I have acquired a Rancilio Silvia + rocky grinder and am having zero success fitting a full 14 grams dose into the stock 40-100-102 double basket. Anyone else have this issue? I have a good gram scale and after filling the basket to the brim overflowing with grind (i'm in the 4-5 step range), and carefully pushing grind around to fill the sides, removing excess, I always end up with 12 grams at best. Cant determine if its the grinder or the basket or my technique?

Jason

For lack of better words, the stock basket sucks. I suggest the HQ-14 ridge less from EspressoParts.

The only way you'd not fit 14g into a stock double basket would be because your grind is way too coarse. Grind finer, much finer, and it'll fit just fine. since you have a Rocky (which I'd recommend you replace with something else asap), you'll have to first get the grind into the ballpark for 1) fitting the dose in the basket, and 2) getting an extraction resembling good. You'll know you're there because the extraction you'll want will be between two grind settings. In other words, you'll either be extracting slightly too fast or slightly too slow, and changing the setting on the Rocky in the correct direction by only one step will throw your extraction too far in the right direction. For example (using arbitrary numbers), you've got your 14g in the basket and you're getting 35g out in 25 seconds, but you want 30g out in 30 seconds, so you click the grinder finer one step, and then you're getting 25g out in 40 seconds. you'll have to choose either the coarse one and increase your dose, or the fine one and decrease your dose. My suggestion is to adjust the dry dose in 0.3-0.5 gram increments until it's close to where you want it in shot time, output weight and taste, and then change to adjusting in 0.1-0.2g increments until it's just right.

emradguy wrote:The only way you'd not fit 14g into a stock double basket would be because your grind is way too coarse.

It's worth noting that different coffees at different roast levels will grind and occupy much different amounts of volume. This is why weighing is so popular, but for me, a dark roast with the same weight as a light roast will end up taking a lot more volume at the same grind setting.

Either way, you can only grind so fine with a given dose, without resorting to other baskets or tricks. Try out 12g doses and see how they work out with the stock double, or try different coffees, or try different baskets. All are good options in my opinion, but just try to change one thing at a time so you don't go crazy!

While I agree on the principles...no matter what the roast level, one should still be able to easily fit a 14g dose in a stock Silvia double basket.

Also, if your using a darker roast (FC+-french) due to the weight loss a larger volume of grinds would be needed to fulfill the desired weight.