skylark I didn’t bother with seasoning my DF83 when I got it last December. I was able to get great results pretty quickly, well before I had gone through 2kg of beans.
There are a lot of reports of people going through ~2kg of beans to season the DF83, and then having problems with clogging. I think it’s because the DF83 isn’t designed to grind that quantity of beans at once.
If you’re going to do the seasoning thing, I would do that in small batches, and get aggressive with using the bellows so that nothing gets hung up inside the grinder. I think an even better idea would be to just start using it, and if you can’t get the results you’re looking for after, say, 25 shots, then consider seasoning.
The same holds for modifying the DF83. There are a lot of folks out there who have a story like, “I tried one cup of espresso and then took the DF83 apart and cut up the declumper.” I’m not saying that you shouldn’t modify the DF83. I’m just saying that it’s a good idea to use it for a while before deciding that you need to do surgery on it.
Full disclosure: my DF83 is the original version, and I haven’t found the need to modify it. I use it twice daily for the past 9 months, so that’s over 500 cups of espresso at this point.
Good luck with the DF83! I think you’ll like it a lot.
