Getting up to speed on this art I have burned through alot of expensive coffee. I found this coffee at King Soopers on sale for about $13.50 for 18oz with a Dec 20th roast date just under 30 days out. Could a real pro even taste the difference between at 15 and 30 day roast date, I don't know? Since I am learning, the cost is right, and it's easy to attain, I may make this my go to coffee for a while. Any feedback on Pete's French Roast would be welcome. Thank you.

I'm confused. Today most people seem to be able to get decent if not excellent results within the first bag. Can you tell us a bit about you're equipment and the issues you're having. I don't think you'll find many people around here that use Petes coffee.

Do you mean Peet's Coffee?
That undrinkable stuff ???

Glad I posted I learned alot already. I am using a Breville Impress, I upgraded from the Express as I wanted dosing and tamping more automatic. I am just looking for an economical way to dial in some coffee without going through $20 worth of locally roasted good stuff. I thought this would be decent since it had a roast date. I started grinding at 15 on the machines scale, tracked output and time and worked down since I was getting 70g for 17g of coffee. I ended up at 2 or 3 and was getting some shot right around 34g to make a 2 to 1 ratio and thought I had it made. Trying to reproduce this I now just choked the machine. I want to just get something decent using only the machine without spending all the time dinking with WDT (dont have a dose funnel now) and just using the machines components. I called Breville today and asked if anyone was taking their machines into a repair facility to lower the pressure, 15 bar, and they did not know much about it. Maybe I will start my data collection over again and just fork out the bucks for the good Kaladi locally air roasted coffee it just gets expensive. That for doing the long read. Sounds like Petes is crap. Sounds like my machine is a problem also. I bet a new grinder is my next alternative and I can limp along on the Breville Impress spending the time do all the meticulous tamping and dosing by hand. I suppose you have to pay to play.

It's possible you never well get something you're happy with given your equipment and choices.

Thanks Ira. I got some of the good Kaladi beans roasted Jan 4 and what a difference! I lucked out on the grind on got a 1 to 1 shot (17g) in about 35s. Decent pour. I will down dose a speck to get up the yield. Tastes decent in my book, but of course you know where I came from. I have not forgotten.

Bar wrote:I called Breville today and asked if anyone was taking their machines into a repair facility to lower the pressure, 15 bar

Although older Breville machines have overly high brew pressure, the more recent ones, including the Impress, have 9 bar pressure out-of-the-box. Source.

Although there are many possible causes for your difficulties, brew pressure shouldn't be one of them. Glad to hear you are making some progress.

Excellent news, thanks.

I bought a Peets a while ago just to send through my Roast Vision because I was curious. It was a "medium" roast. It was the only thing I've ever seen hit a 3 on Roast Vision. Nearly charcoal and it tasted like it. If you are going to get a cheap grocery store coffee to use for milk espresso then look for Illy or Lavazza with a decent roast date. Sometimes I see Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, and Stumptown. All should pull a decent shot as long as it is with a good date range.

Stay far, far away from Peets or Starbucks.