Yeah it takes some experimentation to get the grind right. One trick I do is pull the carafe at the beginning to disengage the switch to get an immersion going then stir it a bit with a spoon, let it bloom about 30s to 1m. In addition to the priming / offgassing effect, I’ve found that it produces a more even finishing bed which tends to be sort of cratered because the water primarily drips down the middle.
I saw that tip in the video I watched. I thought you were exclusively a pour over guy
I bought the machine just to have one when it was on sale. It’s mostly for serving family / guests large batches since everything else I own is aimed at single dosing. I planned to use it for experiments since it controls some of the variability of hand pouring but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
If you still have upgradeitis, the Fellow Ode would probably be a good pick if you want to venture into delicate coffees that benefit from high clarity. Dunno if I would recommend going for a deal on Gen 1 or just paying up for Gen 2 but don’t think you could go wrong either way. There really isn’t a cheaper way to get into flat burrs that doesn’t involve Chinese knockoffs afaik.
Tbh I just want to hone this into making a pot as close to my French press as possible. I like my beans and I like the product I was getting.
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bump, haven’t used these filters very much but found a way easier way to “fix” this, I just push down very gently on the top edge of the filter when rinsing it, so that it’s all the way in the cone when the water hits it. I’m 99% sure it’s the excess material “lifting” the filter up out of the cone, then when the water hits it, it just “sticks” wherever and it’s just not in the right place. this is why giving it a tug also works, but pushing it into place before you pour the rinse is a lot easier than tugging it into position after you rinse.
moccamaster I presume?
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Ah yeah this is what I’ve been doing for close to 10 years I guess and it’s so routine for me that I didn’t even think about it until you mentioned it. That said, sometimes the filters really do not fit the cone well which is baffling, because on the last batch of 02 filters I had there’s no way I could get that gap you were showing regardless of pushing, pulling, or not.
I tried this pink bourbon again at 21 days rest and it’s still not quite there. I’m grinding ridiculously fine at 4M/5A and pouring off boil (208+) at 16:1. Even made sure to dig and stir the slurry during bloom so everything was wet, and it’s still borderline underextracted.
The reason I was immediately enthralled with Apollon’s Gold is because they give advice on rest specific to the coffee. It’s not exactly in a roaster’s best interest to say you need to rest a coffee for 30 to 60 days, but it also indicates that they are serious about actually brewing these correctly. Not too many roasters out there saying “oh btw u gotta wait 2 months for this to pop.” I’d bet some of these roasters have never even tasted their coffees brewed optimally.
I noticed he has a stone warning up on some of the coffees so probably want to double check every dose of AG before grinding. It wasn’t clear to me if this is just general advice or if they don’t have / aren’t confident in a sorting device, but that would be a stupid way to break your grinder.
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yeah I noticed that as well and it had never occurred to me that something like this might happen. My wife hand sorts dry beans before soaking them looking for little pebbles even though we’ve never found one, she just claims this is what her mother and grandmother did when making red beans while she was growing up in louisiana. In any case I definitely won’t get to those bags for a while, I have at least a kilo of beans ahead of them.
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Was it just some of the coffees or all of the coffees?
If the latter. It’s less worrying.
They only list that warning on some of the coffees, but I’d check every dose since breaking your grinder is expensive. It’s a good habit to get into for every dose you grind tbh.
want to get into COOL POUR OVER COFFEE but find all the EXTRA WORK of … (squints at notes) putting a filter in the V60 is just TOO MUCH? Good news!
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finally did the flap trick on the vario+, wow there’s a lot of grinds inside this thing.
I suppose a re-calibration would make sense at this point?
That’s weird, I don’t think there should be a lot of grinds inside it. If I remember right, there’s a rubber gasket around the grind chamber that prevents coffee from getting down into the machine, or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen. If your touch point is good and you get a clean marker wipe then I don’t see any reason to recalibrate.
I should have taken a picture before I blew it all out, it was more than I was expecting but not like an obscene amount I guess. There is a gasket at the bottom of the chute, I didn’t notice anything at the top of the chute other than the flap. THere’s nothing really sealing the top, little pieces of chaff and fines could easily float up out of the top burr and then get between the top burr and the back casing, and then fall down into the innards.
btw, how do you remove the front faceplate from the Vario+? Everything I found was just about the regular old vario or forte. I was able to pry off the metal parts of the adjustment levers but on the + there is still too much plastic and I don’t see how the faceplate will come off. Didn’t really matter anyway, even though everything I read about doing the chute mod said to remove it. the faceplate never budged even after removing the center screw and the two other screws up under there, but I managed to get the chute out without removing it.
Maybe the metal innards don’t have this piece, but on the plastic grind chamber mine has a rubber gasket / collar I guess you’d call it, and its purpose appears to be to seal off the machine from the coffee. I found its fit to be rather dubious on mine which could be expected due to age. Only pic I can quickly find is here. It’s that black ring around the tab and under the upper burr holder tabs on the plastic chamber.
Found the parts lists and they all should have it. Here it is (item 5, part #8224) for the Vario+:
https://baratza.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/vario-plev-v1.1.pdf
I absolutely did not do this to flip the flapper. My feeling about removing the plastic adjustment knobs is 
because seems like they’d be easy to snap. I have the older style obviously which are more delicate but they are super easy to snap off.