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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] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The short answer is that there are a lot of variables, so your process has to be dialed in per bean, which is why most people end up just sticking with 1 type of beans.

Different roast levels are going to have different densities. Different bean varieties (and localities) are going to have different density and size. The age of the bean comes into play as well.

Some variables affect the actual brewing, others affect how the beans grind. Every once in a while, i'll have a bean that just seems to make more fines for whatever reason. I guess it's just down to the stiffness of the bean and the size.

If you want to be able to switch beans at will, you'll need to keep notes for each variety, and adjust back and forth as needed.

I don't think you'll be able to get a new bean right on your first shot no matter how you try to adjust. If you adjust for one variable, there's still all the others.

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

It’s starting to dawn on me that you might be right.

I think I’ll keep trying different beans to test a lot of different coffee before landing on one variety and order that instead.

I’ve gotten a lot of really good advice here today that I’ll use in my future brewing career.

Thanks for taking the time, mate!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

If you’re gonna do that you can also try cupping beans first to get a sense of what they taste like before properly extracting them. I roast as well and this always helps get like the essence of the bean/roast profile’s taste down so I know how I want to extract.