almost a paradox: the Vario produces a compressed grind compared to the Robur for me. It looks like you can fit almost 2 grams more in the basket without going over the rim of the basket. At the same time, the clumps that come out of the grinder seem to disappear with a little tapping. That seems like a good sign, but remember that this is just initial observation.
This isn't a shot from either of the previous doses, but below is a sample of an average Vario pour from today, where my method is just to level (if needed), tap (on the bigger doses), tamp 'n' go, the idea being to work backwards from the minimal distribution effort required by a professional/titan grinder to see what, if any, distribution/grooming methods are necessary on the Vario.
Not too impressive just yet. It seems obvious there will be a little bit of a learning curve.Most of my pours today were very slightly ristretto, between 14.5 and 16 grams to a resultant 1.5 oz. (other than the early chokers). Here's what they've typically looked like a few seconds after a shot:
Most of today's Vario shots had good body, but I was constantly getting these hair-pulling sour notes in the shots. After I had the timing right, I realized this was from my failure to get the temperature just right. When I finally did (I think) nail it, I got a very bass shot. Deep, grainy semisweet chocolate was absolutely dominant in the cup. By comparison, the Robur's best (out of 3 shots) had that same grainy cocoa, but marks significantly higher on sweetness and a really interesting, crisp acidic note that was a little minty, not so much in flavor as feel--a very interesting bite that's interesting and refreshing rather than unpleasant.
Another random note from today: though it's not in the pictures anywhere, I got some great results later in the day by just dosing into the basket, tapping down lightly, and nutating the tamper over the coffee bed prior to tamping. On both the Robur and the Vario, this seemed to correct the tendency for slight donut-channeling at the beginning of shots. Both grinders produced their best shots after I did this, so I am pursuing this method as hopefully adequate for the Vario.
Finally, I wanted to end today's post by addressing the clumping issue a bit.
A little bit frustrating, yes?If you're thinking of buying this grinder, I'd be glad they're delaying release by a bit. After dosing about 2/3 the way up in the basket, the grinder becomes a huge staticky mess, with tiny particles literally flying all over the place. I've tried dosing into the little bucket as well as straight into my portafilter, and it's aggravating and messy either way. With the bucket, some of the particles remain charged even after a bit of shaking, and they fly out as you pour into the basket. For now, I have resigned myself to the mess and I'm cleaning up after every session until I receive the final version. I'm excited to see how they've managed to fix this with a simple tweak, as this seems like a challenging problem that has stumped a lot of major grinder manufacturers. That said, Mahlkönig K30s are pretty minimal on static, and behave similarly to this grinder as far as clumping. That right there is a very encouraging thought.
Mess around the grinder.I know I'm repeating repeating myself, but make sure you take this all with a very large grain of salt. This is a
pre-production grinder, and all of the faults that I've found with it so far are either well known and supposed to be fixed, or attributable to my inexperience with this grinder. I hope I'm satisfying your curiosity at least to some degree.
I also want to say that my own impression after today is that I expect this to be a certain contender in its price range if nothing else. The user interface on this grinder is exceptional in its class; you'd have to lay out at least 4 times its price to get a grinder with a similar interface. Moreover, this grinder does not appear to have the slightest trouble grinding fine enough for espresso or stepping small enough to make very fine adjustments to shot timing. Extractions look like fairly ungroomed extractions from other grinders in this class.
I'll need a good bit more time with this grinder to solidify my opinions of it, of course, and an attempt to answer the question, "Can it beat the Robur [or the other titans]?" will take much longer to wrap my head around. I hope you've enjoyed the ride so far. This is just day 1.
Stay tuned until next time, when I try to return to acceptable photography and hopefully more organized thoughts. Feel free to ask questions if I've been unclear, or made a horrible mess of my whole methodology, or whatever else is gnawing at you to ask about this grinder.
by shadowfax on Mon Jan 26, 2009 6:06 pm 
