Spent 8 months dialing in my espresso grind before realizing my burrs were dull

I kept blaming my technique and buying different beans, but my shots were always sour or bitter no matter what I tried. Finally swapped the burrs out and immediately got a perfect 27 second pull - anyone else spend way too long chasing the wrong fix?

2 comments

2 Comments

zara_hunt1mo ago

Did you check the alignment of the new burrs before you installed them? Even brand new burrs can be slightly off from the factory, and that will mess with your extraction just as bad as dull ones. I made that mistake once and spent another month chasing ghost problems before I realized the burrs were sitting crooked. You should take a sharpie to the outer burr and do a spin test to see if the wear pattern is even. Saves a lot of headache later.

xenar141mo ago

Even brand new burrs can be slightly off from the factory"? Come on, most people don't have a machinist square and a dial indicator sitting around their kitchen. If you buy from a halfway decent company and you're not trying to set world records for extraction yields, just throw the burrs in and dial in by taste. You'll drive yourself crazy chasing perfect alignment that probably doesn't matter for 99% of home setups. Half the time people blame burr alignment when it's actually their distribution or water temp being off anyway. You can fix a lot of uneven extraction by just doing better puck prep instead of overthinking the hardware.