Ken Fox wrote:I have a question for Jim and anyone else who lives in an area where the relative humidity changes frequently and by large percentages (like 25% in a day).

Here's the question: If you have a really good grinder (say a "Titan," either a large conical or a Max hybrid planar/conical) and if you take the peak period for a given coffee, which for me tends to be during the period between days 3 and days 8 after roasting . . . . . even with the changes in humidity which might occur during this "prime" period -- do you still have to change your grind settings much???

Variations between 65-95% are relatively common. Elektra Nino. Generally whenever I move the grind, its to my detriment. Now I have a vivid mark and seldom adjust it from there. If I do, thats why the mark is there, as I constantly find my way back to where I started...

We usually have the aircon on, that may stabilise the RH inside however.

Yesterday, 090910, humidity varied from 95% @07:00 to 13% @ 14:00.
http://data.piercecollege.edu/weather/l ... quinth.htm

Grinder changes : 0

Unless pulling back to back shots, tweaking the grind based on a grinder that's going to sit for a few hours is like deciding to turn on the windscreen wipers because it's raining in the next county.

why tweak the grind on back to back pulls?

SOP here is a single every cupla hours. Back to back when tweaking a new roast.

Fantastic topic; I've been experimenting with a single origin Rwanda that I want to "tone down" and this has helped quite a bit.

You guys lost me back with quarters, nickels, holes, linear stuff. I'm just a computer guy that likes a good cup of coffee or espresso.

Skipping over two pages of math my take away is this. For those of us with entry level kit, specifically grinders like the Gaggia MDF stepped grinder. Once you hit the sweet spot, adjust your dose to vary your extraction rate when...

1.The adjustment on my stepped grinder causes a wider swing in grind and subsequent shot timing than is needed based on the current flow rate.

2.The change in dose does not cause a dramatic shift in flavor. If it does have a negative impact, then adjust the grind instead.

3.My non stepped grinder is experiencing a shift in extraction rate based on environmental variables that may be reversed the next day. Instead of chasing the grind and purging out a few ounces of coffee every time I make a minute change, just dose a little more today, a little less tomorrow. That will avoid the grinder fiddling and wasted coffee.

4.Slight variations in dose do not cause undesirable effects in the cup.

I wish I had my gear to experiment around with this. Moving sucks, having your espresso machine in storage for 4 months sucks even worse.

OMG. Is this another one of those rare, rare instances where Jim and Chris Tacy actually AGREE (at least somewhat)?

another_jim wrote:As the coffee gets older, grind coarser and really updose to counteract the faster flow. This is the only way to keep the taste balance fairly constant.

chris tacy wrote:With a triple basket you can get decent shots with stale coffee. (This is the important one. Today I experimented with some 7 day old coffee from Ecco Caffe. When fresh, this was a lovely, subtle and balanced espresso. Now, in a double basket it is quite flat and undefined, with little dynamic range and limited aromatics. In the triple basket, however, I can pull a 1.75oz shot that is incredibly concentrated, dense and enjoyable - especially in milk. My guess is that I should be able to get decent shots out of this coffee this way for another day or two.)

As I wrote Jim in an email yesterday, my own observations are that by increasing dose as a coffee stales, you can improve the resulting drinks over what you would have gotten with that stale coffee had you left the dose constant. However, and it is a very big however, the resulting drinks are still inferior to the lower dosed drinks that I get with the same coffee when it is fresh. To me this argues more for limiting the amount of coffee that I leave out at any given time, freezing the rest for later use, than it argues for trying to get more out of past-prime coffee by altering dose and grind.

ken

Should we flip a coin, or is this a cat in the box time?

-C

another_jim wrote:Or it argues for throwing out the remaining coffee every day, or roasting every day, or moving next to a good cafe, or switching to tea or ...

I fail to see the point in this farrago of counterfactuals. The only thing that matters here is that sometimes people have to use the same coffee for five or six days. In that case, gradually increasing the dose, and perhaps even grinding coarser, will do much better than grinding finer.

Ken, you're free to throw out the coffee instead.

Actually, Jim, I'm not sure that you have established this as fact, although it is obviously a strongly held opinion of yours.

For home roasters who can choose how often to roast or how much to freeze of each roast product, they do have a choice. For people who do not home roast but who buy in quantities greater than what they can consume when the coffee they just purchased is at prime, they can choose to freeze some, or more, as result of this discussion.

Yeah, no doubt, if you have excess coffee lying around there are various things you can do with it. My #1 choice as long as it is still usable, is to use it in milk drinks and to drink something that is still in its prime for straight shots. That way, the substandard coffee is not obviously noticeable as being substandard, and when drinking straight shots one gets the best that one can get.

There are lots of things to be done with "leftovers." I don't much care for leftovers, either in food, or in coffee, and anything I can do to avoid having them is a net plus in my view.

ken