On my previous post, I talked about the importance of grinder, and about my sadness caused by my sick cat that prevented us to buy THE grinder? We finally got mad about our Baratza. Really mad. Like too mad. My friend, the one who introduced me to good coffee, he ground me some fabulous Pilot Big Bro fresh beans in his manual HG One so I could really try my machine. Long story short – coffee was good (yet way too tamped) and this is when the madness came.
Not long after that, I met the GM of the company I work for, also known as the big boss, at the coffee machine (I was there for tea) and I asked him about coffee. I had heard he had some nice gear. I learned that he did not know how to tune his machine and that his grinder was useless. Not long after, he brought it to me, the grinder, so I could try it and tune it. This was my only chance on earth to try a Mazzer without spending 1000 $.
In the meantime, knowing that he would not sell it to me, we decided to order one of our own. Still, we were very excited to try the Mazzer. On the other hand, I was scared... Not scared like scared to ground-meat a finger, but scared to be burnt. Scared to hate everything else that would not be a Mazzer. Scared to create some false needs... not that any of this is real anyway.
I knew tuning a “new” grinder would be a terrible coffee waste. To cover that, I bought some cheap and not-so-good-but-drinkable coffee and as soon as the kids were in their bed, we got started. Oh. My. Gosh. We got a “drinkable” coffee passed 9:00 PM. We seriously wasted more than half a pound of coffee trying to tune the Mazzer. Secretly, I was very disappointed. There were so many parameters... so many sources of disaster.
- The coffee – oily, lightweight and not-so-fresh
- Espresso machine group head gasket completely out of business
- Excessive tampering force and no reference to get near 30 lb
- Excessive clumping* in the grinder
*I did not know what clumping was, even if I had heard it several times in the grinder reviews I was watching. As soon as I touched the little ground coffee rocks towards the fine grounds in the portafilter, I knew that it was clumping.
This first troubleshooting session was terrible. We decided to drink the less worse cup of the less worse coffee and the countertop was a mess. Coffee everywhere. Brown dusty sink. Disappointed me. I had had the magic thought: The Mazzer is high end, it is going to work fantastically. Apparently, it didn’t. We had already watched many videos, but yet not enough. I thought : damn, if it is so hard with the Mazzer, what is it going to be with the lower end Macap?
The next session, we switched coffee (I had bought two bags) and we used the Weiss Distribution technique (WDT) to reduce clumping. We had now controlled three disturbing factors, the disgusting coffee was now less disgusting and the clumping was mostly gone, which means less coffee explosion while pulling shots. Plus, we had received our brand new gaskets. The only remaining issue was the tampering. We were not yet ready to buy a dynamometric tamper. The dynamometric tamper is not an absolute need to pull a good shot, but when you have been drilled to press a 100 lb to compensate for the bad grinder, going down to 30 lb is nearly impossible.
We then received our Macap M4T. The tuning took us approximately 4 shots. Strangely, it was easier than for the Mazzer. We had now some experience, I know, but it seemed more user-friendly. Even if we are very satisfied with the Macap, and we like it better than the Mazzer for many reasons, we learned that this amazing grinder does not guarantee amazing coffee. Yet.
I pulled my first very satisfying shot yesterday thanks to our brand new Espro dynamometric tamper and amazing Pilot fresh coffee Brazil Zanetti. It was a 19 g (dry) pulled for 25 seconds for 38 g (wet). It did not taste aspirin like the days before so I guess we are getting closer from “perfection”...
Anyway, this post is already taking me too long. I’ll keep the real grinder comparison for the next one. If you have any comments, suggestion, just leave me a message!
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