Hi guys, long time lurker, first time poster. Just got a Breville DB 3 months ago and recently added a Ceado E6P to replace the smart grinder pro. I've seasoned the Ceado with about 1kg of old arabica beans. Heard a lot of good things about them. My favourite coffee bean at the moment is a local NZ brand called Roma, they do a medium-dark roast.

What I've noticed is that I have to have the grind settings very low, around 0.5-1 on the E6P to get a decent 1:2 ratio out of 19g, at around 28-30 secs. It's so fine that when i get near 0.5, even the Ceado starts to produce clumpy coffee. However the main issue is each day, I have to waste 1-2 shots just to dial in again. One day 0.5 will get me a perfect shot. Tomorrow at the same setting, no coffee comes out, and I have to experiment and get to 0.7, maybe 1 for a good shot. Day after that if I leave it at 1, it'll run waaaay to quick and will produce 38g by 20 seconds, so I have to slowly dial it back down to 0.5 again. And repeat. When it's dialed in it's very tasty and is almost just like at my local barista's. However I'm wasting so much time and coffee dialing in each day. I make sure to purge the grinder of old beans every morning for about 3-4g before preparing my first shot. What else could I be missing? Do I just need to be patient for the burrs to season more? Or are flat burrs just that finicky that, every day I have to adjust settings?

A couple things come to mind when reading your description. 1) 1kg isn't enough to fully season the burrs and may lead to grind variations. I have read 5-10kg may be needed. I didn't keep track of my own coffee throughput to provide a number, but it took a long while without grinding 'waste coffee'. 2) You may be fighting some retention oscillation. When you tighten down the grind, you still have some old coffee in the mix. First one pulls great. Next, too slow. Open it back up, old coffee again in the mix, it pulls great. Then too fast. Split the difference and pull 3-4 and see if it settles down. It can take a while to learn your grinder and what amount of change is needed for the specific adjustment and coffee you are dialing in. You have a good grinder, it will settle down eventually and you'll pull some great shots. Patience is hard.. especially in this hobby.

ufergus wrote:2) You may be fighting some retention oscillation.

Thanks - this adds a new term to my vocabulary (I've seen this phenomenon in the past but didn't have the word for it).

I owned an E6P for several years and there was indeed quite a bit of lag where it takes several shots for the grinder to equilibrate after each adjustment. To sort of confirm what you are experiencing, the onset of clumping was right as I got down into the target espresso range (just north of that, perfect piles). Being a hopper grinder, there is some retention as grinds in the chamber get displaced, make their way down into the chute, and push past the flapper.

However, mine was very capable of grinding finer than needed for espresso, so unless your burrs start chirping the scale is somewhat arbitrary (at least the version I owned that has since been updated).

I have a Ceado E37S and have a similar problem. Mine is a relatively new timed grinder and I get inconsistent grinds in the portafilter. I have an Acaia Lunar so I weigh the grinds to check consistency and it can be off by half a gram or more between grinds. I have probably put more coffee through my grinder but some reading has indicated up to 10 kg might need to be put through. Given the price of the E37 though I expected more consistency in output. Nothing I can do about it except wait and see at this stage.

Thanks for the reply guys. Just a note, I was purging for about 3-4 secs every morning before I pull my first shot. I also purge 3-4 secs when changing grind settings. One thing I noticed is this year is it's been a very turbulent spring for us, hot and humid one day and cooler the next. The last 2 days have had the same overcast day with same temperatures, and this morning I pulled a halfway decent shot without having to make massive changes. By the time I got to my second shot it was already really good. Could just be the weather/humidity, as well as my shorter burr seasoning than some have suggested (5-10kg wow!).

Just got to be patient I guess, and now that I'm starting to get a hang of the amount of adjustment I should make, I can get dialed in within 2 shots, instead of the 3-4 before. That's acceptable to me during this seasoning process. Hopefully in a couple months it stabilizes more.

Hi did you see any improvement. I bought a ceado E37S two weeks ago, same issues. I can't get it right. Especially when dialing in to more fine. Whenever I dial in to a coarser setting it reacts as expected, but when I then have to go back to a more fine grind it suddenly runs extremely fast, and I can start all over again.