Gday everyone,
its been a while since my last post on these pages. During my pause from posting I tried to achieve constant extractions on my Classic+MDF combo. Sadly it all seems to fall to pieces
For the last two weeks Ive been using some defrozen Brazil/Bali "fresh" roasted beans. They seemed to work pretty well, I was grinding very near the "0" setting on my MDF, but the extractions were really slow. I got dripping at the start and a small cone with a steady stream. The beans were really oily and it was a dark roast, so it had some more bitterish flavours, but I kind of liked it.
Last week my batch ended so I ordered some new beans, all pure arabicas, 4 different kinds. It all arrived yesterday and with a big grin on my face I opened one pack to smell some fresh coffee and see how the roast looks like. Currently Im using Sulawesi Toraja beans, its a medium dark roast, mostly brown and light brown beans, roasted on th 21st of June. I poured around 200g to a small SS container and put the rest in the freezer to keep it fresh.
After measuring 18.5g on my electronic scale I poured it into the grinder, set somewhere around 0.5, which means its a pretty fine grind. Did all the usuall stuff, so grind into a cup, poured it into the basket (double), distributed with my needle tool and tamped. The tamp was fearly light, around 10kg max with a nutating motion to seal the edges, because my Torr is slightly smaller than the basket. Hit the brew button and watched with a stupid look on my face as the pour went into the huge cone phase in around 10s. It also went blond quite fast. I stoped the extraction faster and looked into the cup. The crema had millions of bubbles on top and it disappeared almost entirely within 30s. Thought to myself: "Hmm the grind is probably to course", so I went back to almost 0 and tried it again. The extraction was very similar to the first one, only a bit slower, but still a huge cone and unstable crema. So heres when I ask the question:
What the hell is going on!!??
I will just add that recently I lowered the pressure on the basket to around 9.5bars using a manometer. Im using week old coffee, which was stored in a tight sealed bag (with a valve) since the roasting process. Im grinding on a setting of 0,1. Im using 18.5g in a double basket which is still a lot and yet it all seems to fail. I tried split dosing, one tamp methods, nutating motion and other weird techniques and still nothing. I even ordered a set of new burrs and a custom made tamper, but it just feels too hard. This is just coffee not positronic destillation of subatomic particles, is it suppose to be so damn difficult? I think it might be the burrs on my MDF, so theres still some hope, but if the new set works like the old one Im going to throw the MDF out the window. I might be also getting some side channeling, because when I dont do the nutating motion the pours are mostly blond gushers.
I dont know what to do, Im annoyed and I dont really know whats going on. Gonna grab me a glass of water, because it looks like coffee hates me. Or my Classic is one picky mean machine.
Cheers,
dsc.
its been a while since my last post on these pages. During my pause from posting I tried to achieve constant extractions on my Classic+MDF combo. Sadly it all seems to fall to pieces

For the last two weeks Ive been using some defrozen Brazil/Bali "fresh" roasted beans. They seemed to work pretty well, I was grinding very near the "0" setting on my MDF, but the extractions were really slow. I got dripping at the start and a small cone with a steady stream. The beans were really oily and it was a dark roast, so it had some more bitterish flavours, but I kind of liked it.
Last week my batch ended so I ordered some new beans, all pure arabicas, 4 different kinds. It all arrived yesterday and with a big grin on my face I opened one pack to smell some fresh coffee and see how the roast looks like. Currently Im using Sulawesi Toraja beans, its a medium dark roast, mostly brown and light brown beans, roasted on th 21st of June. I poured around 200g to a small SS container and put the rest in the freezer to keep it fresh.
After measuring 18.5g on my electronic scale I poured it into the grinder, set somewhere around 0.5, which means its a pretty fine grind. Did all the usuall stuff, so grind into a cup, poured it into the basket (double), distributed with my needle tool and tamped. The tamp was fearly light, around 10kg max with a nutating motion to seal the edges, because my Torr is slightly smaller than the basket. Hit the brew button and watched with a stupid look on my face as the pour went into the huge cone phase in around 10s. It also went blond quite fast. I stoped the extraction faster and looked into the cup. The crema had millions of bubbles on top and it disappeared almost entirely within 30s. Thought to myself: "Hmm the grind is probably to course", so I went back to almost 0 and tried it again. The extraction was very similar to the first one, only a bit slower, but still a huge cone and unstable crema. So heres when I ask the question:
What the hell is going on!!??
I will just add that recently I lowered the pressure on the basket to around 9.5bars using a manometer. Im using week old coffee, which was stored in a tight sealed bag (with a valve) since the roasting process. Im grinding on a setting of 0,1. Im using 18.5g in a double basket which is still a lot and yet it all seems to fail. I tried split dosing, one tamp methods, nutating motion and other weird techniques and still nothing. I even ordered a set of new burrs and a custom made tamper, but it just feels too hard. This is just coffee not positronic destillation of subatomic particles, is it suppose to be so damn difficult? I think it might be the burrs on my MDF, so theres still some hope, but if the new set works like the old one Im going to throw the MDF out the window. I might be also getting some side channeling, because when I dont do the nutating motion the pours are mostly blond gushers.
I dont know what to do, Im annoyed and I dont really know whats going on. Gonna grab me a glass of water, because it looks like coffee hates me. Or my Classic is one picky mean machine.
Cheers,
dsc.


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