Compak K3 touch

Extremely little (<0.1 - 0.2 gm tops).

I pulse the grinder and use a brush probe and/or my finger to remove the grinds and repeat a couple of times until nothing is left up there.

If I did nothing at all to sweep away or collect the grinds as above then there would be about 2.5 gm.

mhoy wrote:I make the first double for my wife's latte, the second double is for my espresso. She's happy and I'm happy and heck I couldn't tell the difference anyway.

Your secret's safe with us . . .

Compass Coffee wrote:In a commercial environment zero sense. In a home environment can make total sense, ie routinely pulling back to back different coffees.

Given the results of the "how often do you change coffees" poll... it seems like a tiny percentage of HB members are doing this.
So if you're not grinding in this manner because you're changing coffees on a shot to shot basis... why would you do this?

I have a NS MCI doserless. I have modified it significantly to eliminate clumping and to allow for easy chute access for post grind cleaning. I pulsed the grinder this morning to see what came out and I got exactly what I expected, almost nothing. So few grinds came out I was tempted to count them individually.

This was not the case when I first purchased the grinder. In a totally unmodified state it produced Kong sized boulders of a super compressed nature and would retain as much as 6 grams of each 14 gram dose. Despite my best cleaning efforts, as delivered, it would still retain 2 or 3 grams between sessions.



Gus

another_jim wrote:Blind testing has made me very humble, so I'm pretty certain that the 1 to 1.5 grams of stale grinds in a double is something I can't taste.

Just for grins this morning, I didn't clear the stales for the first shot. Admittedly, this was not blind, but the taste of the first shot was bitter and thin. So much so that it went down the sink.

The next two shots were just as expected : Almond / Sour Cherry / Citrus / Milk Chocolate YUM
Vibiemme HX / MC4 - Caffe d' Bolla Mountain Mambo 8.5g / 202°F / 8.5 bar / ~25ml in ~25s from first drop.

I don't think I have any special tasting skills. I'm often at a loss to describe flavors. It was by process of elimination that I came to 'believe' stales impact a shot. 2nd shot's almost always tasted better that the first. No amount of grinder tweaking, shot volume or temperature adjustment could ameliorate the problem. Finally, the light went on and it's just as Ken Fox says "It's the coffee, stupid." Once I started binning the first couple of grams, 1st and 2nd shot discrepancies disappeared.

Perhaps it's a coffee, grinder, machine and shot preference* combination peculiar to YHS

*~25ml Singles pulled @ about 1ml / s, timed from 1st drop

I know, I am a little over the top on this, but I take a few minutes after each session to brush out the Super Jolly. Think I get almost everything because there is no finger guard and no screw to secure the hopper for fast, thorough cleaning. The weight of the grinds from this cleaning is always around one gram.

At work, I use a Shop Vac on the S.J. That for sure gets everything.

malachi wrote:it seems like a tiny percentage of HB members are doing this.
So if you're not grinding in this manner because you're changing coffees on a shot to shot basis... why would you do this?

cafeIKE wrote:Just for grins this morning, I didn't clear the stales for the first shot. Admittedly, this was not blind, but the taste of the first shot was bitter and thin. So much so that it went down the sink.

There are a few of us that get in the habit of cleaning the grinder well enough that we don't have the issues that Ian talks about here. We do it because we'd like to have the clear, yummy taste of fresh ground (and it takes remarkably little ground coffee from yesterday, or this morning even, to sully a cup) and we aren't quite comfortable putting two to three grams down the crapper every time we want a cuppa.
I pulse and sweep, Like Jon R (and may have even gotten the idea from him) with the Majors, and with the Rocky, I just give 'im a chumly thmack on the back, and then tilt 'im ninety over forward til he coughs the remains into his beak. Another friendly chuck on the back, a pulse on the motor, and he's empty as soon as I set 'im upright again..
All of my hand-grinders run right through, and cleaning them out is as simple as turning the drawer over and smacking it.

I keep saying that there are ways and techniques for some that aren't for others, but that doesn't necessarily make them wrong. If it works for me, it may not work for you, but I'll tell you so that you get to try it for yourself and see if it helps.
If it does help, then we have accomplished what we set out to do when we joined this forum.
If it doesn't help you, jumping to the conclusion that it must be wrong, or superfluous, or pseudo-scientific is rather self-centric.
There are so many combinations of machinery and methodology, coffee and climate, perspectives and personalities, that suggesting that any particular techniques is ineffective has a 99.98% (made up statistic) of being flat wrong for some percentage of the readers.
And Fullsack, you're not any more over the top than any of the rest of us

Good to know, I was afraid I was going to have to begin looking for some sort of support group.

To completely come clean, I often brush, pulse and clack the Super Jolly after each shot

Fullsack wrote:Good to know, I was afraid I was going to have to begin looking for some sort of support group.

Uhm...
"Hello, My name is Doug, and I'm an OCD espresso junkie."
HB, en chœur, "Hi Doug!"

And how is this better than doing a single "seasoning" shot before pulling shots in the AM? Is it just the "waste" issue?