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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on February 6, 2012 at 6:26pm

If it tastes great then why does it matter if it's low volume?  I'd sure as hell rather be handed a delicious low volume shot than an undrinkable proper volume one.

Stop using volume, weigh your shots (yield).  Take notes on dose, yield and time (and probably drop that temperature down substantially- 203.5 is pretty damned hot) and compare where flavors start to drop off.  Is it when you updose and maintain grind?  Downdose and use a finer grind?  Updose and use a coarser grind?  Longer time or shorter time?

For example, today I ran two different espressos.  One was our "house blend" espresso and I was running it at 17.5g dose, 29g yield over 23 seconds.  I was also running an offering from Mexico at 16g dose, 24g yield over 28 seconds.  As far as volume was concerned the shots looked nearly identical because one had a larger crema stack than the other.  However, if I was to reverse those "recipes" and use one on the opposite coffee I would have had a smokey and thin house blend shot or a salty and sour Mexico.

It's not about volume, it's about taste.  Volume doesn't determine taste, but mass does.  Worry about the weight of the shot, not the volume.

-bry 

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Permalink Reply by Scott on February 7, 2012 at 11:54am

Is 203 the temp at the group head, or is this the temp on the display on the machine?  Cause the machine reads boiler temp and you usually see a temp drop at the grounds.  Unless you verify it's really 203 at the grounds, the boiler temp is a little misleading.  

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Permalink Reply by Nick Giovannetti on February 7, 2012 at 8:09pm

Ok, so some things I should've clarified... On the Strada it's the boiler temp we control which is an obvious drop to the grouphead.  If I'm right, the grouphead is right around 200-201 although I can't remember the exact reading.  

Another thing I should've clarified is that I seem to be the only one having this volume problem.  I have adjusted the tamp both lighter and harder seeing as I have a hard time knowing exactly how many lb's of force I'm using, but having seen much of a difference.  My thought at first was that I may have been tamping to hard causing the water to flow around the puck and extract the outside before the center (giving a lower volume with both a bitter and sour taste). 

Another thing, I understand the mentality of "If it tastes right, serve it," but even though it may taste right, it's not the best.  Bryan, sadly, I haven't actually ever weighed my shots.  I've always gone by volume.  Now that I think about it, volume is a poor indication compared to mass, it just wasn't something I thought of at the time.  We have a small training area at our roastery so my thought right now is to just burn through espresso and go to town. If it was everyone having a problem with low volume then I wouldn't be saying anything, but it seems to be just me.  Regardless, I'll post here again when I've come back from testing different grind adjustments, tamp pressures, etc.  Thanks for the info all

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Permalink Reply by Casey Loseth on February 8, 2012 at 4:52pm

The best thing you can do is start weighing it out. We run intelli's black cat. Normally we run 17-18g over 23-24 seconds and end up with 27-30 grams. (I'm also running it at 201) Usually ends up being 2oz 1.5 after the crema's settled. today I ran 15 grams at a tighter grind over 27 seconds I ended up having 33g in only a single oz of volume. I pulled entirely different flavours from it this way, I had pipe tobacco all over the nose it was fantastic. It really showed me something about volume. Also check out Morgan Allens routine from the Canadian western regionals this last go round. Instead of adding ingredients for a signiture beverage he chose to offer his espresso in three different ways. Simply by changing grind, dose, extraction time and so on. Also I'm not sure exactly about the strada, but our synesso should have the same set up. It adjusts our boiler temperature to maintain the specific temperature at the group. So we set what temp we want to come out of the group, and the boiler continuously adjusts to compensate for bringing new water in and so on so that it can maintain the same temperature at the group. So what your PID is reading if it is the same as ours possibly is the extraction temperature

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Permalink Reply by Brady on February 12, 2012 at 7:37am

You've gotten some great replies so far, I'll just make one more suggestion... If your results are different from your coworkers, it is probably because some part of your method is different. I know it sounds obvious, but if you eliminate the differences in your process you'll eliminate the differences is your results.

I don't like seeing people make grinder changes at shift change for exactly this reason. If the person on the morning shift has been getting correct shots at a certain setting just prior to shift change, that setting should result in the same results for the next barista on bar. If a change is required, that means that there is a process variation AND that the shots will taste different for your customers.

Minimize variation to maximize consistency.

Hope that helps.

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Permalink Reply by Casey Loseth on February 12, 2012 at 9:20pm

That's a good point. We keep track of every part of the set up everyday. We use dry erase markers and write what we have the espresso set up as on the top of the doser. So We'd write something like 16g = 32 in 26sec. That way if all of a sudden after a shift change the barista tastes a shot and doesn't like it they can before making changes check their parameters against those of who set it up that morning.

Brady said:

You've gotten some great replies so far, I'll just make one more suggestion... If your results are different from your coworkers, it is probably because some part of your method is different. I know it sounds obvious, but if you eliminate the differences in your process you'll eliminate the differences is your results.

I don't like seeing people make grinder changes at shift change for exactly this reason. If the person on the morning shift has been getting correct shots at a certain setting just prior to shift change, that setting should result in the same results for the next barista on bar. If a change is required, that means that there is a process variation AND that the shots will taste different for your customers.

Minimize variation to maximize consistency.

Hope that helps.

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