I live in south texas, so it's very humid, we couldn't even dry out sand here.

I have tried lower brew temps, some would say "bright" but to my palate it is just acidic sour. I don't think I prefer those flavors.

I believe the answer to this is definitely older beans in the hopper or left behind grinds to some extent, that and a better overall extraction. Maybe that and the bag of redbird i had then. Shots are definitely more on par with expected results recently. Still trying to pull something with all the flavors and no harshness, I have trouble pulling out the sweetness that I have had before. Really wish I could find a training course or something to help with the "me" aspect. Getting some advise from an actual person face to face would do me some good I believe.

Is there any factor other than fresh beans that can impact crema or shot viscosity heavily that I should be aware of (ie level tamp or distribution?)? Haven't seen much info on that floating around. Can a gram or two of day old grinds really effect that much? That's like 8-12% of an 18g basket...

zanna5910 wrote:Can a gram or two of day old grinds really effect that much? That's like 8-12% of an 18g basket...

Best way to address this is to test.

Tomorrow morning pull the first few grams of grounds into a dish and discard.

Then grind and dose as normal and pull a shot. Observe the pour, and maybe record it with your phone so you can copmpare it later.

Next day, do it they way you've been doing previously, (ie: including the old grounds). Compare and report back.

You read my mind. Will be a week or so before I test, as I recently returned my old vario for warranty for a brand new one, and need to run a bit more coffee thru it to finish its break in. Already getting more stable and now that its dedicated (purchased a virtuoso to handle FP/drip workload), all my back and forth changing settings problems have gone away (on top of the calibration issues) and this has made me far more sane; leading to much, much, much, much better consistency and overall shot quality. It also gives me time to experiment where before all I did was try to get the grinder dialed in before it was time to switch settings again. Now that I've been down that road, I can say from experience I would never recommend it if you need both (or more) grind types with any regularity. YMMV. Shots are already more consistent, I haven't been able to replicate that strange crema burst, but I can say newer beans produces results in line with photos, thick melted honey. I guess i was really commenting on post shot "settle" and the crema left as the shot settles down. I think really the result was due to grind retention flushing out of the burrs and shoot and then getting an all fresh shot.

With that said, I will do the experiment on next hopper full, that will mean about 1.5 lbs have then made it thru the new vario at that point. There is very little shoot retention anyways, but will grind a gram or 2 thru it just to be sure and see the difference.

Just to follow up: I conducted some 'ittle-do testing. I didn't have a lab coat out, but tried to keep most variables locked. I had a few pictures but my two year old went on a delete spree on my phone. Still having a belt issue with this grinder I tested with, but here is what I found, drumroll please.....

Leftover grinds had no effect on crema.

Blam. Boring, but tested. What did have a big impact on crema and taste was age of coffee. I also tested some with temperature and tamping/distribution, but I dont think I really did enough to comment on whether or not that had impact. I typically freeze in jars, and use a jar at a time, usually lasting about a week. I was pulling shots around 18g, 36 out in ~30sec. I would not clean the chute out from the previous day, and just pull a shot the next morning, so ~24 hrs old grinds in there. I could not discern any real difference in crema or in taste with an assumed standard deviation for a shot with leftover beans mixed in or with the chute clean. My palate is okay, but I'm no sommelier, YMMV. I know that for me, with this grinder, its just another thing I'm not going to worry about and focus on other things. Interestingly enough, I do think dosing/grind did impact taste, as well as whether I was pulling cooling (hi temp with a cooling flush) or warming shots (pulling shots when machine is rebounding up in temp) off my HX. Those need to be tests for another day though.

I say this with a caveat. My vario doesn't hold more than ~1g in the chute. If your grinder has 4g or more in the shoot, you may get different results as then maybe 20% or more of your basket is older grinds.