I just recently realized I've been doing this, but when I open up a new bag of coffee, to get an idea of what dose and grind to start with I'll usually flip back through my notes on previous coffees and try to find one that's similar. In practice, what this means is that I find another coffee from the same roaster (very rarely do I order the same coffee twice), and then I'll try to find a coffee that has about the same size beans. I think this generally gives me a better starting point than considering something like origin or process, etc.

I think that smaller beans generally need a tight grind (potentially this is just a physical process, they'll have less interactions with the burrs, so they'll generate less fines?), and because roasters seem to a have a certain style. I think that roasters (especially smaller roasters) are either roasting their beans for the style of espresso that they like to pull, or they're picking beans that work well with their style of roasting?

An example that pops immediately to mind is any espresso blend from Klatch, I'd expect to grind tighter than I normally would for the expected volume, and let it run a little longer. If I was doing an SO espresso from Klatch I'd adjust that a little further by looking at the bean, and tweaking the starting point a little based on that.


I'm not sure if this is a smart strategy? Or if other people have found the same thing? But I just realized it was something I was doing while flipping through my notes, without really thinking about it before

Sounds like an intelligent process to minimize sink shots if you rarely order the same the same thing twice.

TrlstanC wrote:... when I open up a new bag of coffee, to get an idea of what dose and grind to start with I'll usually flip back through my notes on previous coffees and try to find one that's similar. In practice, what this means is that I find another coffee from the same roaster (very rarely do I order the same coffee twice), and then I'll try to find a coffee that has about the same size beans. I think this generally gives me a better starting point than considering something like origin or process, etc.

I think that smaller beans generally need a tight grind (potentially this is just a physical process, they'll have less interactions with the burrs, so they'll generate less fines?), and because roasters seem to a have a certain style. I think that roasters (especially smaller roasters) are either roasting their beans for the style of espresso that they like to pull, or they're picking beans that work well with their style of roasting?

This is precisely what I do -- since I rotate through different beans, and often more than one bean/blend from different roasters, at a given time. I've found a correlation between a general grind range and certain roasters. This, at least, gets me in the right ballpark right off the bat. Then I can fine-tune the grind from there.