Without changing the setting on my Niche grinder, and with the same beans, 30g of espresso now jets out of my Rocket Giotto R58 in a mere 7 seconds. Only yesterday, it took around 25+ seconds to extract 30g of coffee from 17g of beans.

The niche is set to a tad over 15, and the beans are pretty dark roasted. Moving the dial to 20 did slow down the pour some, but not significantly so.

So I'm thinking it's the Niche, but I really don't want to send it to Ireland for service.

Anybody have some suggestions?

1) Make sure your machine is dispensing hot water through the GH

2) Use a blind basket and see if pressure will rise with that

3) If yes, grind super fine and see if it will choke the machine

4) If yes, then grind coarser as needed to get back to desired shot time.

Setting the Niche from 15-20 should increase the flow because an increase in numbers will grind coarser. You need to turn it clockwise to "screw it in" You'll eventually get a point where you can't go any more. That's where your calibration point should be. Back off of there. Try grinding at like 5 or 8 to choke the machine.

Might not hurt to weigh out how much of ground coffee you're getting back to make sure that you're chute isn't clogged or anything.

Report back!

I had that happen, all of sudden, on some really dark espresso beans.. on my Sette 270. I only had it happen on those beans. Not sure what it was.. My theory (based on zero knowledge) is that the beans became too brittle and/or I tamped to hard and the pressure just blasted thru. But once my beans got to this state, I had gushers every time.. I found them too bitter and so I just threw them out and haven't had an issue since

I'm pretty sure the Niche is fine (do the grinds look bad?).. Try some medium roasted beans.. maybe do some careful distribution and tamp with less pressure.

Thanks guys! I am an idiot and adjusted the grind setting in the wrong direction when trying to compensate. I still wonder if something changed inside my Niche, or if something changed at the coffee roaster's. New bags from the same place now all require the finer grind setting (closer to 10, whereas it was at ~15).

I do weigh my grinds in and out, and the loss is typically 0.1g, if any.

I love this board ! ! !

With my machine and basket, which isn't your machine, with my Niche, which may have its dial set to a different place than yours, I find that different coffees can range from 12 to 18 for their "sweet spot".

A possibility for why the grind changed suddenly might be that the burr carrier stuck in its guides or a bit of coffee got in between things and shifted the burr a tiny bit until it dislodged. Part of that silky-smooth grind adjustment is that the burrs aren't bolted to the adjustment collar as they might be in a shop grinder. I marked my silver ring with where the "dot" is so that when I periodically clean it I can confirm that I've tightened down the central bolt enough and that "15" before is reasonably close to "15" after cleaning.