Barista Magazine

APR-MAY 2017

Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005

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SPRING HAS FINALLY SPRUNG here in the beautiful Pacifi c Northwest, though for us that means another few months of rain with a little bit of sunshine thrown in just to get our hopes up. It also means more people out and about looking to socialize after months of winter hibernation, and much of that catching up transpires over great coffee at a local café. So café owners: Did you get that deep spring cleaning and maintenance done on your equipment yet? Good. We knew we could count on you guys! How can I get my grinder to dose more consistently? Well, I'm going to assume your grinder is using time as the parameter you adjust to control the dose, rath- er than weight. Espresso grinders that use time to portion-control the dose (which we want to be a specifi c weight like, say 20 grams) are a little bit tricky to keep accurate 100 percent of the time. This is because there are a number of factors playing into how much coffee can get through your burrs in a given amount of time. A few of them are easily controllable. Sharp burrs are going to have a much easier time pushing coffee through than dull ones generally. Additionally, though, as the burrs get dull, you need to tighten your grind up more and more to get the shots to extract in the perfect window of time while pulling them. When you tighten up the grind, you are putting the burrs closer and closer together, and you can therefore fi t less and less coffee between them, resulting in it taking longer to grind that 20 grams than it did when the burrs were fresh and sharp. Dull burrs also tend to hold back more coffee in the grinding chamber, and then sporadically release some of that held-back coffee. When that hap- pens, you would defi nitely notice a wild dose inconsis- tency from one shot to the next (e.g., you got 20 grams the last three shots you pulled, and 24 grams this time). You can easily avoid this scenario by changing your burrs on a proper schedule. Your local tech can help you determine how many pounds or kilos of coffee your particular burrs are rated for, and when they should be changed based on your volume. Another factor typically out of the barista's control is the coffee itself. The roaster may change the beans that go into a blend, or the time they release it from the roaster to achieve a specifi c fl avor profi le, which can alter the size of the beans, the density—any number of things. Changes at the roaster level can also effect how much coffee gets through the burrs in a given amount of time. This dynamic is unavoidable, and you just have to reset and roll with it. Someday soon we may have more available espresso grinders that dose based on weight (there are a few out there now, so be on the lookout). Ultimately, if weight is what we want to mea- sure, then we need weight to be the way the grinder is measuring, rather than measuring by time. ÑAlex ILLUSTRATION BY PHIL MARKEL Meet High Maintenance columnists and equipment specialists Alex and Double J at the Global Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle! From 1–3 p.m. on Saturday, April 22, they will be answering equipment questions in a guest apperance at Barista Magazine's booth, #420. 108 barista magazine

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