Had some friends in town last night so I decided to have a dinner party with all of our group. Ended up having to do more of a stand up party with buffet table seeing as I had about 30 people including kids at one point. As the evening went on and the crowd thinned out I ended up playing barista after someone requested a coffee. I made them a latte and everyone was fascinated with the tools and process such that they had to have one too. I made caps, lattes, mistos, Kahlua lattes, amaretto macchiatos, etc, etc. It was really quite fun! I probably made 10-12 drink in all. It was the first time I've made more than 3 drinks in row. I got into a nice little routine that allowed me to bang out drinks fairly quickly I thought. I impressed myself! The really big thing I discovered.. or rather confirmed, is that after the 2nd extraction everything begins to gel with the machine and pulls become incredibly simple. They look beautiful and taste even better! This experience explains why my daily, single, morning extraction is so inconsistent from day to day. I know it's been talked about around here but I don't really feel like wasting good coffee on one or two warm up shots in the morning. I suppose I could have a container of cheap beans sitting around to use for this purpose. The only difference is that I'd still only have one try at getting the grind just right on the good beans each morning.

For those who only make 1 or 2 shots at a time... what do you guys do?

Ciao Nikolai,

Glad to hear of your successful "command performance". That phenomenon of improvement after the first pull is so often reported, that there must be something to it. My own suspicion is that this has more to do with the grinder, because they often retain some stale grounds from the previous day. My own remedy for that is simply to run the grinder a few seconds, with the good beans I intend to use, to push out the stale grounds. It is counter-productive to run junk beans through, because you'd have to purge the retained grounds with your good beans anyway.

If there's some other factor involving the espresso machine -- assuming it's already warmed up -- that explains the phenomenon, I'm all ears (or eyes).

Happy Brewing,
Wayne

Nik : You're looking at it like a Canadian hoarder, as my NY'er ex brother-in-law would say. If you hoard, you have two mediocre shots and never any great shots for a 0% return. You can't use garbage coffee because it hangs about in the grinder and you still have to purge it out. If you scrap half a dose per shot, that's 3 doses of coffee for 2 great shots of espresso for a 66% return

Wayne, it's not the grinder as I purge as well.

Ian I take offense to the Canadian hoarder comment. I'm a Ukrainian hoarder thank you very much. The math is worse than you suggest. Considering my system can only take a single double shot in the morning and it takes probably 2 warm up shots to really get things just right, that means a 33% return. Not good. Would you suggest making singles instead? 2 warmup, and 2 combined to make my double? That would be 50%, still not great but better than 33%. Plus it would be more work which I don't have time for in the morning.

Edit: ok re-reading you post I may not be understanding correctly. How do you mean scrap 1/2 dose per shot exactly?

Edit, edit: I think I understand Ian, you're meaning scrap 1/2 a dose from the grinder, yes? I'm already doing that. It still seems that 2 warm up shots are require of the machine get things working nicely though.

Are you sure it's warm up and not another artifact?

• from your first post of the thread, it appears you are adjusting the grinder every day? IMO, this is nonsense. I just recently changed coffee [I stay with the beans for several #s] and now that I've dialed the dose, don't expect to change again for several weeks... unless the current 50% humidity and low 40's overnight temperature radically change in the interval

How long is your machine on before you pull shots?

• at least an hour or cover the group with a tea towel

How often do you clean the group with detergent?

• more than 2 or 3 days is problematic for yhs

nixter wrote:For those who only make 1 or 2 shots at a time... what do you guys do?

Well, I have an Oscar, and its primary use is to make lattes for myself and (sometimes) my partner every morning, and a small group most Wednesdays, but 7 mornings a week it produces 1 or 2 doubles that get consumed.

For my morning routine, first I preheat the machine for an "appropriate" amount of time...probably averaging 45 minutes or so, and then flush 4-5 oz. through the group/portafilter just to make sure everything's got good and hot, grind/dose/tamp, and flush again until about 2 sec. past the water dance, lock and pull. This first shot goes to the espresso gods, unless I'm angry at my partner, then it's all his

After the first sink shot, subsequent shots behave themselves so long as I flush to just the end of the water dance, lock, and go.

And I completely agree, this machine is at its best when you have a small crowd to serve.

Thanks for sharing eric!

Ian, don't adjust grind every day. In fact I find I rarely need to adjust grind at all throughout a given bag of beans. My machine is on for 90min before use. I clean with detergent roughly every 5 days. I do a serious brush scrubbing and flushing with water after every use. I will try purging the grinder a little more than usual and see what happens.

Thanks