I've had my Breville Dual Boiler and Smart Grinder Pro for a few years now and gave up end of last year feeling I wasn't getting the right results. I made cappuccinos and some of the problems were:
--
Q1. I felt the coffee was often weak and that not much liquid was coming out. I always used the single wall "double shot" basket so it felt there should be more.
But amazingly today after reading it seems "double shot" really means "1/4 extra coffee, and output = 2x input". So these are still relatively small and you'd use one pull for a small cappuccino and two pulls for a larger 250/300g cup right?
Q2. I often tried different brands of freshly roasted local coffee, but no matter what I did the pressure would drop during extraction from 9 bars to 7 bars; but if I ground any finer then I would choke up the machine.
But today I read it's fine and even common during extraction for the pressure to drop. It doesn't happen on every kind of bean but it does on some. Is that right? Or is my grinder not up to par?
Q3. Also my pre-infusion seems to only stop between 7-10s so the 9 bar pressure is definitely only built up by 10s, so my shots often took 34s-40s to complete. I felt this was wrong because I kept reading "30s, it should always take 30s". But I don't know if when people say this it includes Breville's pre-infusion time. Do I need to worry about that?
--
Anyway today I cleaned up the machine and gave it another shot (pun intended) on my most consistent local beans roasted 13 days ago. This time I took some measurements.
17.8s grind level 3, 34s extraction, 18g input, 9 bars, 29g output
18.8s grind level 3, 34s extraction, 20g input, 9 bars,15g output (so I've packed in too much)
17.8s grind level 3, 40s extraction, 18g input, 9 bars, 39g output (came out a little watery - this is where I often went before)
17.8s grind level 4, 40s extraction, 19g input, 9 bars dropping to 7.5/8 bars at the end, 39g output (this one looked very creamy on top and tasted the best)
Does this sound reasonable? I felt I was a failure at making coffee and was on the boarder of going back to a Nespresso machine.
Thanks
--
Q1. I felt the coffee was often weak and that not much liquid was coming out. I always used the single wall "double shot" basket so it felt there should be more.
But amazingly today after reading it seems "double shot" really means "1/4 extra coffee, and output = 2x input". So these are still relatively small and you'd use one pull for a small cappuccino and two pulls for a larger 250/300g cup right?
Q2. I often tried different brands of freshly roasted local coffee, but no matter what I did the pressure would drop during extraction from 9 bars to 7 bars; but if I ground any finer then I would choke up the machine.
But today I read it's fine and even common during extraction for the pressure to drop. It doesn't happen on every kind of bean but it does on some. Is that right? Or is my grinder not up to par?
Q3. Also my pre-infusion seems to only stop between 7-10s so the 9 bar pressure is definitely only built up by 10s, so my shots often took 34s-40s to complete. I felt this was wrong because I kept reading "30s, it should always take 30s". But I don't know if when people say this it includes Breville's pre-infusion time. Do I need to worry about that?
--
Anyway today I cleaned up the machine and gave it another shot (pun intended) on my most consistent local beans roasted 13 days ago. This time I took some measurements.
17.8s grind level 3, 34s extraction, 18g input, 9 bars, 29g output
18.8s grind level 3, 34s extraction, 20g input, 9 bars,15g output (so I've packed in too much)
17.8s grind level 3, 40s extraction, 18g input, 9 bars, 39g output (came out a little watery - this is where I often went before)
17.8s grind level 4, 40s extraction, 19g input, 9 bars dropping to 7.5/8 bars at the end, 39g output (this one looked very creamy on top and tasted the best)
Does this sound reasonable? I felt I was a failure at making coffee and was on the boarder of going back to a Nespresso machine.
Thanks

Comment