Where to? Dialling in my Breville Oracle

#1: Post by **AndrewWhite86** » May 10th, 2022, 2:50 am

Hi there,

As a complete novice I am looking for guidance to dial in my Breville Oracle

Beans im using: Fairtrade Organic Sumatra (Looks to be dark roast, fresh from my local roaster)

I have been experimenting with the grind size and am getting closer, but not there yet.

My Oracle is at factory settings which includes 7s pre infusion, factory tamp, temperature and 30s shotclock. (I dont have scales but from what i understand, Oracle's usually grind by default 22g approx)

My grindsize is at 19 which is a pretty nice espresso shot but probably a bit over extracted and the yield is less than 1:2. If I do the grind at 20, its defintley under extracted, yield exceeding 1:2.

My question is, where to from here? Do I leave grind at 19 and just increase the shot lock by a couple of seconds i.e 7 sec preinfusuon / 25 extraction? Should I look at tamp force? Preinfusion pressure/time?

In what order should one work through the parameters to increase the yield and dial in the extraction?

Thanks in advance

#2: Post by **spopinski** » May 10th, 2022, 4:41 am

First, buy a scale. Dialing blind is hard to stay consistent.

#3: Post by **Jeff** » May 10th, 2022, 5:15 am

Agree on the scale.

Dark roasts can reveal excessive roast flavors, including bitterness and charred or ashy flavors if extracted too much. They often do better with a slower extraction flow rate (more "syrupy") and cutting the shot short of blonding. Ristretto shots tend to be in the 1:1 to 1:1.5 range in around 25-35 seconds on a pump machine.

In my experience, increasing the preinfusion time can make the espresso from dark roasts overly bitter for my tastes. With what you've said as all I've got to go on, I'd be going for a ristretto shot to try to get a balance I'd enjoy more. Others may prefer the bolder shot to "cut through milk" better.

#4: Post by **exidrion** » May 16th, 2022, 7:26 pm

What Jeff said certainly applies if you want to stick with the built in grinder; but I will copy a post I made in another thread here to further help of I may:

exidrion wrote:If you want to make more espresso for a large milk based drink, dose more. If you want to make less espresso dose less. I don't typically change dose to adjust taste.

That said, it depends on the roast. To make your life easier with light roasts, I'd reccommend the 14-18 range, as they are harder to extract. With medium to medium dark, you can go 18-23( )g.

As an Oracle owner myself, if you're using the built in grinder and tamping mechanism, I'd really upgrade to a standalone grinder so that you can actually control the dose and variability, and use third party baskets; at 23 grams it's nearly impossible to get a decent extraction with MOST coffee's, especially with that grinder. It'll always be a lot of coffee and under or over extracted. I get what Breville was trying to do here as most thirdwave places seem to be dosing at least 19 grams and up, but they're pulling double ristretto's suitable for giant milk drink on more capable equipment.

Note that the stock basket fits like 20g as an upper limit if you're doing it manually IMO. Trying to manually WDT and tamp more than that without the auto tamper that SHOVES a giant dose in it is very cumbersome.