New Ceado E37S - initial impressions and more (over time) - Page 2

Grinders are one of the keys to exceptional espresso. Discuss them here.
CarloM (original poster)
Posts: 130
Joined: 11 years ago

#11: Post by CarloM (original poster) »

Peter_SVK wrote:Oh I see (misunderstood you as well :) ). In such case there will be more coffee in the chamber between sweepers, maybe additional 2 - 3g. If you would like to measure that exactly, grind some coffee with the beans in the hopper, close the hopper and remove it. Then vacuum clean the grinder throat with the upper burr stil in the place to remove all unground coffee from the space of the lower burr, remove the upper burr and check (weight), what remains in the chamber. You will get an idea, how much of stale coffee you should purge manually before switching to double shot (somebody could argue, that the stale coffee is mixing with the fresh one gradually, so the amount of the purged coffee should be even higher :wink: ).
Unless I end up buying the bellows attachment (if they even ever offer it separately), I don't think I'll be single dosing. As such, I think doing a 0.7 second flush should be enough to get rid of the 2-3g that is in there--the grinder is so fast that should be enough time. If there's a random 1g or less left...I'm not going to sweat that because I don't think I could taste that difference anyway, my palette isn't that refined--if it were, I could move up to a full second flush.

I will say this, after opening it up twice now after use. If one were to buy the bellows, I would have a high degree of confidence that retention is very very low. It's clear that what retention does happen, happens at the chute. So the bellows should push air through that chute to get rid of it. I'd be more worried if a lot of grind was accumulating around the sides of the burr chamber because those could just blow around in a circle, but there is a surprisingly little amount (as shown in the photos).

For now, I'll live with the sub-1s purge.

linuxAndJavaScript
Posts: 296
Joined: 5 years ago

#12: Post by linuxAndJavaScript »

Thanks! How many grams was that 6 second grind? And was the hopper full or beans or was that single dose?

Peter_SVK
Posts: 534
Joined: 6 years ago

#13: Post by Peter_SVK »

CarloM wrote:... I'd be more worried if a lot of grind was accumulating around the sides of the burr chamber because those could just blow around in a circle, but there is a surprisingly little amount (as shown in the photos)...
Because of single dosing, if you grind with the beans in the hopper, there is much more coffee around the burr left...

CarloM (original poster)
Posts: 130
Joined: 11 years ago

#14: Post by CarloM (original poster) »

linuxAndJavaScript wrote:Thanks! How many grams was that 6 second grind? And was the hopper full or beans or was that single dose?
That was a 5 second grind, yielding approx. 15g (again my scale is in 1g increments). There were beans in the hopper. It wasn't full, maybe 1/3 full or so.

CarloM (original poster)
Posts: 130
Joined: 11 years ago

#15: Post by CarloM (original poster) »

Additional retention update. Note: I did take pics but don't have the time/energy to upload them from my phone right now. I will ask you to trust me in the meantime. :)

I have been using the 37S but noticed that grind time and output was still varying pretty widely. Doing some internet research, I found that seasoning primarily affects grind output rate, so I realized that I may not have seasoned it enough. I thought I had seasoned 4 lbs on day 1, but now having looked at the 5lbs bag of old beans, it was probably closer to 2.5 lbs. I think I was just trying to get to the "use the machine" stage too quickly. So I took out my espresso roast and put back in the remained of the old stale beans and ran the remaining amount through it. Now I have seasoned it for the full 5 lbs. Hopefully the grind time and resulting amount won't vary too much.

I decided to take it apart again to clean it before using it tomorrow morning with my espresso roast. Several impressive (to me) observations.
  • 1) The chamber was still as clean as my previous pics. So even having run a lot more bean through it, grind just does not really accumulate around the burr/chamber area in a significant amount.

    2) I saw the flap that Peter_SVK refers to and definitely saw the grind being trapped there. I took a small paintbrush, reached in and swept the grind into a measuring cup. I purchased a 0.1g increment scale today, so I was able to measure what I swept out of that flap/chute. It was 0.5g.

    3) There was approximately the same amount of grind still sparsely spread out in the chamber, so I would estimate that the total retention is around 1g. 1.5g at the absolute top end, but in all honesty it looks closer to 1g.
As Peter notes, this is assuming you single dose and run it until no more grind comes out. I think the centripetal force does a pretty good job of forcing as much out of the chute as possible. I would think the upcoming bellows version would allow a user to get all but a negligible amount of grind out of the E37S.

Also as Peter points out, If you are using a hopper and keeping beans in there (like I am) then there's the "partially cracked beans" that happen after the grinder stops naturally. That's just the nature of the beast. As such, I will continue to do the 0.7s purge each time I use it (about 12h apart) to try and get rid of as much old/aged grind as I can.

Peter_SVK
Posts: 534
Joined: 6 years ago

#16: Post by Peter_SVK »

1.0 - 1.5g total retention is really top-notch.

CarloM (original poster)
Posts: 130
Joined: 11 years ago

#17: Post by CarloM (original poster) »

Here are the accompanying pics to my previous post.

This is the overhead view from when I first took apart the grinder after running an additional 2.5lbs of the old beans to season it. I did no cleaning prior to opening it up, just held the grind button until no grinds came out of the chute. You can see the accumulation of grind at the chute, flap and front part of the burr chamber.


Here are two pics of the mini 0.1g scale I bought from Amazon. Note it's really small, fits in the palm of your hand. That is a 1/3 cup measuring scoop I'm using. On the left is when I tare'd the scoop, and on the right is what I was able to brush into it from the chute and flap.


Here are the after pics (after I swept the chute and flap). There is now more grind visible in the front of the burr chamber because in my efforts to sweep the grind down, I pushed some back in. I wanted to capture it in the pics so you could see the total amount. There a small amount on the right/front of the chamber as well. My opinion, having seen it in person vs. pictures, where angle and distance of camera to the subject can skew one's perspective, is that those two sections of retained grind in the burr chamber were no more than the 0.5g you saw on the scale.


There was no other accumulation of grind to note anywhere else in the burr chamber; a random few particles here and there but nothing that, even if you swept them all together, would register more than 0.1g on a scale in total.

linuxAndJavaScript
Posts: 296
Joined: 5 years ago

#18: Post by linuxAndJavaScript »

CarloM wrote:I have been using the 37S but noticed that grind time and output was still varying pretty widely.
About how much?

CarloM (original poster)
Posts: 130
Joined: 11 years ago

#19: Post by CarloM (original poster) »

Sorry I don't have a good answer for you. I switched to manual dosing to fill the ports filter after calibrating the grind via single dosing method. I'd say one time a 5s shot filled the pf and then the next morning it was only about 85% full. It may also have been partially the bean aging from day 4 to 5 after roast date.

What I've done is remove all the beans, mimicked a single dosing method to dial in the grind, measuring 15g output to a 27s double shot. Tonight I'll put the hopper back on and see if it holds the grind setting and then start trying to figure out the length of time it should be set to (which is different from the single dose time because of how much longer I let it spin to get the last beans ground.

CarloM (original poster)
Posts: 130
Joined: 11 years ago

#20: Post by CarloM (original poster) »

Okay this may already be known news for those who have cycled between single-dosing and using the hopper, but with the upcoming E37SD which looks to essentially use the same burr/motor/body, just with a different grind adjust collar and bellows in place of the hopper, I thought I'd note this here.

There is a very significant grind setting difference between single dosing and using the hopper.

Last night as I was dialing in the single dosing setting, I was around a "2", which is pretty far to the right. I was not planning on single dosing, but I thought since I had cleaned the machine after finishing the rest of the old beans I used for seasoning, I'd see if the workflow of single dosing was going to work for me. I slowly adjusted it finer all the way to 2 (with the chamber empty each time I adjusted it).

This morning I decided the workflow for single dosing wasn't for me, as I'm often in a rush in the mornings as I head off to work. So I put the hopper back on and put the rest of the half-pound of espresso that I had in there. I ran a 2-3 second primer purge and I knew something was wrong. The flow of the grind was super slow. I ran the 4.7s double dose timer setting that I used the last time I had beans in the hopper. Only 7.8g came out. Uh oh. For the heck of it I manually filled it up to 16g and sure enough, it choked the V2B.

Luckily I remembered that the last hopper-filled grind setting I had was just a hair finer than "4". So I put it there, ran 4.7s double dose, and sure enough, 15.9g came out (I like to dose with 16g). Close enough.

Perfect double shot.

So I'm you're single dosing with an empty hopper, the setting is "2". If I'm using the hopper, the setting is "4" (just a half-mini-notch to the right of "4").

I suspected that having beans in the hopper would have an effect on grind results, but I don't think I was aware that the difference would be so pronounced.

EDIT:

On a side note, what this does prove is Ceado's marketing line that "removing the top to clean the burrs doesn't change the grind setting". Very true. When I defaulted back to the last setting I used with a hopper and beans in place, it was exactly the result from the last time even though I had run 3lbs of a different bean, opened it up, and then ground at a much finer setting for all of last night while single dosing. So I'm going to bet that "just-to-the-right of 4" is always going to be my setting for as long as Blue Bottle Hayes Valley formula stays consistent.

Also, with the radical difference between beans in the hopper and not, if you're using the hopper you should never use the "last shot" if the hopper becomes empty. Based on my experience above, the grind fineness for that shot will vary widely since there isn't the weight of beans in the hopper for that shot. Those using the hopper should always ensure there are beans in the hopper for consistency's and quality's sake.