it has been 2 weeks with my new La cimbali Junior M21 and La cimbali junior grinder.
But i cant manage to get a really good shot from her. What im doing wrong, i try lots of combination. 2.5 kg coffee went to to waste but what i have got, bitterish and sour espresso.
when i dose 16 gr. and do nsew with 30 lbs tamp, the shots take 20 sec for 1.7 oz. and i dont lock the portafilter tightly because i think there is no extraction space between shower and coffee. but when i dose 14 gr. its impossible to get a good shot.

when i dose 16 gr. with the grinder setting 1.5, do nsew or stockfleths and tamp with my all power. i dont see channeling (ı havent got a naked portafilter, ı look at the puck after extraction, ıf ı see no pinholes i said no channeling.) and the shot timing is 27 sec. for 1.75 oz. but it starts to blond earlier ı think about 1.40 oz. the shot seems good but tastes not exactly what i expect. (you can see the shot in the picture below.
And one more thing during the extraction i see water flowing to the driptray. is it normal?
ı use illy beans, i know thats not the best, it is the best ı can find in my country. ı have no one around me to ask, only you can help me. thanks.

ozzyymclaren wrote:ı use illy beans, i know thets not the best, it is the best ı can find in my country. ı have no one around me to ask, only you can help me. thanks.

Have you tried ordering coffee from an online roaster in Europe? I use hasbean.co.uk, you will have to pay a little more for postage but they deliver very quickly (at least in the UK). You could at least email them and ask if it is possible to post out to you and how much it would cost / time it would take.

It may be that this is all you need to change. Worth a try.

Hope that helps

From the pic, you are missing some of the classic indicators of fresh beans (tiger striping, flecking, etc.), but that is to be somewhat expected from the Illy beans. If you can't source a roaster locally then you may be able to work with the Illy some (I have never used it, so I don't know).

Try grinding finer than the 1.5 setting and tamping to 30 pounds. Though you are shooting for 30 sec./1.5-2oz., the blonding point is when the shot is done, not the volume - so watch the pour.

It is definitely not the machine, which means it is one (or both) of the following: the beans, or the barista. There may be the 4m's of espresso, but for troubleshooting, those are the 2 B's. Once you get above the level of a krups machine, only the 2 B's matter: the beans and the barista.

i think the problem is barista...
i will go with fresh beans as soon as i can find them
maybe i can buy them overseas. but isnt it normal that a machine pulls shots despite finer setting and a over 50 lbs tamp in 20 sec? did i missing something with the machine, maybe a setting. it stays with the factory settings.

ozzyymclaren wrote:i think the problem is barista...

In all honesty - probably a little bit of both. Though you may not be much of a barista, not having fresh beans really hurts.

ozzyymclaren wrote:but isnt it normal that a machine pulls shots despite finer setting and a over 50 lbs tamp in 20 sec? did i missing something with the machine, maybe a setting. it stays with the factory settings.

I don't really understand your question, but if you grind finer and tamp harder, then you should get less volume in more time. You might try dialing the grind down to the point where you choke the machine (nothing coming out of the portafilter, or very little) and then back off. It may give you more feedback than going the other way.

As a side note, I know that on Bob Roseman's La Spaziale each 'click' on the Cimbali Junior is about 5 seconds in shot time (IIRC). It will probably be different with your machine, but that may give you some rough guidelines.

/mw

thanks i will try to choke the machine. but it seems it will be hard to choke the machine. is it harmful to to grinder to run at setting "0" ?

it is long, sorry. but i want to show all my processes. how to prepare a bad espresso. and what a shame i had about my tamper... i will get it from a web site as soon as it possible.

is it harmfull to to grinder to run at setting "0" ?

I'm not familiar with your specific grinder but the key point is simply to ensure that the burrs don't rub against each other and cause premature wear or damage. Run the grinder with no beans in it and set it to finer settings gradually until you start to hear the faint whine that indicates the burrs are beginning to touch each other. Back off a very small amount - just a click or two - and then try grinding a shot.

On my Mazzer grinder if the burrs are relatively new I actually use it at the 0 (zero) setting or even a notch or two finer than that. Also - keep in mind that when you make a change in the fineness of the grinder it will not be visibly effective for about one shot after making the change if you're working from a hopper of beans. There are always beans left in the grinder throat that are partially ground from the previous setting.

thanks this is very helpful. i've tried it and my stop point is 0.5 i think. when i came to this value i hear a metallic sound then i stopped.

ozzyymclaren wrote:thanks i will try to choke the machine. but it seems it will be hard to choke the machine. is it harmful to to grinder to run at setting "0" ?

hi,
despite my low post count i dare to throw in my 2 cents worth

If you have to grind on a setting of almost "0" to choke your machine (with a really capable grinder!), then it's most probably because of the age of the beans. Maybe you could try to see if it makes a difference, if you use beans from a package that you just opened (or is open for less than 2 days). I just visited Turkey last autumn and also liked the turkish coffee
it seemed that people in turkey also consume quite a lot of 'kahve'. Because of this i was quite astonished to hear, that you can't source fresh roasted beans. So i just had to go for a search, but only found a single one:

the english version
http://www.johnscoffee.com.tr/

and two sites of the same dealer in turkish
http://www.kahveci.com/ ---- IIRC, it means the guy who makes coffee (as profession), right?
http://www.sgckahve.com/ --- everything is in turkish so I don't have much of a clue what this site is about

I wonder if they state a roast date on their beans. At least their company is a member of the SCAE (as you see on the last link). Unfortunately i couldn't find out which other companies from turkey are SCAE members - the SCAE website is really lamentable..

greets

marco