Since there hasn't been a Vario thread in about 5 minutes...

I finally got one a couple of months ago! Thanks to all who provided advice and encouragement, both publicly and privately. Feels great to have finally gone for it. And yeah, I did have to recalibrate at the start, but it's been great since then.

Seems there's been a spate of posts detailing dissatisfaction lately.

I'm very happy with mine, though these posts make me nervous and perhaps oversensitive to problems, or even just the possibility of problems.

Recently though, I tried switching from single dosing to loading up the hopper with 3 or 4 doubles-worth of beans. I could swear this had an adverse affect on the grind! When I was grinding per shot, I got the desired resistance in the lever of my pavoni. With the hopper a bit fuller, suddenly the shots ran much faster. (I did try to compensate for the fact that the grind time/dose will be affected once I'm using the timer, and not simply grinding until the beans are gone.) But even sliding the Micro up seemed to make no difference. Usually, I get no drips during my preinfusion and pump the lever of my pavoni 2-3 times before pulling my shot. Now, it seemed I'd flashed back to my earliest novice days, when the coffee would start dripping out of the group within seconds of raising the lever.

Today, I went back to single dosing, slid the Micro up to almost its finest point (the Macro is one notch down from its finest setting), and--I almost choked the machine! What gives?

If your shots were running too quickly even at the finest setting, your Vario probably requires calibration, or you weren't grinding as much as you thought. Did you weigh all your doses to make sure you had the correct amount in the basket? Many grinders behave differently when only loaded with a single dose of beans vs. a full hopper.

The grind changes if there is pressure from a hopper full (or partially full) of beans. I would adjust the grinder so that you have a few clicks beyond the fineness you want, then you can use the grinder either way.

Someone came up with a design for a Mazzer grinder that included some kind of a ball to weigh down the beans so that predictable grinding could be done with only a couple of shots worth of beans loaded. It simulated a column of beans.

With a full hopper compared to single shots two things happen on every grinder
-- you grind faster
-- you grind finer.

Consequently, if you had the timer and grind setting the same switching to a full hopper you would really have choked the machine, not gotten faster flow. If you used the same weight, you would still somewhat choke the machine.

I have no idea why your flow is faster with a full hopper, except that you didn't tell us the whole story -- something else has changed. Most likely, you are inadvertently dosing far less when you fill the hopper.

Adding to what Jim has written, maybe the faster grind is resulting in a fluffier grind, so that if you have set your grind time for volume of grinds in the basket rather than dose weight, the dose is in fact less than before and that is why the shots are running fast.

Just a thought.... Do you have a scales?

Cheers

Mike

Thanks all. Very informative. I hadn't thought the performance would be so affected.

To clarify, I'm not really filling the hopper, just tossing in 3-4 doubles worth.

I don't have a scale, and have never weighed shots -- not that I'm against doing so, but I haven't gone there yet.

I understand, therefore, that my doses and resulting shot volumes, timings, etc are impossible to repeat, or study clinically. But my methods haven't changed (other than using the grinder somewhat filled) and my results are quite different than usual.

As a years long single doser, I throw two scoopfuls of beans into the grinder, using the plastic spoon the europiccola came with. I'm guessing my doses are close to 14g.

Once I got the Vario, my first long-term exposure to a grinder with a timer, I experimented, finally settling on two 7 second "grindings" to fill my double. I take the filter out and tap between each. Yeah, a bit of work, but this greatly cuts down on flying grinds. This combined 14s has been enough to grind my single dose, and also completely empty the grinder.

When I started playing with a filling up the hopper a bit, I knew I had to cut down on my grind time, since 14s completely cleared the grinder of a single dose, but now I'd be getting as much coffee as it can grind throughout, instead of wisps near the end. Make sense?

Ultimately, with grinder filled a bit, grinding twice for 6.5 seconds seemed right.

After nearly choking the machine yesterday with a single dose and the micro ramped up to its finest setting, this morning I filled the hopper with 42g+/-, and ground with the micro back down to about halfway.

Some unexpected results. 6.5s produced much less than half the shot. (I know it's hard, since I can't measure anything, but when I was grinding per dose, 7s would grind roughly half of what I tossed into the machine.) Today, even after 13s, I had much less coffee in the filter than I expected, and ground a couple more seconds, just to get close to my accustomed dose. Inspecting the puck later revealed that my dose had still been a lot smaller than usual. (Jim, your speculation about inadvertent underdosing is borne out there, but this was not the case when I first filled the hopper last week and was getting the fast shots...)

The shot still almost choked the machine. Not quite as bad a yesterday, but close.

A couple of other observations that may or may not have some bearing. Today, the motor stopped on a dime at the end of the set timing. I didn't hear the motor slow down. When I'm running it in manual mode, or stopping it before it gets to the end of a set time, sometimes I hear the motor slow and stop. It's quick, but it's not a dead stop like it was today -- which is the way I think it is supposed to operate.

Also, I noticed the other day when running it in manual, that the grinder seemed to run for about a second before the timer started counting up.

Though it might not seem so, I'm really NOT looking for problems and I do love the grinder, but I'd like to solve these mysteries, and obviously, if there is a problem, address it.

Thanks.

The problem is that you're just estimating how much you have in the basket, so it is very difficult to arrive at the correct settings for both methods. Plus, the volume on different grind settings isn't the same, so you can't really eye it anyway. If one method is producing faster shots than the other with the same beans, then the grind is coarser, the dose is lower, or both.

What is the benefit of loading three shots of beans in the hopper? Even the best timed grinders tend to get a little wonky on the last couple shots because of lack of bean weight and popcorning. I would not expect all three shots to be the same if ground for the same time. Also, if you're single dosing, why don't you just load the beans and grind them through? What's the point of using the timer and leaving some behind?

Thanks Chris. As to your last point, I'm not leaving any behind. It's just I found that using the timer allowed for a slightly more hands free experience. I know pushing the start/stop button a second time doesn't sound like a big deal -- and of course, it isn't -- but setting timings that would use up all grinds and not require me to manually stop, actually streamlined my process more than I thought it would.

Your other points are also valid. I just thought it'd be interesting to play around with a fuller hopper to see if I got fluffier grinds, more consistency, not to mention the added benefit of not having to unscrew the mason jar for each shot, but what you're saying is that 3 shots isn't enough to 'stabilize' the resulting output?

Perhaps my relatively low usage -- 1-2 shots/day on average -- make anything other than single dosing ill advised. Oh, well.

On that last point, if I may ask one of the simplest, basic and perhaps most obvious grinder questions. I do always get a little worried when I hear the motor whirring at a higher pitch once the burrs have gone through a single dose.

Can you run a grinder empty for a few seconds at the end of a dose, day in and day out without doing it harm?

Since 1000's are doing same and no reported problems, it's probably safe.