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I'm wondering if anyone on the forum has tried slow feeding beans as suggested by James Hoffman towards the end of this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IjFfl-8Gu8 I am getting a Ceado E37S next week and planning to use it for single dosing (before anyone asks, I didn't have the budget for E37SD and waitlist for Niche is too long, I need a grinder next week!).

From my research (I am a newbie so apologies if I say silly things -- please correct me!) it sounds like the problem with using a non-SD grinder for SD grinding -- beyond retention -- is that the grind of the final beans will be coarser than the first beans as there's no weight to push them in through the grinder at the same rate. The common hack is to place a weight on top of the beans to mimic the weight that the first beans would have benefited from in order to maintain a grind consistency throughout the dose.

But I'm wondering if slow feeding beans achieves the same thing (consistency) by keeping the weight that the last beans benefit from consistent throughout the grind (the video suggests your grind settings need to be a lot finer for this to work). Lots of people report a taste improvement in the cup with this technique so single dosing may not be the primary argument, I'm just wondering if anyone has tried this technique for single dosing with a non single dosing grinder?

bluecorr wrote:From my research (I am a newbie so apologies if I say silly things -- please correct me!) it sounds like the problem with using a non-SD grinder for SD grinding -- beyond retention -- is that the grind of the final beans will be coarser than the first beans as there's no weight to push them in through the grinder at the same rate. The common hack is to place a weight on top of the beans to mimic the weight that the first beans would have benefited from in order to maintain a grind consistency throughout the dose.

Hmmm... if anything, I would think the last beans to be ground would be finer... if there's any difference at all. My thinking is that if there are a lot of beans sitting on the burrs and they begin to spin, the tendency for the burrs to move apart due to mass would be greater (causing coarser grinding), rather than at the end when only a few beans are left.

As for the weight, beans move through the grinder due to centrifical force and pressure from the burrs... they don't need to be pushed, or you'd never get all the grounds out of the grinder. People mostly put something on top of the feed throat to help control pop-corning, not to act as a weight. Then again, theories abound, don't they!

Too bad James didn't do a grounds comparison of his slow grind method versus a normal grinding session. It would have added credence to his video, and it would have been nice to see if there was even a discernable difference in the output.

Here are a couple of threads discussing the video/technique:

Niche Zero - Unimodal Grinding Technique

Regrind technique for light roast espresso - sweeter, less grassy & earthy. Fewer fines?

I'm still slowly feeding beans for brewed coffee. I haven't stopped since I tasted that first cup.

I'm slightly disappointed that James didn't reference this quantitative analysis of the effect of popcorning/feeding beans one by one: https://coffeeadastra.com/2019/04/12/gr ... ng-effect/

Perhaps James was unaware of this analysis, but the results were quite clear in showing that feeding beans one by one results in a slightly coarser average particle size and a slightly tighter distribution.

However, the second conclusion is that popcorning of the last few beans for single dosers has a negligible effect.

results in a slightly coarser average particle size and a slightly tighter distribution

Re coarser average particle size, that's why the video suggests to set the grind finer. I will need to read the thread as I'm not sure I understand what "slightly tighter distribution" means and the implications of that...

I am getting old and weak, but still like using my HG-1 on occasion. I have found feeding beans in a little at a time makes it physically much easier.

bluecorr wrote:Re coarser average particle size, that's why the video suggests to set the grind finer. I will need to read the thread as I'm not sure I understand what "slightly tighter distribution" means and the implications of that...

Ah, so the tighter particle distribution is what really matters here. The fact that the average particle size is slightly coarser for feeding beans one by one vs. a filled hopper is important only because it reveals that you would have to grind finer than your usual grind setting if you were to switch to the one by one bean feeding method.

A tighter particle distribution means that your ground coffee is closer to the same particle size. This is important because you are going to get a more uniform extraction from the ground coffee: less overextracted fines and less underextracted boulders. If feeding the beans one by one didn't result in a tighter particle distribution, there would be no improvement in taste vs. the regular single dosing or full hopper bean feeding.

I should also add that I am too impatient to do the one by one bean feeding technique so I can't comment qualitatively on how much of a difference in taste it makes.

I hope to be done later tonight: