Hi everyone.
I have two grinders: old Nemox Lux with the stepless adjustment mod and new Specalita. I make shots on Lelit Elizabeth.
After spending a few pounds of beans I couldn't dial in my Specialita - even on a turk range the flow is too big, many channels etc...

I start thinking it was grinder, and go back to store, but they made a perfect shot. When I got home with their settings and beans I got this: And again the adjustment did not much.

I have no problems with the tamping using the paperclip and distribution tool. And I have no idea what could be wrong.

What I usually get with Nemox:

How about beans, are they freshly roasted? That is typically the culprit, it happened to me some time ago.

Yes, freshly roasted beans from local roaster. I bought the beans they used.

Have you compared the grinds from both the grinders? How do they compare?

Are you grinding at lowest possible setting on specialita?

SCespresso wrote:Are you grinding at lowest possible setting on specialita?

The Specialita doesn't have a stop at the zero point, so at the lowest possible setting, the burrs will touch. Please don't go quite that far. But it sure looks like you need to grind finer.

Here's what I would do:

1. Clean the grinder thoroughly.

2. Find the true 0 (burr first chirping point).

3. Grind as fine as you can and see if you can choke your espresso machine.

4. From there, adjust the grind coarser and see if you can improve your extractions.

5. If this doesn't work, I'd consider checking the burrs alignment and/or contacting the seller.

Have you compared the grinds from both the grinders? How do they compare?
Are you grinding at lowest possible setting on specialita?

Yes, they are very similar. Maybe a slightly different shade. I tried very fine setting, and the flow is less, but very overextracted.

Here's what I would do:

My true 0 between 4 and 5, setings on video is 2. I've spend all day trying adgust the burrs alignment, and got almost full touch, but have no change.

or contacting the seller

I was already back to the saler, but they didn't have any problem with my grinder. They did a perfect shot for me.

Few Qs:

1) When you said that the dealer did a perfect shot for you, what does that mean? Did they use your grinder on their machine?

2) What size/brand of portafilter basket are you using?

3) when you grind beans in the Specialita, how are you measuring the amount of ground coffee to put into the basket?

4) Same question as #3 for your old grinder

After ruling out stale coffee (you're using the exact beans from the dealer) and a faulty grinder (the dealer used your grinder to produce good espresso from their machine), another explanation is that you aren't dosing enough in your basket to achieve the desired output time. So that leads me to a couple of reasons why: 1) your basket is too big for your dose, or 2) your grinder is retaining too much coffee, thus giving you less than the expected coffee grinds in the basket.

Auctor wrote:Few Qs

1) Yes, they use my grinder and their prof machine.
2) Its lelit 58mm portafilter and Lelit 18g basket (I tried another no name 18g basket - no difference).
3, 4) I do all the measurements on an 0.1g accurate scale.

I'll try the 20g basket later and let you know if anything changes.

cnm.h wrote:My true 0 between 4 and 5, setings on video is 2.

So you still have half turn to dial, right?