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Need a little guidance on grinding (self.coffee)

submitted 4 months ago by Bronzie to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Morning Gentlepeople.

As a coffee newbie I am having some small issues while trying to improve my game. I have a Oracle Touch and subscrube to a local monthly coffee delivery, so my beans change weekly.

My issue is that the grind setting is incredibly different from bean to bean. With my last bag, grind 14 gave a perfect 1:2,5 ratio. With a different bean today, I had to discard two cups before learning that grind size 3 gave me the same ratio. 14 gave me 1:3,5 which tasted rubbish.

The problem is that I got channeling and very little crema.

I guess the questions are: do different beans require completely different ratios or am I doing something very wrong?
Should I accept a very high ratio to avoid channeling on certain beans?
Or should my timer be lower on certain beans?

Thanks in advance for any help and have a great cup this morning!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The darker the roast, the lighter a bean should be. You could count a number of beans you have your numbers right and get decent results with, weigh them, and thus compare their roast to that of other beans. That way you‘d be able to find out if your achieved ratios are tied to the roast. Maybe you could even work out a scale telling you what to expect, a ballpark to get your ratio somewhat right when opening a new bag of beans.

That said, I’m only citing theory here, don’t take what I say as the last word on anything :)

[–] Bronzie 3 points 4 months ago

Appreciate you taking the time!

I’ll do some volume/weight tests and see what the difference is. If it’s lighter than I thought, a higher ratio is what I should be going for anyways.

Cheers mate!

[–] Bronzie 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ok I just did a quick weight test and the difference is massive!

The store bought beans are marked 6/7 darkness and gave me close to 60 ml of volume.
The subscription without marking gave me <50 ml for the same weight. That's allmost a 20 % difference in weight even though they look very similar!

I'll do another test with an exact number of beans to confirm, but I've learned a lot already. Maybe my 1:3,5 ratio wasn't half bad after all and what to actually expect from such a light roast.

This is cool stuff! Much obliged again!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Counting beans isn't particularly helpful, either, cause they come in a range of sizes. A pacamara bean, for example, is huge, while peaberries of any variety will be tiny. Coffee mills generally sort beans to consistent sizes so they roast well, but you could get coffee from the same farm from 2 different roasters, and each roaster could be buying different sized beans.