Hello, so I've had my Vario (non W) for 3-4 years now with little to no issues. I can recall a small handful of times where the discharge chute got clogged in which I fixed by simply removing the top/lower burrs and pushing the grinds out through the chute. I'm pretty mindful about cleaning the burrs once every month or 2 as well

Fast forward to this week, my Vario started clogging again and continues to clog every time after I clear up the clog at the chute. It grinds the beans for around 3 seconds before the clogging happens. I noticed this rubber flapper by the chute that might be causing the clog. What's the purpose of said flap? It leans against the chute in a way that can cause enough resistance for the coffee ground to go through. Can it be removed? Anyone have any other ideas as to why the grinder might be clogging?

Thanks in advance

There's a popular "flapper mod" for the Vario. You can take a look here:

Single Dosing My Baratza Vario Success!

Do you single dose? Maybe this offers you the solution.

Oh I see, I was hoping there'd be a solution that didn't include taking the thing apart lol (knowing me I'd break it)

Is there a reason why this started happening now? It grinded just fine the past few years

And I do usually single dose (45g tops)

Have you changed your coffee recently? Darker roasts, especially decaf in my experience, seem to grind "stickier" with more static cling.
Or your burrs could be wearing out...

It did happen right after I changed my beans hm.. But I tend to lean towards light roasts to begin with (as was this new bag, granted it's a blend)

I'll grab another bag of beans and try again then

Update: got a new bag of beans (light roast Kenya) and the grinder grinded it just fine

I guess the question then becomes, is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening? Is this just a shortcoming of the Vario?

The weird thing is that I've grinded these beans (the ones recently causing clogging) just fine before

I'd like to avoid modding if possible lol