Bone dry puck

Pompeyexile

Recently for some reason my pucks are very dry so much so, they will not knock out and I have to carefully use a spoon to break them up in order to release them.

Now I am dosing at the normal 18g and I have changed my grind settings in the hope that might fix it. But here is the strange thing…no matter how much I adjust I grind, the flow through the puck is still fast and the pressure guage is only pre-infusing at about 2 bar and reaching about 7 bar overall. I do use a puck screen.

But this has only happened in the last two bags of coffee I have used. Before I grind, tamp and use a puck screen and all has been fine with only slight tweaks necessary depending on the beans.

Any suggestions?

koffeeking

Bigger basket ?

Cuprajake

I used to get this when using paper and a high flow basket.

What’s the coffee? Is it light or really stale?

Pompeyexile

The basket is the Sage original straight sided which I think can hold 22g but as I said I put in 18g…always have. With the beans it is the same as I have been doing for years with all that I get, in that as soon as it arrives it is placed in the freezer and within no more than two weeks it is split into 36g glass bottles with screw caps and used as and when.

This has never happened in the past and the beans are a medium roast. Even if I tamp harder or tighten the grind it still seems to flow rather quick.

I’ll try it again without the metal puck screen and a longer pre-infusion and see what happens and report back.

Pompeyexile

Just tried it without the puck screen and it was much better 36g in 28 seconds and the puck was dry (not baked hard) and knocked out easy peasy. I was wondering because te puck screen takes up space would I need to dose less whe I use it and that is why it was so compacted?

JammyDodger

I’m my experience how wet or dry the puck is has a direct relation to the level of headspace above the puck. A smaller headspace correlates to a dryer puck and vice-versa.

As different beans have different densities, they will therefore take up different volumes in the portafilter. Due to this, sometimes you will find that certain beans will cause a wetter/dryer puck. A puck screen will have the effect of reducing headspace as well, so removing this as you have found will also help to reduce the dryness of the puck.