I've used up another 12oz of Peoples Daily Espresso from Social Coffee over
the last week. I ordered the beans on the 17th and had them on the 18th. The
roast date on the package was May 16th. I placed about 1/2 cup of beans in my VARIO
and the rest were sealed and placed in the freezer.

I had calibrated the VARIO as directed using the instructions posted on the Baratza site.

My results were much better. It took me about 4-5 shots to get the grind right,
but the combination of fresh beans and added range on the VARIO to grind finer made
all the difference.

Really really important to adjust the Vario grinder, using the key provided and following instructions in the manual.

That coffee is usually dosed to about 18 grams at the minimum. The recomendation of 18-22 is based on 58mm double baskets, but still I'd updose.

Evan

15g in my 53mm pf is equivalent to 18g in a 58mm. This is based on puck volume.
When i see a reccomendation for 18g dose with 35g mass, i adjust it for the smaller
basket on my La Spaz and use 15g with mass of 29g. This works well for me.

cafeina wrote:15g in my 53mm pf is equivalent to 18g in a 58mm. This is based on puck volume.
When i see a reccomendation for 18g dose with 35g mass, i adjust it for the smaller
basket on my La Spaz and use 15g with mass of 29g. This works well for me.

Hmm did you figure this out for yourself? That's good to know if it's true. I always thought for best results I'd need to squish 18-20g in there!


Also,
Everyone was so quick to blame the coffee/roasters. But the people at Social seem to know what they're doing. I've actually gone there and spoke with them, they're very informative and also super nice. The Peoples Daily Espresso blend is highly rated on a coffee review site.

Benjammer wrote:Hmm did you figure this out for yourself? That's good to know if it's true. I always thought for best results I'd need to squish 18-20g in there!

This is an easy calculation. The volume of a cylinder is pi * radius * radius * height. This means that a 53mm basket has 83.5% of the volume of a 58mm basket of the same height. 83.5% of 18g is 15g.

Yes, you can squish 18g of coffee into the Spaz 53mm double basket. Much more, and the puck will hit the shower screen as you lock in. I haven't yet found a coffee that benefited from dosing over 16g on my Spaz, but YMMV.