marcoffee wrote:Quality of brew though I'd say closer to the Apex. Will see if this changes with some more break-in but I doubt it.

Nice info Sir... it's time for me to brew with electric grinder...

Acavia wrote:I learned that with my first April coffee. 100C and fine grind made a harsh coffee that I could not finish. Communicating with April and following their advice, I went to around 90C and coarser grind, and it made a very smooth, tasty, easy to drink coffee with multiple flavors. Since then I grind coarser overall and experiment with temperatures and pouring rates.

April should definitely not be grinded fine nor brewed at hot temperatures their roast aren't designed for that, they are designed for their 1:1 recipes in the April brewer and in espresso for a turbo 1:3 at 6-7bar.

DenisSabou wrote:Coffee colective is like that but they advise you to use soft water ±10ppm for brewing. With harder water it's gonna be roasty.

Lance brewing technique with 98-100C and finer grind gives you more deep acidity but the body and overall experience is more like a tea that is concentrated and layered. Brewing with massive flow and 93-96C/5 pours coarse at 13-14 on dial gives you more sweetness and a thicker body, it's a different experience.

I feel like you are missing out a bit by brewing everything so fine, 4-5 on dial is really really fine, and i'm not expressing just myself but also 3 other friends who own the grinder. For me the moment I step bellow 5.2-5.5 I get biterness/muddy brews/bad taste but that is with 5-6g/s flow not with osmotic flow that is much less. In theory you could grind finer and use a reduce flow thing to not get the bad taste but I still believe that you are narrowing a lot the landing spot for most beans. My point is that if you can modulate the grind size to be coarser but extract the good stuff out of it at a decent extraction rate then the coffee will be good, but if you hold on to a super fine grind you are going to enjoy a limited amount of beans. I can count the fingers from one hand how many good beans I had that you could grind them super fine and use 100C water on them and they are good.

I brew doses from 10 to 20g and I use mostly v60, and sometimes timemore b75 on clogging coffees (ethiopia) and april brewer with 12-16g dose for natural or funky coffees. Today brews is a 28 days rested el salvador geisha anaerobic 300h fermented by Andres Saldarriaga, roasted by me. Ground finer and super hot it gives you a massive vegetal acidity, when hot soy sauce when cold cucumber/kimchi vibe. That would be like 15g to 240g brew at 5.5 on dial with 98c water.

Now my recipe for it and it's outstanding: 16g in april ground at 13 on sculptor with 1000rpm.
250g of water split in 3 equal pours, water temp 92C. pour at 0-35 and 60 sec. Finish at 2:05 min. Done, taste is layered, floral (hibiscus, rose) prune skin acidity, crisp tropical fruits, strawberry and when cold has a fruity cognac taste/coating.

Coffee is multi-dimensional, and you must have the skills and tools to modulate the taste to your desire to an optimal result. If we restraint ourselves into a narrow recipe the results wont be always good, and there will be a lot of frustration. I have been there, when I owned a lot of ssp burrs and custom made water, even using 5-10ppm water.

Wonderful insight. May i ask what pour speed do you recommend for your 2nd recipe as well as the speed of pour rotation? (i.e how long it took for one rotation of pouring)

Here is a simplified in a video, I am not using exactly that method but the pouring is close to that:

Just read @Ourcoffeeshelter on Instagram where he put the 078S burrs in the 078 grinder and noticed that the tolerance isn't' there. Possible that the burr depth aren't the same?

He had to shim it with aluminum foil.

On 9 january I roasted this kenya washed and packed it in single dose vials and let it be till today. So rested for 73 days today.

I knew it's super light roasted when I roasted it, and that is the reason why I left it be for so long. Today I measured it and the color is 124 agtron gourmet. Tim Wendelboe is ±115 agtron for kenya.


Recipe: 13g of coffee (sorted) ground medium-coarse, water at 93C, v60, same paper filter same brew time same ratio (200ml water split in 5 pours of 40g) Brewed them on the same scale side by side so have them at the same temp when tasting.

The brew with more chaff is the white grinder that is equiped with an auger and 65mm brew burrs (what you call today SSP brew burrs) they are new burrs installed and aligned by me (new bearings into the grinder, aligned on dial) and seassoned with 10-15 kg of coffee.

Left brew is white grinder, right is sculptor 078.




Aroma:
a. the sculptor smells super sweet, floral, and fruity in the direction of red berries and peach.
b. 65mm flat similar to ssp brew burrs- red berries, not as sweet smell, figs, slightly smell of wet cardboard

Flavor:
a. sculptor: sticky sweet, brown sugar, red apple baked, black currant, green walnuts skin slightly - this is from the underdevelopment (it taste green a bit in the aftertaste/finish).
b. 65mm flat: harsh, clouded, missing sweetness when hot, red apple, plum, nutty/green taste amplified.

When cooled down:
a. sculptor: goes up in acidity and becomes super juicy, imagine biting into a crisp red apple and your mouth start watering.
b. 65mm flat: becomes more savory, flat, and slightly bready.

I did measure the extractions and despite the same brew time/paper/pour the 65mm flat burrs extracted much higher. We are talking 1.4 tds for sculptor vs 1.6 tds for the 65mm flat. Yes I can grind coarser on the 65mm flat burrs and end up with a faster brew time, but I feel like then I will miss some of the mid notes and the taste will become a bit hollow at certain temps.

Beware that I owned since 2018 to 2021 around 8 ssp burr sets, two times 64mm ssp brew burrs (once in df64 and once in p64) and brewed with those burrs for over 1 year, so I kinda know how they taste. My white grinder tastes similar to the 64mm ssp brew burrs, it works on certain beans but most of the time I feel i'm missing some quality parameters in my brews (mostly sweetness, complexity).


Let me know if you have other questions. The burrs in my white grinder are Mahlkonig Kenia 65mm flat burrs (similar to 65mm mahlkonig proM burrs) and the source of inspiration for SSP/Hansung to make the 64mm brew burrs. The white grinder is a 1954 favorite 2a with new koyo bearings, aligned and shimmed with a dial indicator for the static burr and marker method for the rotating burr. Feel free to ask me anything, have a great day.

Are you discarding the fines caught in the knocker of the 078? I'm curious how people are implementing the fines catcher. Would it make sense to dose slightly higher to end up with the desired weight of ground coffee to brew in order to account for what is discarded? Otherwise wouldn't you end up extracting less coffee when comparing to a grinder without such a feature?

I dont think it makes a huge difference. That knocker is all about discarding the chaff, that has a horrible taste. The fines I dont have the problems with them, you need fines to make coffee taste both in espresso and brew.

Brews done with 500 to 850 microns sieved are not complex and boring. Fines are good if you know how to deal with them and they are not clogging your brews. My brews above are at max 2:30.

Would the 64s be good for a beginner getting into espresso?

I can get the 78s too, but thinking it's a bit expensive for my needs.

Anyone have some advice?

Thanks!