maccompatible wrote:What's your usable range for espresso with the ditting burrs?

Usable range is about two-three seconds per micro click IIRC. I'm going from memory as I haven't used my Vario for espresso for quite a while.

maccompatible wrote:Also, would it be worth a quick trial of shimming to see if that makes the steel burrs more usable? I don't mind to go through the effort of hyper aligning and upgrading the chamber. I just want to make good use of my time.

The short answer is no, because at the espresso range, it is the flex in the brew chamber that is of concern, and that cannot be corrected by shimming. As such, shimming may improve things in the brew range only. I believe that is not your concern, so I would say shimming is not good use of your time. I certainly wouldn't bother.

In addition, Jake's hyper-aligning procedure is not the same as shimming, and hyper-aligning can identify things that a marker test cannot uncover that you may or may not be able to correct, e.g., lower bearing wear, excessive belt tension, etc. One does the marker test and shimming after all the other things in hyper-aligning.

Didn't see the reply until after I shimmed. Seemed easier to dial in this morning, and the shots out flowed like they should and tasted as good as I expect. So we'll see. I'll definitely have to consider the hyper alignment, just hard to convince myself to do it when I have a P64 on the way lol.

... then I'd suggest maybe not doing anything - and when the P64 comes, use the Vario with Dittings for pourover?