HB wrote:I feel confident asserting that compressed grounds have a greater density than uncompressed grounds. But if you disagree, please dry 20-30 spent pucks with clumps and 20-30 without, section them, weigh them, and report the results. Thanks.

You're just tryin' to get me to go away for a while and quit posting

Seriously, I've run that movie and there are massive technical difficulties in splitting the pucks to achieve any sort of meaningful results. If one sections the puck in a few segments, the clumps could average out. If one tries many segments, it's very difficult to maintain section integrity.

I'm not certain that clumps are more dense. While intuitively it seems correct, their ephemeral nature when touched raises doubts. It very well could be that clumps are less dense, allowing uneven extraction.

Going farther, I'm still not convinced that clumps per se deserve their bug-a-boo reputation. When using a coffee that clumps, if the distribution looks more or less uniform, a mash & go yields a fine shot. If I don't redistribute, by whatever means, on a thwacked clumpless off center distribution, the likelihood of a sub par shot increases.

Psyd wrote: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.

The value in the pared-down technique is its core focus on dose and grind. Fundamentals.

I have returned a little to my technique from before to get me thru these confusing times

I use the large 10oz cups and I know this may not be looked at as acceptable, but I put the sugar cube in the cup before pulling. Instead of counting 1, 2, etc, I just look at the relationship of how high the coffee level is to the cube and that is the mixture for me. For instance I know that the cube has to be well covered and Voila. Normally takes 16 seconds using a double basket filled with about 17g to arrive. Its before blonding, but plenty of Crema, then add Latte. Molto Buono !!

I mean if your system works, and tastes good, then it can only get better from there.

Just tried a bottomless portafilter.

First time I got a perfect pour with tiger stripe everything you could wish for

The I went back later and it was spritzing out in every direction all over the place on the machine all over the cup everywhere literally. 98% went in to the cup but the side angle spritzing what's that all about.

I think I put a little less in the basked the second and third times, but otherwise I need to pay attention to what I did different.

The main difference is the size of the portafilter seems wider but less high.

timo888 wrote:3. Each day, as your roast ages, you may have to grind slightly finer.

Not guaranteed to give best results. Past a certain point, with many coffees you'll have better luck going coarser and increasing dose instead.

Randy G. wrote:...
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....
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...

This is an important point.

One coffee from Brazil and even one pulped natural from Brazil and even one pulped natural from Sul de Minas in Brazil is not the same as another.
The differences between coffees from two different producers in the same region of the same country - even if they are processed in the same manner, grown from the same cultivar and from the same harvest - are very significant. So significant, in fact, that assuming that they're going to act the same much less taste the same is foolish.

If I were to say, "I had a blend that was 50% latin coffee and 50% african coffee where I sourced the beans from a local roaster but when I tried the same blend with beans from Sweet Marias" everyone would point out that a 50% washed Colombian 50% natural sidamo is VERY different from a 50% pulped natural brazil 50% washed kenyan.
The exact same is true within a country and within a region.

So the real issue here is that you had an entirely different coffee and were assuming that you could pull it using the same parameters as you had with the previous coffee.

Psyd wrote:I've learned quite a bit from puckology.

And thousands and thousands of people said the same thing about reading entrails.

misterdoggy wrote:Just tried a bottomless portafilter.

First time I got a perfect pour with tiger stripe everything you could wish for

The I went back later and it was spritzing out in every direction all over the place on the machine all over the cup everywhere literally. 98% went in to the cup but the side angle spritzing what's that all about.

I think I put a little less in the basked the second and third times, but otherwise I need to pay attention to what I did different.

The main difference is the size of the portafilter seems wider but less high.

The single best thing about a naked portafilter is that it exposes your issues with consistency.
That's what happened to you - and it's what's causing your travails.
You need to be consistent - in everything.
Break the process down into parts.
Do each part the same way, in the same sequence, with the same output - every time.

The single best thing about a naked portafilter is that it exposes your issues with consistency.
That's what happened to you - and it's what's causing your travails.
You need to be consistent - in everything.
Break the process down into parts.
Do each part the same way, in the same sequence, with the same output - every time.

Thanks, I am going to try the Yogurt cup and mix up the grains and see how that goes.

What a mess when the coffee was spritzing all over the place. But also what a pleasure it was
to see it working just right with tiger stripping and all. Just when I thought I was there boom spritz....

I need some time alone with the machine and about a 1lb of coffee to just repeat repeat repeat

You need to be consistent on dose also.
A plastic yogurt cup won't help with that.
You need to have consistent weight or volume shot to shot. If weight, the max variance is 0.3g (with a target variance of 0.1g).

This is really important (in fact, far more important than other things - like tamp for example).

My suspicion is that your inconsistency in dose is very high and that and a high degree of inconsistency in distribution/bedding is causing MUCH of your struggle

malachi wrote:Not guaranteed to give best results. Past a certain point, with many coffees you'll have better luck going coarser and increasing dose instead.

So you'd revise and extend my remarks, as follows: to maintain the flow as the roast ages, grind a little finer each day (assuming dose remains constant); however, there may come a day when the incrementally finer grind no longer has the same effect on the flow that it had been having, and on that day, you can go coarser and increase the dose.

No.
Flow changes also.
To get the best taste results, with many coffees you may find that at a certain age, going with a higher dose and coarser grind gives better results (despite changing flow ie volume/time).

cafeIKE wrote:Going farther, I'm still not convinced that clumps per se deserve their bug-a-boo reputation.

I share your skepticism, though perhaps not to the same degree.

The Macap MXK clumped more than any grinder in the Titan Grinder Project, and yet it was easy to dial in and extractions were even without primping. My hunch is that there are benign clumps and not-so-benign clumps. These barista-friendly clumps may correlate with large conical grinders, which would explain why they gained favor among pros years ago and home baristas more recently. That is, the taste profile of large conical grinders may be almost indistinguishable from flat burrs in the absolute sense, but the conicals have a greater "forgiveness factor" and thus appear superior to flat burr grinders in practice.

malachi wrote:So the real issue here is that you had an entirely different coffee and were assuming that you could pull it using the same parameters as you had with the previous coffee.

I never gave a thought to it one way or the other until the extraction was problematic. The challenge was to find a solution (and hopefully identify the cause) when the extraction changed.

I had been using various Brazil coffees as a base for years.. around the last five years or maybe a bit more. In the many years I have been using a bottomless portafilter I have NEVER had extractions like that. But as I get more coffees from this new source it will be interesting to see if the Brazil was the cause or it was something else.

"If espresso was easy, *$$ could do it."
-R.G.

Brazil != Brazil

malachi wrote:You need to be consistent on dose also.
A plastic yogurt cup won't help with that.
You need to have consistent weight or volume shot to shot. If weight, the max variance is 0.3g (with a target variance of 0.1g).

This is really important (in fact, far more important than other things - like tamp for example).

My suspicion is that your inconsistency in dose is very high and that and a high degree of inconsistency in distribution/bedding is causing MUCH of your struggle

I need to find a yogurt cup that it slightly conical in shape. This morning I tried with a cut out cup. I stirred with a wooden skewer (kind that you put on the Barbie) I was surprised to see how many clumps there were and thought if I was to buy the Grinder all over, I would pick a doser to avoid clumping.

I thought I was so clever buying the M4D avoiding cleaning the doser unit with old grains and clicking coffee grinds that inevitably fall all over the place. Grind and have the grains fall directly in to the portafilter what could be easier. Hmmm, now I have to stir.

Well the result was interesting and will now take another adapt as the stirring makes the grains finer and less volumetric in the basket and a bit more "fluffy" I found myself having difficulty keeping the 3 turns at the end to lock in the tamp a difficult thing to keep "level". That the grains can get soft and too mushy, not solid like before, packed if you know what I mean.

The coffee came out much stronger, darker and the taste was slightly more bitter which leads me to think I over tamped trying to adapt to the finer grains due to the stirring.

also note* that because the cutout cup was straight (vertical) when I lifted it out of the basket, it left a ring around, a space so to speak which I had to push the grains into, to fill up and wonder how this played in the whole obsessive path.

malachi wrote:No.
Flow changes also.
To get the best taste results, with many coffees you may find that at a certain age, going with a higher dose and coarser grind gives better results (despite changing flow ie volume/time).

At roughly what age have you found this transition to occur, typically? In the first week? After week 1? After week 2? Is depth-of-roast implicated?

misterdoggy wrote:This morning I tried with a cut out cup. I stirred with a wooden skewer (kind that you put on the Barbie)

Use a fine needle. A BBQ skewer is to thick and causes as many problems as it cures.

Notice how fine the needle is on the stirrer atop the scale. The corkscrew device is used to clear the MC4 chute after each dose.



Quit obsessing. On good days my MC4 is less clumpy than the dosered La Cimbali Max Hybrid. Darker roasts, which I rarely use, are more clumpy. A quick go round with a needle und alles gute.

How much stirring are we talkin bout ? I mean the clumps break up and if you mix it around everything becomes finer and finer ?

When I WDT, I go once around the basket in a continuous series of circles of radius slightly more than half the basket diameter.

sort of gives the idea.

But ya gotta use a FINE implement