Let’s say your standard espresso method starts with 18.0g of beans, you grind them, your grinder has perfectly zero retention, and you make your espresso, and it’s just what you want.

Keeping everything the same, how much of a change in the starting weight of beans do you need before seeing a change in the taste of the espresso? 0.1g? 0.5g? I’m trying this poll thing out, but feel free to leave comments.

I have a reason for this question, but wanted to see what the mind hive here had to say before giving context.

Thanks!

How much of a change in the weight of coffee beans do you need before you see a change in the taste of espresso?

0.1g0%
0.5g38%
other (leave comment below)63%

    Over a gram I reckon

    Decent De1pro v1.45 - Niche Duo - Niche Zero - Decent is the best machine ever made -

    wilburpan - at what ratio? What I’m saying is, you might increase the dose by 1g, but would you keep the ratio he same? Would that then affect taste? Essentially what I’m saying is, if you increase your dose, you either grind coarser or brew longer to keep the same ratio - but you don’t make reference to any of those variables in your post.

    As an answer to your question… no idea. I dose 18.3g usually, and brew something between 32 and 42g depending what I’m feeling like. And I just drink it.

      At the same grind setting, with another .5 in my machine I’d certainly start seeing at least a longer shot duration. A 40-50s shot is always going to taste different than something that was truly dialed for that 30s range. I’d never sweat .1 though…

      When you say “a difference” do you mean a noticeable difference in taste, or a difference where the majority of brews at the different weight exhibit a similar malfunction?

      Extraction wise, there will be some normal variation at constant inputs & shot weight out, from my experience difference in taste/preference are larger/more noticeable than those in extraction. So I would still aim for the highest consistency you can. (I use 0.01g scales for dosing, not because I think 0.01g is anything like enough to notice, but because it is faster to dose to 0.1g tolerance with them, especially if your scales that read to 0.1g go up & down in larger weight increments.)

      To shift into an area of consistent malfunctions, this might be over a gram increase in weight, decrease in weight may be more tolerant because the worst that can happen is you extract a bit more, which is unlikely to be catastrophic, maybe just a little flatter acidity & more silt. Changing dose weight is not the most effective way to shift extraction, it is very fine tuning after ratio & grind adjustments.

      If you have 0.1g scales you are unlikely to be able to dose to 0.1g anyway, your grinder’s dose consistency will be larger than this (no “perfectly zero retention” grinders exist), but your scales won’t show it.

      A simple way to look at it is differences in extraction over 1% are likely to be marked in taste 1% is a twentieth of 19-20% extraction, so you might expect differences over a twentieth of 18g to be significant.

      All this assumes the same beans & weight of shot out.

        MWJB When you say “a difference” do you mean a noticeable difference in taste, or a difference where the majority of brews at the different weight exhibit a similar malfunction?

        My assumption is that you have things dialed in for a great shot of espresso. How much of a change in the weight of the beans you start with would result in a noticeable change in taste — not necessarily a bad shot, but enough for you to notice that the shot with the new bean weight is different?

        • MWJB replied to this.

            For me a change of 1+g affects extraction time/weight, so makes a small difference. The larger the weight change the bigger the difference.

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            I did not try exactly this, but in yield I feel the difference with every gram, if I pay attention. In terms on changing the dose that would probably be 0.5.

            One extra gram changes my current bean, a Monsooned Malabar, from drinkable to delicious. It’s a medium roast (by my standards, so probably dark to the third wavers) and that’s unusual for me. The darker roasts I usually go for seem to work best at 18g.

            Thanks for the feedback, everyone! It looks like the consensus is that you need a pretty hefty change in the dose (at least 0.5-1g) to cause a change in the taste of the espresso.

            The reason I asked this is in this post.