JimWright wrote:I thought you said you had not used the timer for dosing here? In any event, are you using WDT or another method for distribution consistency?

Im new to the lingo and dont know what WDT means

I basically fill the double shot basket almost to the top. I measured it to be approx 17g. It does not come up to the rim n the basket. I acheive this by letting the m4d go for 7.7 seconds.

I thought that 14g was what to shoot for, but that was too little for the Vibiemme machine basket. I bought another double basket which is slight less and am thinking about changing baskets, but dont want to throw in too many variables at once. Its already hard to keep track of.

One thing is the m4d coming directly into the basket is "clumpy" and you try to smooth it out.

WDT : Banish Uneven Extractions with Weiss Distribution Technique

malachi wrote:Given that you are relatively unpracticed when it comes to dose it is very unlikely you're consistent with your dose to less than 0.3g (much less the goal of 0.1g).

Dose consistency is far more important that tamp pressure consistency (for example) when it comes to consistent results.

If struggling with shot consistency the above cannot be stressed enough. Eyeballing it when it comes to dosing doesn't come close to cutting it without years of practice. And then it's still not just eyeballing it, but eventually rather eye and feel, more feel than eye. You can start a tamp and know if it's over or under, though I usually already knew before tamp during feel of Stockfleths distribution. AND need periodic shot build series checkups with 0.1g resolution scale to make sure you've not gotten lax and keep yourself calibrated. Personally I've never gotten good enough to do a dozen builds with 0.1g variance, my goal for a double is +/- 2g, 4g total variance max. That I can do fairly consistently, last checked myself today while working with a newer barista at my cafe. Her first series of 6 builds whopping 1.1g variance (target of 17.3g), 2nd series of 6 much better .5g max variance. I'm now having her pop the basket and weigh it on every shot while working a shift with instructions if build not to spec +/-2g dump it without even pulling. All shots pulled nekkid so (relatively) easy to quickly pop build and weigh basket. Sure it'll slow production a bit, but quality trumps speed and off shots.

I haven't had a Jamaica Blue Mountain that would pull a good espresso. The coffee is just not right for a SO, not to say that there is not one out there. They are too acidic and floral in an espresso.

Just to reiterate what has already been said, different coffees require different grind settings. The same coffee roasted a week apart will require different grind setting, sometimes that same coffee you pulled a shot of an hour ago will need a grind adjustment because a rain storm blew in and the humidity changed. Environmental changes, age, blend changes, and sometimes simply walking by the grinder will seemingly cause a grind change. You also need to be dosing withing 0.2 grams, preferably even closer if you want to repeat back to back shots that are withing a couple seconds in timing. You may also want to run the grinder for 2 or 3 seconds to purge old grinds from the internals.

Espresso is a moving target.

cannonfodder wrote:Espresso is a moving target.

Which is why I like the MG42

miKe mcKoffee wrote:I'm now having her pop the basket and weigh it on every shot

The popping is insane. Give her a scale that has the capacity to weigh the whole portafilter, basket and dose.

AndyS wrote:The popping is insane. Give her a scale that has the capacity to weigh the whole portafilter, basket and dose.

I do have a trade legal scale with 0.01g resolution capable of holding the entire PF. Being required to pop the basket out each time until she gets consistent dosing is impetus to focus on dosing consistency. When she can do a dozen in a row within my tolerance standard (max 0.4g variance) she'll no longer need to keep popping them out. The other option, which some bigger shops have the luxury to do, is she wouldn't even be allowed to pull shots for customers until dosing consistency attained.

This is not home setting, this is my cafe and my reputation at stake.

Coffee is an organic natural product which varies from batch to batch, blend to blend, and day to day. That is what makes it fun and makes it an art. Even with the same coffee, if the grounds are not as fluffy or are settled a bit more, they will weigh more and lead to inadvertent updosing is one is not careful.

cafeIKE wrote:WDT : Banish Uneven Extractions with Weiss Distribution Technique

This is very interesting as my grinds out of the brand new Macap M4D are clumpy to the touch. You would think that those light clumps would not resist the pressure of a 30lb tamp and fall apart under the pressure. However, I will try the technique.

I have heard that the clumping becomes less and less as the machine is used more and more.

My biggest problem is getting my wife to accept all my efforts as she thinks all this talk about me perfecting barista technique is a bunch of voodoo. I have to do it on my own secretively, but am not deterred.

AndyS wrote:The popping is insane. Give her a scale that has the capacity to weigh the whole portafilter, basket and dose.

What about timers like on the Macap M4Digital. I have it set to 7.7 seconds for a double. I see variance from one basket fill to the second basket fill being a bit more volume at the same amount of time.

However, it is better to have a timer than a novice guessing volumes.

I guess this weighing each time, then using the stirring grain method, but this finds yourself spending so much time "preparation" of cafe, that all your morning friends will be growing impatient. I want to be devoted, but hope at somewhere along the road, I can do it all quickly

misterdoggy wrote:I guess this weighing each time, then using the stirring grain method, but this finds yourself spending so much time "preparation" of cafe, that all your morning friends will be growing impatient. I want to be devoted, but hope at somewhere along the road, I can do it all quickly.

Ok, you want a sane preparation routine that will produce good espresso. Let's pare down, eliminating unnecessary rituals from the routine. Leave them to the high priests.

1. Settle the grounds in the basket with a couple of light thumps of the portafilter upon the countertop. No need to stir the basket with a pointy stick.

2. Don't worry about a 30-pound tamp. Tamp lightly or even ultra-lightly, having made your adjustments on the grinder. Tamping lightly makes the entire process more forgiving. What do I mean by forgiving? For example, if you have increased the dose by too much, or have changed blends and are using coffee that was roasted yesterday, instead of a stalled flow you get a ristretto.

3. Each day, as your roast ages, you may have to grind slightly finer.

4. Dose consistently if you want to repeat your most recent success.

5. You mentioned tapping the basket gently after tamping, to dislodge a few wayward grains of coffee from the basket wall. Don't worry about them; a few grains have no impact upon the essential quality of the extraction.

6. Last, and certainly not least: pay attention to temperature, however your machine requires you to manage it.

timo888 wrote:Ok, you want a sane preparation routine that will produce good espresso. Let's pare down, eliminating unnecessary rituals from the routine. Leave them to the high priests.

1. Settle the grounds in the basket with a couple of light thumps of the portafilter upon the countertop. No need to stir the basket with a pointy stick.

2. Don't worry about a 30-pound tamp. Tamp lightly or even ultra-lightly, having made your adjustments on the grinder. Tamping lightly makes the entire process more forgiving. What do I mean by forgiving? For example, if you have increased the dose by too much, or have changed blends and are using coffee that was roasted yesterday, instead of a stalled flow you get a ristretto.

3. Each day, as your roast ages, you may have to grind slightly finer.

4. Dose consistently if you want to repeat your most recent success.

5. You mentioned tapping the basket gently after tamping, to dislodge a few wayward grains of coffee from the basket wall. Don't worry about them; a few grains have no impact upon the essential quality of the extraction.

6. Last, and certainly not least: pay attention to temperature, however your machine requires you to manage it.

I have a 30lb "autotamper" Acaso and have just bought an Espro to learn what 30lbs is. So I need to work on just the other variables. Therefore the Macap with dosing timer.

Thanks for the info about the grains needing to be finer with each day that passes from the time they were roasted. I noticed this and that puts some pieces together for me.

The temperature on the LaVibiemme Domobar Super should be right as I give a quick flush each time.

I've also ordered a open portafilter which I hope will not open a whole new can of worms with the channeling issues or something new.

I'm hangin in there !! And thanks to everyone here I am learning at a reasonable curve Thanks !!!!!

HB wrote:The clumps themselves are not the problem per se, it is their varying density. The result is more coffee in one section of the puck versus another, despite the two sections having the same volume of coffee. The WDT assures that the coffee's density is homogeneous.

Ummmm,..... science please.

The WDT could have the effect of dropping a load of fines to the bottom of the basket, improving extraction.

Tuppence Alert : the WDT is more effective with darker roasts. With lighter roasts, a gentle side to side shake is every bit as effective, at least on e61 / Macap combinations.

I guess my thinking in suggesting the WDT for our original poster is that redistribution can, in addition to addressing channeling and uneven extraction issues, also potentially eliminate some non-weighed dosing variance in clumpy loads - esp. if you stir mid-dose.

I'm a lazy doser - almost never using the scale - and the MK tends to generate a fluffy, consistent grind, which helps when dosing visually (though I'm sure I'm nowhere near Chris's suggested 0.3g target variation). But on those occasions where I get clumps, I often dose half the basket, stir, then dose the rest and finish off and either stir again or more often, hand distribute, and have found that this seems to help my consistency. Some might argue that I'm not really changing the dose this way and that any improvement is really just getting rid of channeling, but by evening out the density of the bed before sweep and tamp, I feel like I'm getting more consistent on mass as well, and the effect shows up in the pour.

I have hesitated in adding to this because I was in the middle of much the same situation but had not yet been able to identify the cause nor the solution until this morning. While my reply could be a separate thread, there is enough info in it to make it valuable to this discussion:

THE BACK STORY
For the last 6 or 7 years I had been getting my green coffee from the same local supplier- a small commercial roaster who sold to me at a very fair price, and sometimes even gave me green. While I had gotten better coffee in the past, the pice was good and the quality acceptable so I continued on with this supplier.

About 1 or two years ago the company was sold and the riginal owner semi-retired. I established a rapport with the new owner and continued purchasing there until he bailed out of the business and it was permanently closed and the equipment sold off. Now what? I was personal friends with the original owner, and his widow gave me the name of another local roaster whom I called and he told me that he was gald to support hobbiests, and after talking he agreed to sell me coffee at his cost since the amounts I buy were so low. I, of course, talked coffee with him for a birt and gave him my espresso URL.

THE COFFEE
I bought a selection of about 4 varieties from him and we had a very nice talk abut coffee, his business, roasting, and all the sorts of things two coffee guys talk about. I even brought one of my Hottops with me to show him, and we roasted a small sample batch in it... too small a batch. After I extinguished the flaming chaff-tray handle caused by the chaff fire (totally my fault for roasting such a small batch)

THE BLEND AND ROAST
I got home and put together a blend similar to what I had been using with the other supplier's beans. This "new" bland was, iirc, 50% Brazil, 25% Bolivian, and about 25% Kenyan. Pretty standard fare. I roasted it as I had been doing recently. Allow roaster to hit about 225, adding beans, bringing up to abut 300 and holding till beans turned tan in color (lost all green color) then ramping up to beginning of 1st, lowering temp ET and allowing the beans to cruise through to a fast second and ejecting manually.

THE PULLS
I had done two batches with the above roast profile but had been having some of the poorest pulls I had experienced in years. While the espresso was improved from the first pull with the new beans, the extraction was odd. It started with multiple streams in a doughnut pattern on the bottom of the basket (using a bottomless PF), then joining together in one stream after a good 10 seconds of extraction, then after about five more seconds the flow looked like the "Mushroom" part of the E-61 group, looking like an inverted bell hanging off the bottom of the basket, and very thin in viscosity. While I had been getting good pulls producing over 2 ounces of crema before, I could not get this to happen with the new coffee.

Mind you, even with this poor extraction performance the espresso tasted better from the very first pull than it had with my old supplier. But what was the cause of these abnormal extractions?

My first thought was the new roast followed closely by something about the coffee, but the overwhelming thought centered on the solution. As this thread started, I was using the same grind range, and the same dose and distribution, the only change had been the coffee. But again, what was the solution? I tried a fairly wide range of grind setting, far more than I had ever used before with the Kony. This did not solve the problem. The coffee tasted better so there was no going back. I even removed the shower screen and cleaned it to be sure it as flowing properly. It was.

The solution was.... change the dose. This morning I "down-dosed." I do not want to call it under-dosed because that would infer I used less coffee than required. I cannot quantify the amount of coffee because I do not have a 0.1g. scale but using less coffee I could judge the amount by eye and how far the tamper went into the basket. The result was two wonderful pulls that tasted about as good as anything I have produced.

CONCLUSION
If something is wrong, change what you are doing. I changed coffee and a change in the extraction for the worse was the result. What to do? I changed the grind setting- that didn't work. I changed the dose- that worked. Taking any portion of our preparation for granted can lead to some long, frustrating mornings.

THEORY
The new coffee is of a higher quality and, more importantly, fresher. The new source takes his coffee very seriously, actually going to South and Central America, visiting farms and farmers. He also cups the coffee and is particular about what he buys. The old supplier got quality coffee, but was more interested in the price than getting top-notch coffee. The result was much of his coffee was older.

So I think that this new coffee expands more in the extraction process, and if I use the same dose as I was before it causes fractures and channeling. Yes, examined the pucks post mortum, but it revealed nothing, putting one more data point towards puckology being a fairly worthless science.

Randy G. wrote:Yes, examined the pucks post mortum, but it revealed nothing, putting one more data point towards puckology being a fairly worthless science.

The puck, the puck, a mess of refuse and muck
The last to be seen of Arabica Devine.

Roast, rest and grind the coffee beans journey goes
Tamp, spin and pull 'till demitasse but overflows.

The crema flowed richly, smoothly filling the cup
Coating the taste buds with nectar so fine.

But what of the puck, wet flat rounded puck
Is this all there is, the end of the grind?

No lessons to learn, no knowledge to glean
No hints for tomorrow, to better the bean?

The secrets lay hided, embedded in rhyme
Seeking the answer, grind-tamp-pull one more time.

(originally posted on SM List 6/20/03 by me...)

timo888 wrote:Ok, you want a sane preparation routine that will produce good espresso. Let's pare down, eliminating unnecessary rituals from the routine. Leave them to the high priests.

This prep technique is a great one for you, at your house, with your coffee, and your machinery. And as it works really great for you, I'm sure there is something in it. But with all of the variables (different water, coffee, machinery, altitude, temperature, humidity, and PBTPF (person behind the portafilter) you really think that this will automatically translate? I do have to say that most of the high priests do those odd routines because they are protecting some high-priestly arcane knowledge from the ignorant peasants. Sometimes the hand-waving is a distractions, but sometimes it's actually the key to the kingdom. It's not fair (or polite) to make fun of, publicly, what you don't fully understand.

But what of the puck, wet flat rounded puck
Is this all there is, the end of the grind?
No lessons to learn, no knowledge to glean
No hints for tomorrow, to better the bean?

I've learned quite a bit from puckology. While I wouldn't bet the farm on it, there have been many times when the shot pulled weird, and tasted off, and looking at the puck told me what I had done wrong in the preparation. Sometimes knowing that I screwed something up prevents me from changing a variable that I would have otherwise sought to adjust to get things back on track. Knowing what went wrong makes making the corrections easier, and more direct. While looking at the puck won't always answer the question, not looking at it will never answer it!

Again, with all the variables, sometimes reducing them is a good thing, and anything that helps is good. Three are schools that suggest that good looking pulls and good looking pucks are no indication of taste, but I've noticed that most of my good looking shots are good tasting ones, and most of the ones that have odd looking pulls or pucks don't taste as good.
Often enough that it's starting to be something I can almost depend on...