When you are making adjustments to the grind finer, are you doing it while the grinder is running? I felt like adjustment drift was more prone to happen if one were not adjusting while grinding. As I understand its much harder to move the burrs closer with stationary coffee particles stuck in between. When the Smart Grinder Pro was my sole Espresso Grinder for awhile, I really quite felt the motor working hard while grinding for espresso and especially adjusting finer.

Hmm. No, i do remember some saying to do that on YouTube vids. I did not see it in the manual though. Maybe i should start doing it.

Yes, that's good practice with pretty much any grinder.

Hopefully I didn't wear the burrs down. We do single dose everything and grind for a couple seconds after coffee stops coming out of the grinder. So even when we were adjusting finer with the grinder off, the hopper and burrs were empty.

coffeechan wrote:When you are making adjustments to the grind finer, are you doing it while the grinder is running? I felt like adjustment drift was more prone to happen if one were not adjusting while grinding. As I understand its much harder to move the burrs closer with stationary coffee particles stuck in between. When the Smart Grinder Pro was my sole Espresso Grinder for awhile, I really quite felt the motor working hard while grinding for espresso and especially adjusting finer.

I felt like adjustment drift was more prone to happen if one were not adjusting while grinding.
Am I understanding you right---that you are saying that the adjustments one makes are more prone to drifting if one makes adjustments without the grinder running? No matter if I am adjusting finer or coarser--I do it with the grinder running. I've read and heard that some feel it is only necessary when adjusting finer--yet others say to be safe, run grinder during fine and coarse adjustments.

Pacotacomeat wrote:Hopefully I didn't wear the burrs down. We do single dose everything and grind for a couple seconds after coffee stops coming out of the grinder. So even when we were adjusting finer with the grinder off, the hopper and burrs were empty.

https://baratza.com/debunking-the-myths ... r-grinder/

If you adjust grind size without running the machine, your grinder will break!

This one is kind of on us. We advise running your machine while adjusting the grind because of the many benefits to performance and longevity that provides. That being said, there are actually certain situations where it's not necessary to do so!

If coffee is in your grinder, it will be between your burrs. the grind finer in this situation puts strain on the adjustment system - this is bad for longevity. Adjusting coarse, however, simply moves the burrs farther apart, and won't add any strain.

Grinder's also retain some ground coffee in the system between grinds, which means making a change while the grinder is not running will put some of that old grind size in your next dose.

So if your grinder is empty, you can change the grind size all day without trouble!

Pacotacomeat wrote:Thanks for the suggestions, especially regarding shimming. I think i have the internal burr at 4, so i still can adjust more providing the burrs don't touch! I didn't think about that. I'll definitely try shimming if needed.

It just doesn't seem like it should be wearing out so soon! I hope it's just breakin... hopefully it's done breaking in soon.

We've probably put 40-45 lbs of coffee through it in 6 months.

That should have been plenty for burr break in. I see figures thrown about for around 5 Kg of coffee for other grinders. Hopefully running the grinder while making adjustments helps resolve the issues you're seeing.

chanty 77 wrote: I felt like adjustment drift was more prone to happen if one were not adjusting while grinding.
Am I understanding you right---that you are saying that the adjustments one makes are more prone to drifting if one makes adjustments without the grinder running? No matter if I am adjusting finer or coarser--I do it with the grinder running. I've read and heard that some feel it is only necessary when adjusting finer--yet others say to be safe, run grinder during fine and coarse adjustments.

Pretty much what walr00s linked. Adjusting finer of course run the grinder while doing the adjustment. It's especially important to do so with a flat burr grinder as it can cause a jam leading to a potential burn out of the motor. A few jams have happened once or twice with even a commercial Ceado E37s which has giant burrs and a very capable motor. I believe it's unnecessary while adjusting coarser. It's not really a technical explanation and more of a hypothesis but here goes. If coffee is between the burrs and one is trying to adjust finer, the coffee would prevent the burr from moving closer to a certain degree and running the grinder would mitigate this.

Funnily enough the Vario was my first serious grinder and which experienced what I think of "adjustment drift". It's nothing that the calibration tool couldn't fix with the Vario, but it frustrated me to move on up all the way eventually to a Monolith. Even Denis, who designs and builds the Monolith grinders, advises running the grinder while making adjustments towards the finer end, and most definitely when adjusting from really coarse to really fine.

Pacotacomeat wrote:Hopefully I didn't wear the burrs down. We do single dose everything and grind for a couple seconds after coffee stops coming out of the grinder. So even when we were adjusting finer with the grinder off, the hopper and burrs were empty.

Unless it's stale coffee or very lightly roasted coffee, you shouldn't need to adjust that fine where there's a potential to wear down the burrs. Many people find they can choke their machines at a point before the burrs touch with fresh coffee. This is even more likely to be the case with a conical grinder, which I assume the built in all in one brevilles use. As I understand it, conical grinders create more fines, which slow down flow more so than a flat burr grinder.

The Breville conical grinders are just noisy. They get the job done but the quality of the parts when operating don't exactly sound effortless like a commercial grade grinder.

One thing to remember too is that coffee beans are hygroscopic. Changes in air temperature and humidity alter the moisture content in the beans, and those changes happen hourly, daily. In the morning you may have dialed it in perfectly after 3-8 (or more tries), your afternoon cuppa might not be as good, and you gotta make adjustments to your ground again. Not to mention the next day. As George Howell has said "espresso is like landing a jet on a matchstick".