Let’s start with the obvious answers, “Just weigh the dang beans”, “Just get the single dose hopper”, “Just clean more often”, and my personal favorite, “Just spend more money”.
Now that that’s out of the way…
I’m tired of fiddling with my grinder. I started my espresso journey with a cheap steam unit and a whirly blade grinder. The grinder was quickly replaced with an Encore, and the steam toy was replaced with a second hand Gaggia Classic.
After a few years I realized I hated weighing beans every day, and realized that the steps on the encore were too big to truly get the most of my espresso setup so I bought a Sette 270i.
For about a year it worked admirably. I rarely cleaned it, but it never seemed to falter.
However as the 2nd year passed and now the 3rd year is waning, the grinder is becoming more and more finicky.
I should explain that in my mind, the entire point of buying the Sette over the Vario or any of the other stepless grinders on the market was the time based grinding.
I’ll always remember when I first got it, I got 18g out in 5.85 seconds.
Slowly it crept up to the 6.5-7 second range but I figure that was normal.
But now in the 3rd year it’s taking 10.5 seconds to get approximately 18g out.
Why approximately? Well sometimes it’s 16. Sometimes 20. Other days 17.4. Very rarely do I actually get 18.0 grams out.
There doesn’t seem to be any trend or logic to it, but whenever it starts to drop down to 16 regularly I figure it’s about time to clean it, so I remove the hopper and lower burr and give it a good scrub with the included brush.
The lower burr is never really what you’d call dirty, but it makes me feel like I’ve done something I guess. Plus, that is always the first thing anyone says to do when you say you are having grinder troubles. Gotta clean it out!
I called Baratza support and they recommended using a lighter roast.
As expected, that shortened the time to get approximately 18g out, but the inconsistency didn’t improve, and I was reminded why I don’t really like light roasts for espresso.
What beans am I using? Why not use what I used when I first got the grinder? I am. They are from a local roaster, same beans I’ve been using from the same guy for 8-10 years now. Fresh roasted, I’d call them medium - medium/dark, and $10/lb. No, not $10/12oz bag. Pound. 16 full ounces. And $10 cash. But anyway, the guy is like 80 years old, been roasting coffee in the same building for 60 years or something, I figure he knows what he is doing.
I call back Baratza. They offer to send me a free single dose hopper and recommend I weigh the beans.
No.
Also, what about the inconsistency?
You see, if on one of those days where I only get 16g out, I continue grinding until there is 18g in the portafilter, the espresso machine nearly acts as if I have installed a blank disc. Instead of a shot taking 30ish seconds to pull it may be 50-60 seconds or more. Clearly something else is going on.
Baratza support: “Oh, well when that happens it’s because the coffee is getting stuck in the chute and getting reground until it is much finer than normal, you should clean it more often, here watch this video on how to clean”
Me: ಠ_ಠ
Anyway.
I don’t want to spend $3000 on a Mahlkonig, and I’m just too skeptical about time-based grinding at this point and too cheap to spend $800 just to try out a Eureka Mignon and hope it’s better, so I guess I’ll just keep cleaning my Sette unless anyone has a different suggestion.
And thank you for reading all this.
Oxo makes a grinder with a scale, which has been working well for me for a few years with no cleaning. l did have to modify it a bit to remove a safety thing and attach a bent wire to the top of the blade to stir the beans to help them feed, since the angle of the bottom of the hopper is too shallow. But it wasn’t very expensive.