I have to admit that first thing in the morning I'm not inclined to sacrifice anything, especially if it's something at its peak that's been making me happy. It feels like divorce.

And anyway, I just want to get that coffee in me. And there's a risk the grinder is waking everyone up when they'd rather sleep....

So paradoxically, I'd rather sacrifice in the day, when my tongue has woken up... but I don't

Does all this mean one has to sacrifice more with big burrs than little ones? Can I now stop lusting after a Major or Robur?

I suppose not. It's 3 am and I should really be asleep....

Night night....

Almost None. I've applied a few simple mods to my Compak K6 and added a step to my routine.



Mod 1: I've attached electrical tape to extend the dosing fan blades to give a clean sweep.

Mod 2: I've removed the baseplate just above the dosing hole to eliminate unnecessary static.




Mod 3: I've included a rubber insert (blue colour in photo) along the circumference of the middle screw of the burr to raise the beans. Before this mod, beans always got stuck in the circular valley.

Mod 4: Instead of a hopper, I jammed in my aeropress funnel in its place.

Routine: After the grinding is done and the portafilter dosed, I use a pipe cleaner to remove the grounds stuck in the hole, and these additional grounds make up my dose.

Congratulations.

Now screw off the top burr and look inside the grind chamber. That's the coffee we're speculating about.

Clean, though not sparkling. Just a teensy bit of grounds stuck on the burr teeth. I took apart the grinder a few weeks ago. Much cleaner than before the mods.

another_jim wrote:The Versalab dumps about a half gram 15 minutes after the shot.
All of you fancied or real super discriminators who can tell, buy a Versalab, where the stales get dumped shortly after the shot.

By no means am I standing on a podium, but mine doesn't dump any grinds after a shot. I did have one experience on a high load of ~18 grams (into a double basket) where there was a little coffee stuck right at the edge at the bottom funnel, but that's been it as far as retention. I've even ran the grinder a few minutes after a grinding session and nothing emerged but the whir of the motor.

We seem to have lots of miracle grinders around here; not sure if it's the machines or people though.

I'm not sure what you mean by your post, Jim, but I'm just posting my experience, with my grinder. I'd hardly call it a Christmas Miracle©, but I am definitely happy with the performance.

I have more problems with bean fragments flying out the top of the grinder than grinds out the bottom. Fixing that will be nothing short of a miracle.

another_jim wrote:We seem to have lots of miracle grinders around here; not sure if it's the machines or people though.

It's the people (at least it is in my case )

I checked this over the weekend to make sure I wasn't spouting bullshyte earlier. Currently I have one grinder with the hopper loaded and the other two are grinding per shot....I'm playing with some new Yemen beans/roasts. After loading and grinding per shot and my little multiple bump-n-brush routine there is practically nothing left behind. After running a bunch of shots Satrurday afternoon I test-bumped both grinders (Macap conical and Mazzer Super-J) Sunday morning and got only the faintest wisp of grounds

I am no longer clear the parameters or desired result of this experiment. I thought Ian's initial challenge was for users to determine what was dispensed from a hopperless, grind per shot, grinder on the first empty pulse of a new day's use, assuming the grinder was used the previous day. I think this challenge was based on the fact that he experienced in hopperless use that some stale grinds were expelled each morning. With the original parameters of how much stale coffee is discharged from your overnight idle grinder, many users have indicated that little or nothing is expelled from their empty, idle grinder. I don't think this is a machine or user miracle, but a rather common result for this base test parameter.

I think Jim has raised an additional question, not of what is expelled from the idle grinder, but what is retained that is not expelled. This question applied to the previous answers of little or nothing, certainly does make it sound like there are a bunch of miracle grinders out there. While my hopperless, single shot usage results in almost no stale coffee exiting the grinder the next day, I know if I open it up fully and look inside there will be between 1 and X grams (I have never weighed it) of ground coffee "stuck" in the machine. If this is the coffee we are referring to, than I think running a semi full hopper and dump grinding at the beginning of each shot is just as ineffective as hopperless single shot grinding as a means of removing the stuck coffee. For this purpose I think only a daily break down and full cleaning would suffice.

So which is it we are referring to here, the coffee that is expelled or the coffee that is retained? Once we determine which amount of coffee we are referring to, what are we trying to determine, is it which is better at mitigating the amount of stale coffee in the next days use, single shot hopperless, or semi loaded hopper? Or what is better at mitigating the mixing of retained stuck coffee with fresh ground.?

On a side note, this thread has me taking a second look at my grinder usage. This weekend I started using a semi full hopper and grind dumping to see what differences I notice.

I think that there is a bit of an odd situation with a few grinders out there. Some burrs on some grinders allow a gram or three to build up between the back of the burrs and their mountings. These broken beans and grinds, while truly stuck in the grinder are not in the grounds path. They become (for all intents and purposes) an organic gasket.
OTOH, if that grind got exchanged every shot, it would be near impossible to clean out without removing the upper and lower burrs.
In any case, those that measure and dose their grinder with just enough beans to provide a double, and to that serially, contend that we clean our grind path sufficiently that we are not getting one or more grams of stale coffee in our morning cappa. Those that do not, contend that we aren't as smart as we think we might be, and that we really are drinking stale coffee, whether we choose to believe it or not, and that that has to be true in all cases except those of divine intervention.
We're contending that it is nothing of the sort, that we prefer the tiny extra chore of cleaning the grind path per-shot, and putting off the weekly chore of going to get fresh coffee beans.
I do imagine that I get a tenth of a gram of old coffee leftover from the burr faces to the bottom of the doser, on a bad day, but that is so completely satisfactory compared to knocking out twelve grams a day on average straight out of the grinder and into the knockbox.
I'll extend the invitation to those faithful that wish to prostrate themselves before the holy implement, and see the miracle for themselves first-hand.
PM me a coupla days ahead of time, and remember to bring your offering of beans form someplace really nice. A pound ought to do it...