Newbie's question about BES870 stock filter baskets

Need help with equipment usage or want to share your latest discovery?
Curious
Posts: 2
Joined: 1 year ago

#1: Post by Curious »

I recently acquired BES870 and attempted to achieve properly extracted espressos.

I started with a grinder setting of 6, grinded a single dose of coffee into a 1-cup single wall basket, tamped and trimmed as per the instruction manual. Then pressed the 1-cup button. To my surprise, I achieved proper extraction pressure from the first attempt, with a manometer pointing right in the middle of the "espresso range" zone.

However, when using the same grinder setting with a 2-cup single wall basket (double dose, the same tamping and trimming technique, pressing 2-cup button) the manometer's needle never moved from the pre-infusion zone. I started gradually decreasing the grind's coarseness, and finally, at the grinder setting of 1, I achieved proper extraction pressure with a 2-cup basket.

I repeated my experiments many times, and had very consistent results: grinder's setting has to be 6 for a 1-cup basket and 1 for a 2-cup basket.

Is this expected behavior or machine is not working properly? Do we expect such drastic differences in the grind size, when moving between 1-cup and 2-cup baskets to achieve the same extraction pressure?

JRising
Team HB
Posts: 3667
Joined: 5 years ago

#2: Post by JRising »

Sounds about right. And it kind of seems like you've proven it.

If you are still learning the machine, you might want to stick to just the double basket while dialing in the grinder. The double will be a little more forgiving (less wasted coffee) while your ears and eyes get used to what a good extraction looks like and sounds like. Switching from basket to basket adds an extra factor which isn't helping.

Curious (original poster)
Posts: 2
Joined: 1 year ago

#3: Post by Curious (original poster) »

JRising wrote:Sounds about right. And it kind of seems like you've proven it.
Thank you. Yes, it is proven for my particular situation. I just want to make sure my machine is not malfunctioning or broken, because I still have time to return it or exchange it.