I roasted a batch of Peruvian Organic Grace Villa Estate a week ago.
Was pulling perfect shots two days ago. One of those rare instances I enjoy espresso by itself (i normally have long blacks).
Then suddenly, the beans started to change. I know beans change abit and adjust my grind accordingly, but this time, the beans started to have a very oily sheen to them.
I dropped my EM4080 grind setting by FOUR NOTCHES!!!!!11111 from what was ideal only two days before and it would still only pour less than 10ml in 30s. Five notches and it starts to resemble a normal pour.
Its a relatively dark roast: I wanted really minimal sourness in the cup. So I took it to a rolling second crack.
Didnt get to play much as i ran out of beans trying to get it right... but the bottom line is that I was finding dosing extremely difficult. The ground coffee seemed "wet" and just packed together when I pressed down with a tamper, even at very coarse settings. Visual inspection showed that it looked like compacted powder (that "powder cake" look). At the coarser grinds, it was very difficult to dose and level because of the "wet" nature of the grinds - they came out fluffy but you could compress them into the puck even with the flat back of a knife at 45 degrees when levelling.
Was pulling perfect shots two days ago. One of those rare instances I enjoy espresso by itself (i normally have long blacks).
Then suddenly, the beans started to change. I know beans change abit and adjust my grind accordingly, but this time, the beans started to have a very oily sheen to them.
I dropped my EM4080 grind setting by FOUR NOTCHES!!!!!11111 from what was ideal only two days before and it would still only pour less than 10ml in 30s. Five notches and it starts to resemble a normal pour.
Its a relatively dark roast: I wanted really minimal sourness in the cup. So I took it to a rolling second crack.
Didnt get to play much as i ran out of beans trying to get it right... but the bottom line is that I was finding dosing extremely difficult. The ground coffee seemed "wet" and just packed together when I pressed down with a tamper, even at very coarse settings. Visual inspection showed that it looked like compacted powder (that "powder cake" look). At the coarser grinds, it was very difficult to dose and level because of the "wet" nature of the grinds - they came out fluffy but you could compress them into the puck even with the flat back of a knife at 45 degrees when levelling.


Comment