Hi everyone,

recently I've been struggling to pull a 'true' (50-60ml) double espresso from my double basket and unfortunately I cannot get anything good taste-wise or volume-wise. I'm working with a week old SO (Celebes Toraja), but had similar problems before with other SOs as well as blends. If I set my grinder (Mazzer Major) to give me around 50ml of liquid after around 30s it's rather watery, body is lacking and the crema drops down pretty quickly, not even mentioning that stream turns blond pretty quickly. If I set the grinder to give me a slow pour, with beading at the beginning and a thin brown stream I can't get more than 30ml of liquid before the pour blonds or starts channeling.

To top that my pours usually never actually 'swell' as seen on most NPF extraction videos. They simply stay thin as a mouse tail and stay that way throughout the whole extraction. The only moment when they tend to 'grow' and expand when forming the cone is when I open a new bag and run a couple of test shots to set up the grinder. After a day or two it simply disappears and I end up with thin rat tail like pours which don't want to form an actual cone.

Any ideas what I may be doing wrong? or is it simply quite hard to get a 'proper' double from 14g of coffee?

Regards,
dsc.

Hi Jim,

thanks for the tip, that's what I've been trying, but for some strange reason I still can't get a 'proper' calm pour, ie. no sudden swirls in the cone, no dancing cone and no channeling.

Perhaps it's a good idea to post a video and I will try to do it today.

Regards,
dsc.

Hi again,

so here it is:



Yes I know it's too fast and I will try to set the grinder a bit finer, but this won't change too much speed-wise (I'm shooting for 20-23s tops). Usually I don't have such problems with channeling, but for some reason I got them this time when doing the video. The result was around 45ml of espresso, but I had to cut the shot a bit faster as it was going blond already. Taste-wise it's nothing special, good in a cappuccino, but as a straight shot I've had better.

Regards,
dsc.

Hi guys,

18 seconds is close to right for a lungo shot.

Good quote... but a 45ml double is not a lungo.

I was just about to say that, 45ml in 18s seems to little for a lungo and that's why I've mentioned that the shot is too fast. I always thought of lungo as a longer normale, so I would say 70-80ml would be the expected volume.

I know the video shows clear signs of channeling, but 95% of my shots are channel-free. The temperature was 92*C measured on the group with an unsheated TC.

This paragraph makes the coffee suspect.

I would bet my Elektra that the coffee is fresh and was roasted recently. Besides the same thing happens with all other blends and SOs I've tried since I got the Elektra (including coffees from different roasters). I can of course grind finer and get slower pours (much slower than that on the video), but they only give around 30ml of liquid and I was really curious to try something different.

but it might be time for a good cleaning of both the espresso machine and grinder

Grinder was cleaned 3 days ago when I was switching to the Toraja from a blend and the group head on the Elektra was cleaned two weeks ago. The last backflush with detergent that the machine had was more than a week ago.

I've set the grinder to a finer setting yesterday and of course got a slower pour, but again less than 50ml of liquid. It simply looks like the machine won't deliver volumes bigger than 30-40ml without extraction problems. Or I'm doing something very wrong on the PF side of the whole thing.

Regards,
dsc.

Hi guys,

the burrs are pretty fresh, I changed them less than 4 months ago. The pressure is set to around 8.5bar and I always grind with a full hopper of beans (around 200-250g of beans).

Here's a video showing today's shot, unfortunately last one with this batch of beans:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2707578[/vimeo]

You can still see channeling and it's far from perfect but I have to say it was pretty good taste-wise, although a bit flat to be honest. It looked pretty good to:



[sorry for the out of focus shot]

Regards,
dsc.

Hi guys,

I've ran out of those beans so I can't really try anything more with them (I can reorder a pack though and I might do that sometime). The grinder was cleaned a few days ago and that included removing the upper burr carrier and brushing any old coffee out (I've ran some rice through it as well). The screen and the plate behind it was cleaned not so long ago, so I might give that a try, although that wouldn't cause such problems (it will affect taste though). I don't use WDT any more as I don't have problems with clumping since my doserless switch on my Major.

I can slow down the pour, but that of course affects the volume. Now I've switched to some Monsoon Malabar and I get nice thick cones and proper (ie. 50-60ml) volumes even with lower doses, but I'm struggling with quickly dissipating crema. That is a bit strange as the coffee is almost two weeks old, although it was frozen for a day and I'm guessing that affected it somehow.

Regards,
dsc.

Hi guys,

I wasn't really worried about how the pulls looked like, as the taste wasn't as bad as thought it would be. I was simply curious why it's harder to pull a 'proper' double. Ristrettos are pretty easy, you simply grind finer and/or pack more coffee in the basket and stop the pour when it blonds. With normal double I always had problems with fast blonding or not enough volume.

Regards,
dsc.