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Macap M2M - fill hopper with only what you need?

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  • Macap M2M - fill hopper with only what you need?

    I've currently been filling my M2M hopper at least half way and then emptying the hopper back into the bag after making coffee - the reason being I felt the M2M had too much "popcorn" effect and thought it would affect the grind quality.

    I'm not so keen in the residual beans that sit in the neck of the grinder.

    Is anyone weighing the beans first and only dispensing say 20g at a time for each shot?

  • #2
    Yes, common practice.

    I weigh beans pour into throat of my grinder and sit my tamper on top to prevent popcorning (it's a perfect fit) I don't use the hopper at all.

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    • #3
      G'day, it seems the common answer is it depends, a lot say that it's best to fill the hopper as the burrs need a good weight of beans on them (or actually moreso there needs to be weight on top of the beans being pushed through) and it helps with getting a consistent grind, but many do indeed single dose (weigh out just what you need for the shot and grind that) with great success. Some also say that certain grinders are more built for single dosing purposes (Kafetek Monolith etc)

      In my experience I have found that if I switch from hopper dosing to single dosing, the single dose shot runs quite a lot faster and erratically, and definitely acts differently to when i have a full hopper. So whether that means it was inconsistently ground or not who knows, but you can adjust finer accordingly and see how you go. I would experiment and see which suits you better.

      With my Rocky grinder I single dosed for years for some reason believing that was the only way to do it, and got awesome results (also the fact that I couldn't really close and remove the hopper was another reason hehe).

      I currently fill the hopper and decant it back into the bag when I'm done, and for the throat being full of beans issue, I bought a bug vacuum which works great in removing all the beans (except 3 or 4 stubborn beans) out into a canister, no wastage there

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Yelta View Post
        Yes, common practice.

        I weigh beans pour into throat of my grinder and sit my tamper on top to prevent popcorning (it's a perfect fit) I don't use the hopper at all.
        I do the exact same thing - except I use a plastic take away sauce container that also doubles as a vessel to weigh beans into. Don't use the hopper at all as I am single dosing with a measured weight of beans.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by simonsk8r View Post

          I currently fill the hopper and decant it back into the bag when I'm done, and for the throat being full of beans issue, I bought a bug vacuum which works great in removing all the beans (except 3 or 4 stubborn beans) out into a canister, no wastage there
          Sounds like a lot of messing around Simon, filling and emptying hopper after each session is needlessly exposing the beans to air, would certainly not help with retaining freshness.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by WhatEverBeansNecessary View Post
            I do the exact same thing - except I use a plastic take away sauce container that also doubles as a vessel to weigh beans into. Don't use the hopper at all as I am single dosing with a measured weight of beans.
            Just goes to show, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Yelta View Post
              Sounds like a lot of messing around Simon, filling and emptying hopper after each session is needlessly exposing the beans to air, would certainly not help with retaining freshness.
              Yeah it's one of those things ay Yelta, I know many others on this forum that do hopper dosing and say pretty certainly that it hasn't to their palate and extraction-wise affected the freshness of the beans. Some even leave the beans in there for a couple of days (which I don't do) and they can't discern any notable difference. Of course there's been a fair bit of discussion about this around on the forum, and I guess it really just depends huh..

              Hopper dosing is something I was quite resistant to doing for some time, but eventually came round to it as I tried it and saw just how much more consistent it seemed for pours (and this of course may be grinder dependent for sure in terms of single dosing grind consistency). And I haven't detected any real decline in freshness.

              I don't actually fully fill the hopper either, maybe fill 1/4 to a 1/3 just so there's sufficient weight in there, and those beans are usually ground through within a few days anyway. But of course I'm always open to suggestions for sure

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              • #8
                Originally posted by simonsk8r View Post
                Yeah it's one of those things ay Yelta, I know many others on this forum that do hopper dosing and say pretty certainly that it hasn't to their palate and extraction-wise affected the freshness of the beans. Some even leave the beans in there for a couple of days (which I don't do) and they can't discern any notable difference. Of course there's been a fair bit of discussion about this around on the forum, and I guess it really just depends huh..

                Hopper dosing is something I was quite resistant to doing for some time, but eventually came round to it as I tried it and saw just how much more consistent it seemed for pours (and this of course may be grinder dependent for sure in terms of single dosing grind consistency). And I haven't detected any real decline in freshness.

                I don't actually fully fill the hopper either, maybe fill 1/4 to a 1/3 just so there's sufficient weight in there, and those beans are usually ground through within a few days anyway. But of course I'm always open to suggestions for sure
                Certainly not my experience Simon, I can detect a marked deterioration if roasted beans are left exposed to air for 24 hours, ground coffee deteriorates even more rapidly, after just 15 hours it's undrinkable, I conducted a series of tests some time ago.
                It's a mantra that's worth repeating, store beans in one way valve bags in a cool dark place until you use them.

                I suspect a large percentage of problems related on this forum come down to this issue.

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                • #9
                  Regular and constant 35+ degree C days and no air con = I do not keep beans in a hopper semi-exposed to those elements - they degrade too quickly in hot conditions for me. BTW, I acquired (thank you Mrs) a 1/4 cup Tupperware measuring cup that sits very nicely in the throat of a mazzer mini, when single dose grinding, and holds (roughly) 20g of roasted coffee beans. I weigh beans in, brush and sweep out, and I weigh extraction. Beans are stored on the pantry floor in valve bags.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Yelta View Post
                    Certainly not my experience Simon, I can detect a marked deterioration if roasted beans are left exposed to air for 24 hours, ground coffee deteriorates even more rapidly, after just 15 hours it's undrinkable, I conducted a series of tests some time ago.
                    It's a mantra that's worth repeating, store beans in one way valve bags in a cool dark place until you use them.

                    I suspect a large percentage of problems related on this forum come down to this issue.
                    Fair enough, and that's good to know. But I wouldn't think leaving the beans in the hopper for only a couple of hours before putting back would have a massive deterioration.. (24 hours maybe a different story). Definitely for already ground coffee, but surely not whole beans for a couple of hours before they are decanted back into their one way valve bag.

                    I speak moreso from inquisitive curiosity rather than making conclusive statements, am genuinely curious hehe. It just seems that a lot of people say that most grinders are designed to be used for hopper dosing (I don't know enough about grinders to speak on this), so I do this for consistency purposes, but am happy to play around with single dosing with my Compak K3 Touch and see what happens. If others have also noted that leaving beans in the hopper for a couple of hours does indeed affect freshness dramatically then I shall definitely consider switching.

                    Ps. Am glad this topic has come back again hehe, would love for some of the other experienced folk to weigh in

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                    • #11
                      This thread is great timing, I have recently won a Macap M2M at a local coffee festival this past weekend which I still have to pick up. I had been mentally willing my Smart Grinder Pro to die so that I could upgrade but the pesky thing is going strong, but this has been a better outcome!

                      As my preference is to single-dose I'll keep these tricks in mind as I'd rather not have to continuously fill & empty the hopper when I'm making only one or two coffees at a time (which is about 95% of the time).

                      I've already had a dig around the forum for other tricks, however does anyone care to offer any pointers?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by WhatEverBeansNecessary View Post
                        I do the exact same thing - except I use a plastic take away sauce container that also doubles as a vessel to weigh beans into. Don't use the hopper at all as I am single dosing with a measured weight of beans.
                        Towards the end of the grind, you're still going to end out with a situation where beans have nothing directly above them. I've tried a similar approach (and it does help), but my M2M is still more consistent if there are beans in the grind chamber throughout the grinding process. My M2M seems to be a bit more picky about this than my other grinders.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Barry O'Speedwagon View Post
                          Towards the end of the grind, you're still going to end out with a situation where beans have nothing directly above them. I've tried a similar approach (and it does help), but my M2M is still more consistent if there are beans in the grind chamber throughout the grinding process. My M2M seems to be a bit more picky about this than my other grinders.
                          Agree - it is more of a pain in the ass and the last bean or two will bounce around but eventually will get gobbled up in the process.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by simonsk8r View Post
                            In my experience I have found that if I switch from hopper dosing to single dosing, the single dose shot runs quite a lot faster and erratically, and definitely acts differently to when i have a full hopper.
                            I noticed that this morning when I tried it - I'll play around with grinding a bit finer to see if it improves.

                            I'll also do some checks to see how much it retains (if any) to make sure if I'm weighing out 20g I'm getting 20g in the basket.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by CoffeeHack View Post
                              This thread is great timing, I have recently won a Macap M2M at a local coffee festival this past weekend which I still have to pick up. I had been mentally willing my Smart Grinder Pro to die so that I could upgrade but the pesky thing is going strong, but this has been a better outcome!

                              As my preference is to single-dose I'll keep these tricks in mind as I'd rather not have to continuously fill & empty the hopper when I'm making only one or two coffees at a time (which is about 95% of the time).

                              I've already had a dig around the forum for other tricks, however does anyone care to offer any pointers?
                              Ah congrats on the win, that's awesome! As for filling and emptying hopper, some mornings I can only fit one coffee in, and honestly doesn't take me long at all, I'll time it next time, but I would say it's maybe 30 seconds all up. Close the gate, decant into bag, bug vacuum the rest and tip canister into bag, fairly quick.

                              But up to you of course, experiment with single dosing, when I did it I added a couple of grams extra first to purge through to get rid of any old grinds then put my proper amount in. If anything single dosing can be more time consuming depending on how you go about it (purge through little extra, sweep out, vacuum, grind up dose amount, brush excess beans into burrs as you go if they land outside burr area, purge, sweep out, purge etc).

                              Originally posted by WhatEverBeansNecessary View Post
                              Agree - it is more of a pain in the ass and the last bean or two will bounce around but eventually will get gobbled up in the process.
                              Yeah it's moreso what Barry alluded to, that the weight on top of the beans is pushing the beans through the burrs more consistently, resulting in a much more even consistent grind. But I'm no grinder expert at all so can't really confirm this, it does make sense, but many pros who go through kilos and kilos in a day do attest to this dodgy shot when you get to the last dregs of beans. Really must depend on grinder design perhaps..

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