Today I'm going to cover the three most common questions that we get
asked around dialing in a new bag of beans into your grinder to reduce wastage [Music]
so we hear some really funny stories where people buy a little bag like this 200 grams 250 grams and
they nearly use the whole bag before they get an amazing shot or if you've got a bag of beans
and you don't know where you're changing from one grind setting to another maybe you've just topped
up your Hopper and you've got some old grind or new Grind in there and they can cause challenges
in your extractions so the first thing we're going to cover is the settings on a grinder now you need
to understand how a grinder works and on the top of your grinder if you remove your Hopper there is
a collar now this is a flat burr grinder and it's going to be the same on any conical grinder and
you'll see a whole range of numbers and they're really just a reference point they're not there
to say I need to have my grind setting on number five and the reason being is the top burr set is
attached to this collar and the bottom burr set is attached to the motor and as you keep winding that
down you're getting closer for the those burrs to touch each other which essentially is getting
finer on the grind now once you've dialed this in and let's say the little red marker on the front
here is at seven when you actually start to use that grinder over time those blades are going to
wear and you're going to continually have to go finer and finer and finer. So that number
technically will just keep increasing so you might have started on seven you know at the start of the
year and then halfway through the year you might be on a nine. So it's a matter of understanding
that as you're going finer those numbers are going to change but once you've got them dialed in you
can then start to play from that point to get the recipe and the grind size that works for you. So
the next thing I want to talk about is getting the first point to be close to an espresso extraction
grind setting. So you might have just got a brand new grinder and you have no idea where
to start. Well I can tell you out of the box it's going to be probably quite coarse so what you can
do is you can remove your whole burr set and in this case here we're going to go coarser.
and there's a very fine thread but they will come out
and even if you've cleaned your grinder you can do this at any time so
there we go so you can see your top burr set and your bottom burr set now if you pull it out give
it a vacuum and clean that's really going to keep the health of your grinder and it's going to and
clean up the Chute as well as it's going out to into your dosing pot or your handle if you keep
these clean all the time the next things we're going to talk about are going to be far easier to
adjust grinds so clean up your thread put a bit of food grade grease on there if you can as well and
we want to put our thread back in place so there's such a fine thread make sure you go coarse first
hear that little click that means the threads have lined up backwards and that allows us then
just to line up the two threads nice and easy and we're going to go as fine as we
possibly can and I'm just holding down the lock so every grinder usually has a lock of
some sort this is a little stepped mechanism here so I'm just holding it all the way down
and I'm going to keep going all the way around a long way around many times until
we get down to where the blades actually touch each other so if we have a look inside here
okay almost there and you'll see the bottom motor actually touch and move
with the there it is there so you can see that that bottom burr set is now actually
moving with the top burr set as I go around so that is basically where the blades are touching
we want to come back half a turn from there Lock It Off
and we're going to put some beans in and test that and now we're very close to Espresso but
we'd have to then start to dial it in and match our recipe so now I just want to demonstrate to
you how easy it is to dial that grind in and we're just using a Precision GS 7 here
today got my beans which are perfectly aged so these are roasted on the 18th
so we're about oh how many days old what are we today the second there you go 12 days old
Champion our main blend smells amazing I'm gonna open up a hopper slide and those beans are going
to fall in so our recipe if you're not familiar is 22 and a half grams of ground coffee into the
handle and we're going to get a two to one out of that in an extraction which is 45 grams and we're
looking for 30 to 32 seconds so what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to grind off just using
the manual setting and I'm going to get 22 and a half grams so we've got our dosing pot tared off
there we go we've got 22 23.4 so we're a little bit over so I'm
just going to take a little bit of that grind out
okay we'll just pinch a little bit back more in there I didn't
have anywhere to put that grind but the good old hopper lid is coming in quite handy now
right gee whiz over and under there we go look 22.7 a smidge over so what
we're going to do is we've got our clean dry handle with a 22 gram Basket in there
we're going to pop on our dosing pot
on our flair funnel as well and we'll give it a quick little WDT so that's
going to help break up any clumps that are happening in your grinder really important
to do this really good investment if you've got a smaller cheaper grinder
because we know that a cheaper grinder will have a lower quality particle size
and will certainly help get a better extraction give a little tap and NCD
to distribute that and then it's going to give it a nice Tamp as well
all right so we're going to check this recipe
I'm gonna just put the timer on here as well
and we're going to hit go on our timer and check this extraction
that's pretty wild
all right that's pretty wild that water is going through pretty fast so we ended
up at 48 grams in 17 seconds so it's clear that we need to go finer again
all right so that was pretty wild we know that was coming out way too fast now you
might think oh I'll just go finer and then I'll keep trying from here on in the easiest
way to do that is just get yourself a way to see what grind's coming out and watch
the actual grind particle size so if we have a look here I'm going to start it manually [Music]
and I want to get to the point where it actually starts to just Clump a little bit
here we go I'm going finer each time
there we go
great so you can see they're starting to ball and that's pretty much going to be where we need to
be for an espresso so that's how much I've had to use just to dial in our grind we could weigh this
and just check and see what that amount is how can I do that I can pop that in the cup here for you
there we go so 12 grams that's all I've had to use to get to the point
where I reckon we're pretty close on grind so basically half our normal extraction
to be able to dial in what I reckon is going to be
pretty close so let's get another full 22 and a half grams of coffee
21.6 so just to smidge more
okay got myself a teaspoon now
here we go all right let's test this one just follow the same process again
you can see there's definitely needing some sort of WDT because
there are these big clumps there so just going to work those up
break them up
there we go
here's our NCD give it a temp
here we go and we'll set this up to test our extraction again
yep
just got to get that time to reset
okay cool lock in our handle start our time
just a little bit of pre-infusion
there you go you can see it's already taking longer to come through and that is looking like
a pretty good chocolatey nice espresso a couple little squirts happening there
there we go so 24 seconds 49 grams this is actually pretty
fresh coffee and we did almost get to a little bit of a over extraction there
but we are already so close to a recipe
all right so 24 24 seconds we're a little bit over on the extraction there at 48 grams me
just not quite stopping that right but all we'd have to do now is make one finer adjustment and
we'd pretty much be on our recipe that'll give us a couple more seconds getting us up to that 30
seconds so I've been able to show you there with two handles and a little bit of grind that we have
basically got a shot that would be drinkable now it's not going to be perfect on our recipe but
if we hadn't have done that first handle which would have been 22 and a half grams less coffee
used and that was our first test I can show you that all we've used in coffee to get to this point
by setting those blades so that they touched and then came back half a turn
and then by looking at the the grind to see where it's clumping we've again only used 12 almost 13
grams there plus one handle of 22 and a half so we're at 35 grams of coffee and we're almost at
recipe so that's an amazing quick way to get to achieve a tasty espresso not the best but almost
to get your dialed in single origin or blend as quick as you can without wasting half a bag
now the other common question that we get asked is how much retention is in my grinder in the
shoot basically and from the blades through and how much does it actually hold if we were
trying to use it as a single dosing grinder so I'm going to show you how to test that we're
going to close the hopper on this grinder now we've obviously been running some shots so from
the blades through the Chute is full dropping some beans everywhere number one rule don't
spill the beans that is pretty common to be honest in small uh home um domestic Grinders
the collars are so small the beans are quite top heavy so don't go doing that to yourself
um and drop beans everywhere so I'm just going to clean out this top here quickly
I've got to get them out a little bit easier with this I would normally tip this upside down or grab
a vacuum but I don't want to do that today because I want to not stir up how much grind is on the
other side of these burrs just yet all right so I've got a fair few of those out of the way now
you can see just by bumping it I have already lost a little bit of grind that was inside that chute
so I'm just going to get this scale ready I'm going to pop on a big
container here see if I can tare that off yep I've got that great so I'm going to pick up the grinder
and literally just shake it and see how much grind comes out and this is basically gonna there we go
I'll show you how much is inside your Grinder from the blades
there you go all right so what do we got we've got five grams so there you go the GS7 has 5 grams of
grind retention inside the Chute now that is only if you've got your Hopper on top with full beans
and you're trying to make a grind change so if you made an adjustment half of that um so it'll take
five grams to push through the old grind before you can get to your new Grind now some commercial
Grinders can actually be a lot bigger on this they could be up to say 20 odd grams so in the
industry commercially we say all right grind one handle and just ditch it just to make sure they
don't have this problem but again we're looking at wastage and we want to be a little bit more
precise in in Saving you not wasting some of those lovely beans so there's a tip there to help you
now the other thing to consider is single dosing so how much does the grinder actually hold when
we're dosing the exact amount of beans in so I'm going to take you through that process right now
all right so we've got our Hopper closed here I'm just going to quickly clean out this grinder
here we go there's nothing else in there
give it a bit of a tap okay now that were the beans that were sitting on top
of the burst so I can't put that into my equation I'm going to remove these beans
there's nothing in the hopper there you might want
to have a quick little look you see a little bit of static there
okay I'm gonna weigh out our let's do 20 grams just for an example here
just to keep some easy easy numbers so because the shoot is clean the speed of
the grind should be able to throw that all the way out it doesn't have to hopefully block up
in that shoot and be five grams but let's just see so I'm going to open up my chute
well I'm going to open my chute after I've got my beans my dosing pot ready to catch
it so 22 20 grams in we're going to start that grinder always best to start a grinder
when you're doing single dose so it's got full speed ready to throw through those first grinds
a little bit of pop corning on the GS7 but not too bad for an
entry level grinder it's actually really good [Applause] [Music]
all right there you go give it a bit of a actually I'm not going to tap
it because that's the retention that we're looking for so here's the test
there you go 18 grams so in a single dosing environment this grind is only going to hold
two grams if you've got a full Hopper and you're trying to push the grind through and that shoot
is full of grind it's five grams so the tip here is if you're looking to really save on
wastage don't fill your bean Hopper up if you do that really great single origin that you
want to make a a beautiful coffee with or have multiple with you know a few grind changes in
between because we don't have to clear out five grams grams so technically you're saving yourself
three grams every time you change your grind when you're dialing in that beautiful single origin
so let's see if we can just give it a tap and get those last two grams out
all right one gram okay well there you go one gram better in the cup than left in
your grinder for the next one so there you go I hope those few tips have helped you understand
how Grinders work and how you can dial in quicker to not waste as many beans and I
guess as a conclusion it proves that single dosing no matter the grinder I mean this is
a $600 entry level grinder doesn't have a huge amount of retention but it means that the burr
set and the beans are all clean for you to make a change very easily and not have more wastage
so if you're not single dosing and you're not pre-weighing your beans or weighing them on the
way out using dosing pots there's definitely some validity there for you to save on grind
and nail your perfect extraction grind setting a lot quicker just by being able to assess them so
if you've got any other questions guys please leave a question down below I'd happily answer
those and of course many Grinders behave a little bit differently but we thought hey let's use an
entry level grinder just to see how this would go your conicals your high-end Grinders are all
going to have their own growing retention and some even claim to be zero retention Grinders
so that may be the right kind of uh information that you want to look for in your next grinder
purchase anyway thanks very much for watching everyone we'll catch you next time cheers
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