Having to change grind settings in middle of bag

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gr2020
Posts: 358
Joined: 8 years ago

#1: Post by gr2020 »

Hey all! I'm new to the forum here, and new to pulling my own shots, after being lazy with a super-automatic for a few years.

Anyway - I recently picked up a Breville Infuser, and a Smart Grinder Pro. And a bag of Black Cat classic. After some practicing with the end of an older bag of beans I had, I started in with the Black Cat. After about 3 double shots, I had it dialed in pretty close to the shot they made for me when I bought the beans, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. :) The beans were roasted on 6/15, and I made these first shots on 6/30.

Over the next few days, I settled into having the grinder on 12 (range is 1-60), dosing about 17.5g, and getting shots in about 30 sec, around 40-44ml and 35-38g. Pressure ranged in the top 25% or so of the "espresso range" on the dial. All seemed well.

Today (7/5), I did the same thing as usual; however, I messed up the tamp, and ended up tamping like 3 or 4 times trying to straighten it out (newbie, I know! ha). Pressure went well above the "espresso range", and there was almost no flow. I chalked this up to messing around with tamping it so much, and made a new one.

However, this new one (same parameters as before), with just one regular tamp, also came out dripping with almost no flow, also very high pressure. Dumped it.

Then I changed the grinder setting one click coarser (up to 13), dosed 17.9g, and got a 25sec shot, 1.8oz, 38g, with pressure in the top quarter of the range.

What I'm trying to figure out is, what happened to my old settings? Everything had worked great for several days straight, and I had just been experimenting with when to stop the shot. But today, suddenly my grind seemed too fine, and I had to coarsen it up. I thought maybe it was from the coffee starting to get stale (we are now 21 days after roasting), but I thought it was more likely to need to be ground finer as the coffee aged, so that confused me.

I thought maybe the grinder was drifting (it's grinded less than 1lb of beans in its entire life), but one thing I noticed was that earlier when I thought things were ok, I noticed some small grinds in the bottom of my cup; today, there were no grinds in the cup, which makes me think it was indeed a bit coarser.

Any insights into what might be happening?

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Dpablo
Posts: 87
Joined: 8 years ago

#2: Post by Dpablo »

It sounds like your burrs are in the process of getting seasoned. It's usually recommended that you run a few pounds of coffee through a new set of burrs to get them to their optimal level (the point at which your burrs are no longer shedding metal).

gr2020 (original poster)
Posts: 358
Joined: 8 years ago

#3: Post by gr2020 (original poster) replying to Dpablo »

Ah! Ok, thanks - that makes me feel better. Except the part where I'm probably drinking metal bits. :o

Sideshow
Posts: 380
Joined: 8 years ago

#4: Post by Sideshow »

Yes, with new burrs you're going to get noticeably inconsistent grinds for a little while. The burrs should even out and settle in after a short time.

gr2020 (original poster)
Posts: 358
Joined: 8 years ago

#5: Post by gr2020 (original poster) replying to Sideshow »

That's good to know - thanks!