Hi everyone,

second time posting here. I use a 1zpresso j-max and Breville Duo Temp Pro, and recently I've been slowly descending into madness. Let's start at the beginning.
About two weeks ago I bought some coffe from a new roaster, among which a washed castillo, medium/light roasted, which I planned to use mostly for espresso. First time I try it I aim for my usual starting point with light roasts, which is about 145 clicks from burrs locking, a little bit over halfway through the suggest espresso range. The result blows me away. Is this the "clarity" thing they all talk about? I try again: same. Super sweet, notes of honey, floral, lovely. I take the cup to my wife thinking now I just need to learn beatboxing and I'm Lance effing Hedrick.
You probably see where this is going: I could not recreate those two initial shots -once- in two weeks of trying. That night I disassembled my grinder for its weekly cleaning, and after that all of my espresso shots have been horrible. I grind coarse, super sour; I grind fine, sour and bitter. I aim for an almost turbo shot, just finer than coarse, and the result is drinkable but suuuuper muddled. It's driving me insane (note: on the other hand my moka pot game seems to be unaffected).
Now why am I thinking it may be the grinder? Well after that cleaning there was a tiny but noticeable change: before when it was empty the handle would rotate freely, easily going around four times with a little push, now it barely completes one. Something has a small bit more friction than before after I screw in the last piece. It could be irrelevant or it could be something small enough to affect espresso grind but not moka pot.
For context, my technique involves slow cranking the grinder, WDT, filter sandwich. I can't think of anything different I did those first two shots. If someone has an idea what might be happening, what I could do to test it or how it could be solved my mental health would be extremely grateful.

I would disassemble and reassemble the grinder again, who knows...

The fact that the Moka coffee is unaffected is due to the fact that small changes in grinding have small effects on Moka coffee, you have to change "several clicks" to notice a difference, IMHO. That's clearly never the case for espresso.

So I figured out the problem finally. It was not the grind or particle distribution and also not the ratio; the dose was the culprit. The Duo Temp does a pretty aggressive preinfusion, and I generally use a smaller dose for light roasts (15 g instead of 16.5), so there is more room left in the basket, which led the puck to lose some integrity (a pretty subtle difference, I couldn't tell by examining the puck, and it seems to affect this one coffe in particular). Anyway, I got back to the higher dose and things improved immediately, including, most importantly, my mental health.