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Appreciation post: weighing beans on a $12 scale beat my $150 grinder's built-in timer
I used the timer on my Breville for about two years and always wondered why my shots ran fast or slow from day to day. Last month I grabbed a cheap kitchen scale at Target in Austin and started weighing 18 grams of beans each morning instead of trusting the timer. Same beans, same grind setting, but my shot times went from swinging between 22 and 34 seconds down to 27 or 28 seconds almost every pull. The timer measures time, not coffee, and my scoop was off by a gram or two depending on the bean. Turns out the grinder was fine the whole time, I was just feeding it different amounts. Curious if anyone here weighs every single dose or if some of you still eyeball it and get good results.
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jennifermurphy13d ago
Oh man, this is so true and it goes even deeper than just the dose. Once you start weighing every single dose, you also start noticing how much coffee your grinder holds onto between grinds, the whole "retention" thing. On my setup I was losing almost a gram in the chute, so even when I weighed out 18 grams going in, I was getting 17 and change in the basket. That alone can swing shot times by a few seconds. So now I weigh the beans going in and I also weigh the grounds coming out just to see how far off it is, and I adjust my grind based on the real number, not the one I hoped for. It sounds fussy but it takes like ten extra seconds and my shots are way more steady. The scale basically made me realize the grinder was never the problem, my whole routine was just sloppy.
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