Retention on Niche Zero with a dark roast?

nosiesta

Hey all. I have Niche Zero and to date have found the retention to be minimal (~0.2/0.3g max). I recently had a bag of Monsoon Malabar beans, which were pretty dark and I found the retention on the Niche to be pretty terrible - often over 1g. Weirdly though, an hour or so after grinding, I can knock the retained grounds out by just dropping the lid on the grinder, or giving it bit of a wobble. If I do this immediately after the grinding though, I’m not able to shift these retained grounds.

I guess they’re more ‘oily’ which is why I’m seeing the extra retention when I grind, and then are they ‘drying’, so that after an hour or so I can knock them out easily?

I’ve also found increased static with these dark beans. Is this normal? I tried a small drop of water prior to grinding, but all this did was cause the beans to stick to the ‘hopper’ on the grinder and also stick in the dosing cup!

Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks!

dfk41

nosiesta Perfectly normal behaviour matey. MM are an odd bean. Very light in weight…..not dense, just the opposite. If the beans are showing oil spots, then that is a risk you run! The reason why an hour or so later without effort, the retention drops out is as you rightly say, the oil has dried. Water droplet Technique will only make things worse!

nosiesta

Thanks for the reply. Yes, RDT did make it worse and aside from making beans stick to the hopper/dosing cup, it actually increased the retention massively, to well over a gram. Shame, nice beans, once I managed to tame the bitterness.

Doram

nosiesta Shame, nice beans, once I managed to tame the bitterness.

As said above, it’s bean-dependant. Some beans are just sticky/wet looking and there isn’t much you can do about it. Fortunately, most beans are not like that.

Having said that, I’m using this as bellows for the NZ and it shifts some retained coffee every time, no matter how much clacking with the lid or knocking on the chute were done before. I know people sniff at the idea and say you don’t need bellows on the Niche, but for me this works better than clacking (or cleaning coffee that dropped from the chute on it’s own timing).

Inspector

My last batch of Sumatran beans also doing the same i just tap few times on the lid to get the retention out, not a biggie. Dont know what machine you have but try to drop temperature to 89 or so if shot is bitter. Works for me.

nosiesta

Thanks. Yeah, no biggie like you say, but definitely lost a few grams from the bag! Is what it is!! Yep, dropped temp to 91 and that helped a lot, might try lower if I buy them again. Good shout.