cannonfodder wrote:Houston, we have a problem. Never let someone that has only used a doser twice in their life run a commercial grinder. She emptied the entire hopper! A quarter pound of coffee shot to hell. I don't think she was pulling the doser level completely around so the flapper was not grabbing the spur on the hub and rotating the doser. She just stood there flapping in the wind. So I tell her she must not have pulled the doser handle all the way around. Mistake. 'Well I've never used one of those before but I did it just like you told me.' I don't think so hun, let me show you again (second mistake). Well, I never quite got that second round of cupping. I am sitting on the deck in the dark typing on the laptop. Oh bother.

Thanks for the effort expended on behalf of the HB community! An n=1 may have to suffice but IMO don't overlook the fact that you predicted or "called the shot" blind as anticipated.

OK now, let me think.... flowers. That's it, flowers. Flowers always seem to work for me when I find myself banished to the outer darkness of my deck. Perhaps those on HB who would like to see more regarding the Kony would even be willing to contribute to cannonfodder's flower fund...

Keep it coming!

OK, so I do care that I only had one blind cup test. Lets face it, even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut. So this morning I managed to scavenge enough beans from the Super Jolly to give the Kony/SJ another go.

I went about it a little different this time, the wife 1.0 interface was bypassed. I took the spring out of my portafilter so I could use two baskets already loaded with coffee. I took two identical baskets, put a small K on one and an S on the other, then covered them with a small piece of tape to hide the mark. I ground and dosed from the Kony into the basket marked K and did likewise for the Super Jolly. I kept the same 16 gram dose, leveled out the baskets and put them on a table.

This time I had my son bring me one of the two baskets. I dropped it into my spring-less portafilter, tamped, flushed and pulled a shot just as the previous test. Then I sampled the shot and placed the basket on the grinds tray of the grinder I believe it came from.

Again, it was not much of a contest. I pulled the tape off the basket and had picked the grinder correctly. The Kony shot was bright with more acidic and less body in the cup. I could tell the beans had aged another day as the cup was slightly different. The Kony was a little harsher today. The drink grabbed my tongue for lack of a better term. A harder attack on the palate (I believe that is a cup term I have heard in regard to spirits). Again the Super Jolly was mellower but the floral and fruit was more prominent than yesterday. Still lots of body but not as clear and defined as the Kony. This morning I preferred the shot pulled from the Super Jolly.

I will be out of town on business all next week and not returning home until Saturday night so any further testing will have to wait. So far I have been pulling a traditional double just to keep things uniform. I think I will try some ristrettos when I return, which is my normal drink, 1.5-1.75 ounces in 30 or so seconds. The drip cup was also intriguing. I will have to try some traditional cupping and a press pot or two when I return home.

cannonfodder wrote:OK, so I do care that I only had one blind cup test. Lets face it, even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut. So this morning I managed to scavenge enough beans from the Super Jolly to give the Kony/SJ another go.

I went about it a little different this time, the wife 1.0 interface was bypassed. I took the spring out of my portafilter so I could use two baskets already loaded with coffee. I took two identical baskets, put a small K on one and an S on the other, then covered them with a small piece of tape to hide the mark. I ground and dosed from the Kony into the basket marked K and did likewise for the Super Jolly. I kept the same 16 gram dose, leveled out the baskets and put them on a table.

This time I had my son bring me one of the two baskets. I dropped it into my spring-less portafilter, tamped, flushed and pulled a shot just as the previous test. Then I sampled the shot and placed the basket on the grinds tray of the grinder I believe it came from.

Again, it was not much of a contest. I pulled the tape off the basket and had picked the grinder correctly. The Kony shot was bright with more acidic and less body in the cup. I could tell the beans had aged another day as the cup was slightly different. The Kony was a little harsher today. The drink grabbed my tongue for lack of a better term. A harder attack on the palate (I believe that is a cup term I have heard in regard to spirits). Again the Super Jolly was mellower but the floral and fruit was more prominent than yesterday. Still lots of body but not as clear and defined as the Kony. This morning I preferred the shot pulled from the Super Jolly.

I will be out of town on business all next week and not returning home until Saturday night so any further testing will have to wait. So far I have been pulling a traditional double just to keep things uniform. I think I will try some ristrettos when I return, which is my normal drink, 1.5-1.75 ounces in 30 or so seconds. The drip cup was also intriguing. I will have to try some traditional cupping and a press pot or two when I return home.

Dave,

Thank you for your efforts in trying to do at least a little blind tasting. I think this is valuable, although too limited in scope to "prove" anything. Perhaps when this project is finished, or at the end of it, a real, statistically valid blind tasting can be done on at least a couple of grinder pairs being studied here. It may be that if the differences in the shots are really so obvious, that the tester should be asked not only to pick a preference on the shots but also to try to identify which grinder produced it.

These kinds of studies are a huge PITA to design, and even worse to execute.

I am not volunteering . . . . .

ken

The last stop for the kit is Jim's place. I believe he is planning on a much more substantial cupping regime. My attempts are strictly off the cuff amateur samplings and should be taken as such. I will try a few more while I have the Kony/SJ, unfortunately I am out of town this week on business so the Mazzer brothers are sitting idle this week.

Teme wrote:By the way, I also have the Illy book and in it he refers to a grinds distribution where both fines and coarse particles are present in appropriate proportions as being desirable. This is what the conical burrs appear to generate better than flat burrs (at least so it seems in the limited and non-scientific scope of the analysis).

Br,
Teme

Teme,

I believe you are referring to M. Petracco in Percolation, Chapter 7, Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality, 2nd. Ed. 2005, where he essentially states that multi-size grading provides the most suitable particle size distribution for brewing espresso. If this is true, I would be interested in learning what the best tasting multi-size distributions look like and what grinders are capable of creating such distributions.

On the other hand, Dan Ephraim of Modern Process Equipment Corporation in a PowerPoint Presentation for one of the Roasters Guild Retreats argued that particle size and uniformity are essential characteristics of excellent coffee.

http://www.mpechicago.com/coffee/TechInfo/PDF/Roasters%20Guild%20Retreat%20Presentation.pdf

Which of these two perspectives is correct?


Ron

altoCalgary wrote:Which of these two perspectives is correct?

Probably neither. Taste is too subjective. Same reason why it's neither "correct" to say espressos should be from blends or that they should be from single origin coffees.

Darryl

darrylr wrote:Probably neither. Taste is too subjective. Same reason why it's neither "correct" to say espressos should be from blends or that they should be from single origin coffees.

Darryl

Two of the top commercial coffee grinding technology manufacturers, Modern Process Equipment (MPE) in the USA and MAHLKONIG in Europe have developed automated machines that accurately create more than one uniform particle size in a run. This multi-modal processing is being driven by demand from the espresso pod and cartridge manufacturers. http://www.mpechicago.com/coffee/AboutUltrafine/Onsite_Articles/Coffee%20%20Cocoa%204-06.pdf

Teme has noted on his site recently that he is familiar with the Mahlkonig K30ES that has been used in the UK barista championships. In a TITAN-like Project taking place in Europe, the K30ES was one of the machines reviewed. http://forum.coffeed.com/viewtopic.php?p=8410 I found it interesting that one of the criticisms of the K30ES was that its grinds were too uniform!

If commercial grinding technology companies have been spending money to create multi-modal processing machines, where is the research that is informing this development? Can this research also be used to inform the TITAN project?

altoCalgary wrote:Dan Ephraim of Modern Process Equipment Corporation in a PowerPoint Presentation for one of the Roasters Guild Retreats argued that particle size and uniformity are essential characteristics of excellent coffee.Ron

Not exactly. If you go through his presentation (page 37), he specifically echoes Petracco: "The Espresso Exception for Quality Grinding: The Benefit of Plurimodal Grinding."

altoCalgary wrote:Teme,

I believe you are referring to M. Petracco in Percolation, Chapter 7, Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality, 2nd. Ed. 2005, where he essentially states that multi-size grading provides the most suitable particle size distribution for brewing espresso. If this is true, I would be interested in learning what the best tasting multi-size distributions look like and what grinders are capable of creating such distributions.

On the other hand, Dan Ephraim of Modern Process Equipment Corporation in a PowerPoint Presentation for one of the Roasters Guild Retreats argued that particle size and uniformity are essential characteristics of excellent coffee.

http://www.mpechicago.com/coffee/TechInfo/PDF/Roasters%20Guild%20Retreat%20Presentation.pdf

Which of these two perspectives is correct?

If we can get enough particle sizer time, I'm going to try testing a very simple model:

1. The rate of flow is determined overwhelmingly by the fines -- the more fines, the slower the flow.
2. The extraction of coffee is determined by how fine the average coarse particles are.
3. The quality of grind is determined how narrow the dispersion of the coarse particles is -- the tighter the distribution, the better the taste.

The conclusion from 3 is obvious. The conclusion from 1 & 2 is more subtle. The finer one grinds, the greater the proportion of fines (more breaking of the particles). So a grinder that tends to produce more fines will have a coarser grind for the same shot speed when compared to one which produces less grinds. Therefore, a grinder that produces a higher p[roportion of fines needs to be dosed lower to get the same solids extraction and taste balance.

The model predicts that two grinders that produce equally tight coarse distributions will have the same taste no matter how many fines they produce, but that one will need to adjust the dose to compensate for the proportion of fines.