Grinding and bean hardness :)

Simon

Hey guys, just read a really thought provoking thread on HB, and whilst not going to take as absolute, will definitely keep it in mind. It's mainly Jim Schulman's responses that are fascinating...

In a nutshell, with coffees with a higher bean density/brittleness it would be better to grind coarser which produces less fines (which blocks up espresso shots and can cause channelling etc), and softer beans a finer grind/higher dose due to less fines present in softer beans. Grinding finer to produce enough fines so the shot doesn't gush towards the end.

All new stuff to hear for me anyways! 🙂

https://www.home-barista.com/tips/help-me-understand-why-some-coffees-are-so-hard-to-work-with-t15162.html

Brett_H

Sounds good in theory. In practice varying the doseage to cope with those variables surely puts us right back at square one: what's in the cup that matters.

askthecoffeeguy

I think it makes sense if you're talking about single estate coffees only and depending upon how they've been processed I mean a lot of the african beans are 'hard' and dry processed so I could se how this would have an impact but in most instances they're blended with wet processed beans (from wetter countries) to even out the blend - so then what do you do? seperate out the beans and grind then separately and then blend them to order for each coffee that you make - dont laugh its only a matter if time until some melbourne hipster does it :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: p

Simon

Brett H wrote:

Sounds good in theory. In practice varying the doseage to cope with those variables surely puts us right back at square one: what's in the cup that matters.

Yeah I was thinking that... and I don't think it would work well with my grinder to be honest (going alot coarser or finer), maybe working just with flow rate and depth of basket filled may be more efficient when working with specific beans.. but yeah it's really hard to generalise, and would come down to the individual bean. Definitely cool to keep in mind as a possible variable. I'm learning very quickly that it's a much more fluid and intuitive process, and comes down to the individual beans in whatever conditions they find themselves in. And the end result in the cup for sure. As someone I know once said (some guys here may know), when it comes to coffee, 2+2= 5 😉

askthe coffeeguy wrote:

I think it makes sense if you're talking about single estate coffees only and depending upon how they've been processed I mean a lot of the african beans are 'hard' and dry processed so I could se how this would have an impact but in most instances they're blended with wet processed beans (from wetter countries) to even out the blend - so then what do you do? seperate out the beans and grind then separately and then blend them to order for each coffee that you make - dont laugh its only a matter if time until some melbourne hipster does it :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: p

Yeah true regarding blended, and hahaha I wouldn't be surprised! I only really wheel an deal with single origins, but fair point!

strayboy1

I curious to test that with the dose held steady to see what the grind change does on its own. Changing both at once would make it hard to tell what actually helped.

rina_preanger

I can add one small data point from home roasting. The Java Preanger beans I buy green are grown high up around Pangalengan and they are hard, and the same bag behaves differently depending on how dark I take it in the popper.

At a light roast they shatter in my hand grinder and give a lot of fines, so for V60 I go about two clicks coarser than for the darker batches of the same beans, dose unchanged at 15 g. The darker roast is more brittle and grinds more evenly at the normal setting. So in my case roast level moved the grind more than the origin did.

I agree with the last post, keep the dose fixed and change one thing at a time, otherwise you never know which change helped.