Popeye beat me to it - as I was scanning down this thread, a weighted load on the top of your desired amount of grind seemed to be an obvious solution. I was thinking a beanbag with something like the 20gm Ken posited above. I hate waste and try to be close with the dose, but there seems to be some good arguments for a loaded hopper. Unfortunately for me, I don't have room for a hopper on my SJ to fit under my cabinet, so the beanbag weight is about all I can do.

Of course, having the beanbag catch in the burrs would not be so fun...

Geoff

On the Mazzer line, a 58mm tamper will fit the grinder throat perfectly.

That's what I do now, but it stops applying pressure at the point where the throat narrows down into the grinding chamber - but there probably isn't enough grams of coffee left at that point to make a big difference.

I understand Mssrs. Andy S. and Ken F. are working feverishly on a weighted "bean bag" which will fit on top of the beans in the hopper and via some proprietary mechanism will increase in weight as the bean mass is depleted through grinding and dosing. Word has it that one is made of authentic burlap from bags of beans and the other is made from pajama material. I'll be anxious to see the results.
Bernie

Actually, all of this makes me wonder. Once you stop letting beans into the grinder from the hopper. Weight is no longer placed on the beans. Anyone?

Ken Fox wrote:
I just want to make the point, that there is nothing inherently more wasteful about loading up a hopper vs. dosing into it for each shot, and I continue to think that the grind quality suffers when using the latter technique, in comparison to the former.

ken

Before I read this thred I was certain that everyone dosed / shot, only because of laziness did people use the hopper.
I don't think that any more .

I filled up my Macap with 60g of beans, ground 2 g to get it going, cleaned out the doser and the chute.
I was hoping to get it close to the 16.5g I usually use. started the grinder, emptied the doser, measured and it was exactly 16.6 g.
That shot was the most beautiful coming out of the naked portafiler. ended up with 2 oz in 33 seconds without blonding. I only stopped the pull because I ran out of room in the 2 oz shotglass.
It tasted as good as it looked. (49th parallel, Epic espresso)
I have not had a puck fail, nor have I seen any squirts either since I switched to this method.
The best part is I waste actually less coffee this way. My cleaning routine is I pulse the Macap a bit to get rid of the smallest of particles in between the burrs. That is about 0.8-0.9 g of coffee. I can brush the chute all the way to the burrs. clean the doser and grind away....

I'm very happy with the results. I will never go back to single dosing......
Thanks Ken and others!

Related topic: Gregg offers an explanation of why some grinders may need the weight of coffee in the hopper to grind evenly in Why the Cimbali Max Hybrid popcorns.

bernie wrote:I understand Mssrs. Andy S. and Ken F. are working feverishly on a weighted "bean bag" which will fit on top of the beans in the hopper and via some proprietary mechanism will increase in weight as the bean mass is depleted through grinding and dosing. Word has it that one is made of authentic burlap from bags of beans and the other is made from pajama material. I'll be anxious to see the results.

Ha ha ha. Nice. Honestly, when I read stuff like crafting custom metal weights or using positive air pressure to recreate the incredibly complex isobaric effect of coffee beans... come on. No, just filling the hopper with a few shots (not even a few days worth of beans) wouldn't give the same sense of satisfaction, would it? Mod this, tweak that. And plenty of us have spent $400 or more on a grinder, and we're sweating wasting maybe $20 worth of beans over the course of a year (if there really is a significant difference in waste between filling the grinder per shot vs. running with a loaded hopper, which I don't believe). Viva la Home Barista.

majorzx3 wrote:I'm very happy with the results. I will never go back to single dosing......

Glad you gave it a shot. My belief is that for the vast majority of grinders, there is a significant difference in grind quality when you keep the hopper loaded.

HB wrote:Related topic: Gregg offers an explanation of why some grinders may need the weight of coffee in the hopper to grind evenly in Why the Cimbali Max Hybrid popcorns.

Do any machines grind the same with or without beans?

Well, i have a SJ for espresso, and a rocky for vacpot/aeropress. But I don't have anything for decaf espresso in the evenings (including lattes - and, as a side note, pluralizing latte doesn't technically require an apostrophe, but it sure looks strange without one. But who am i for grammar as i don't capitalize the letter i?) Anyway, if i loaded my SJ with redline, how would i grind my SO's or decaf? I don't want to use the rocky (I know, it's not bad, but it's - gasp - stepped!).