Yeah, don't let me tell you what tastes good! In my limited experience balanced always tastes best. Balanced just means that all the different flavour components are in sync. A 20s shot is much more likely to be underextracted and therefore have too much of the extremely sour, face-sucking flavours.
Though thinking about it, that wouldn't be too far off how I used to run by old Breville BES800. I think primarily due to the grinder not going fine enough, but can't test now as the machine is long gone from my hands.
It would be a very interesting experiment to go back to some of the equipment I used early on with the knowledge and experience I have now, and especially with the quality of beans I'm using now. I feel like the equipment wasn't as much the weak link in the chain as I used to think
