Hi all,
I purchased a Sunbeam Em4300 the other day and I've not had much luck getting anything drinkable out of it yet.
Been messing around with grind size, dosing, tamping... Everything seems to come out under extracted. Apart from one coffee that was drinkable, that I hadn't done anything different with in the two following attempts. The two following ones did not come out well at all.
Anyway, I've noticed a few things and began some testing. Even when dosing the same, tamping the same, making sure there's no channels etc, the pour time can vary from 6 seconds to 14.
So I have just put two shot glasses under the portafilter, ran some single shots (manual says they are 30ml) and timed it.
When I hit the 30ml mark, I turned the shot off. If not it keeps dripping quite heavily for some time.
There's no coffee in the single filter in these test runs.
30ml Shot Times
16.23 secs
15.1 secs
17.22 secs
14.69 secs (note: the shot poured so fast on this one I missed the 30ml measurement. This was for 45ml)
15.67 secs
15.5 (also super fast, 45ml)
14.19
The 45ml is a bit worrying. If I had off let the pour drip our, it would been about 60ml. And of course the machine pushes out more than 30ml if you don't stop it too.
I also noticed, on a third of the pours, the water came out fairly evenly from both spouts. It favoured the left slightly, but only by about 5%.
On the rest of them, the water predominantly came out of the left spout. It's had something around 25ml in the left, 5ml in the right.
That doesn't seem like a good thing when trying to pass water evenly through coffee.
Anyway, is the above normal? Can I still make a good drink with this machine?
Thank you all!
I purchased a Sunbeam Em4300 the other day and I've not had much luck getting anything drinkable out of it yet.
Been messing around with grind size, dosing, tamping... Everything seems to come out under extracted. Apart from one coffee that was drinkable, that I hadn't done anything different with in the two following attempts. The two following ones did not come out well at all.
Anyway, I've noticed a few things and began some testing. Even when dosing the same, tamping the same, making sure there's no channels etc, the pour time can vary from 6 seconds to 14.
So I have just put two shot glasses under the portafilter, ran some single shots (manual says they are 30ml) and timed it.
When I hit the 30ml mark, I turned the shot off. If not it keeps dripping quite heavily for some time.
There's no coffee in the single filter in these test runs.
30ml Shot Times
16.23 secs
15.1 secs
17.22 secs
14.69 secs (note: the shot poured so fast on this one I missed the 30ml measurement. This was for 45ml)
15.67 secs
15.5 (also super fast, 45ml)
14.19
The 45ml is a bit worrying. If I had off let the pour drip our, it would been about 60ml. And of course the machine pushes out more than 30ml if you don't stop it too.
I also noticed, on a third of the pours, the water came out fairly evenly from both spouts. It favoured the left slightly, but only by about 5%.
On the rest of them, the water predominantly came out of the left spout. It's had something around 25ml in the left, 5ml in the right.
That doesn't seem like a good thing when trying to pass water evenly through coffee.
Anyway, is the above normal? Can I still make a good drink with this machine?
Thank you all!


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