This is from an SCAA document I was reading earlier. It articulates the point I was making a while back that you can’t trust your eye to determine grind size. This appears to be from a presentation slide deck with some redundant info but there’s good stuff in here. You’ll notice that they either do a ro-tap or laser particle measurement. Both are prohibitively expensive for home / hobbyists, so they devised this “single sieve hand shake” ro-tap method that’s standard for cupping.
Wow who ever knew coffee could get so intense? I don’t see the pour over method of brewing in that .pdf. Is that the same as drip?
No need to answer. I’ll have so many questions. Bottom line is that grind seems very important and I’ll go with the more expensive hand grinder that ripdog recommeneded.
At this point you probably won’t notice much difference between a higher end grinder and your gf’s electric. I think trying different beans and grinding them just before brewing is a fine place to start exploring. I jumped from drip to french press, then the Aeropress was my go-to for 10 years or so. That was a huge step up and you can pick one up for $35 or less and make a cup that blows drip coffee away.
Every person in this thread? There’s a lot to learn if you treat it like a science, and a lot of these discoveries have only become common knowledge within the past decade or two. When I see “drip” I usually think of machine, but drip / pourover / percolation are all basically the same method (gravity pulling water through a grinds and a filter) and can be used somewhat interchangeably.
Hoffman had his hands on your new grinder before it was officially released back in December and put it up against a [wait for it…] $500,000 industrial roller mill. Every person who is here for grinders should watch this. Very rarely do we get to see some Real McCoy shit like this where a dude straight up puts a Baratza Vario on a laser with a $500k machine, and there’s an amazing point illustrated here that I made in the first post of the thread: the returns on the dollar for this stuff are highly nonlinear.
Random observation:
That’s a 9W with an unknown calibration point. I default to 9A (closed @ 1F) for new coffees, but it’s probably +/- half a grind setting depending on his calibration (most likely 2Q from factory). So what on earth is this 4M nonsense about?
I see a lot of people parroting this grind setting on forums. Is everyone on crack or wtf is going on here exactly?
my last two bags on the vario (with the ceramic burrs) have ended around 7K
where is that table from?
baratza
The outer ring is the part that’s machined to tolerance and what you’ll be shimming. That’s why you want to use as few pieces of foil as possible and avoid tightening the screws too much. You could use Loctite, might even be a good idea, but you’d need to be sure you have alignment first. See this thread:
Well I can’t use these burrs anyway. Check out this shit machining of the screw holes
Compare to the proper matching on this one
Wtf?
just shitty QC. the screws won’t go straight through so as soon as you try to tighten them it’s obvious something is wrong. Luckily I backed them out first rather than force them through. Anyway, I guess it will be at least saturday before I get another set at this rate.
It’s incredible to me that those actually left the factory. Are they being mass produced in China now or some shit? Wouldn’t surprise me.
Idk but baratza support responded to my email in like 12 minutes and they’re sending a new set.
Not enough knowledge to follow most conversations here, but know enough to realize that’s crazy. It must’ve just slipped past QC
I just made my first (ever?) cup of coffee. It was drinkable but slightly bitter, took about 4 mins to drain (v60) and the grounds looked on the muddy side. Grind coarser and try again?
Also I’m just putting what I want in the grinder and running through all of it, I think this is standard. I put in 15 g and got 11 g out, lots of bean shards jumped out of the burrs and got stranded in the hopper. Anything I can do better here?
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Like this is my hopper post grind. Feels like a lot left up there. And that’s a half bean out of focus.
I doubt anyone wants to hear my trials and tribulations into brewing, but maybe it will read like a comedy to some. Hopefully, it will bring back memories and I’m not the only one who struggled out of the gate?
Trial 1
Result: Abject failure
All my stuff arrived yesterday and I didn’t have much time before a meeting. I quickly looked over the 1Zpresso JX hand grinder (took it apart to familiarize myself a bit and set it to what I thought was the proper grind for a pour over), checked out the scale, and washed out the kettle and V60 with dish soap and water. Oh boy here we go!
I conflated ratios I saw on different charts and used 15g of coffee to 150g of water (or 10:1?). I poured for maybe a minute, let it bloom for 30 seconds, and resumed pouring using delicate swirling motions. When finished, I stirred it gently with a spoon and waited for filter to drain. What I wound up with was slightly less than 1/2 cup of what I’d call a couple shots of espresso. Tasted decent after I put some cream and sugar in it, but waaaay too strong for me! I was jonesing like a field mouse for the rest of the day
Trial 2
Result: Worse than trial 1. wtf?!..
This time I thought I had worked out the kinks ahead of time. I set the grinder a couple clicks in the direction I thought was more course, weighed out 21g of beans, 370g of water (30g for rinsing filter) for a 16:1 ratio. While the hand grinder worked like a charm last time, today I couldn’t get it going! I adjusted the beans and still nothing. Finally, I got it going with a couple of starts and stops. Eventually, it was grinding non stop and I’d say done in about 40 seconds or so. My water was heated just under boiling and I rinsed off the filter. Then dumped the grounded coffee in, set it, and started the slow pour. After about 1 minute and 40g of water I let it bloom for 30 seconds. Then resumed slowly pouring over the next minute and a half, letting it drain for 1/2 minute.
Well, it yielded the proper amount of liquid, but it seemed even stronger than the batch yesterday! How can that be? Even with sugar and cream it tasted way too strong and even bitter
Adjustments: Even though I think the grinder is the least of my problems, I probably should calibrate it so I know where dead zero is. Right now, I have no idea what setting it’s really on (somewhere near the middle). The only other adjustment I can think of is to use less beans? Maybe something like 16g and 350g of water (~22:1)? Granted, I’m not using the best quality beans (O Organic medium roast Arabica), but I made a very good cup with a cheap electric grinder and auto drip a couple days ago. No reason my pour over should be WORSE. Clearly, I have much to learn and am open to any suggestions
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