@Cuprajake This one was tasty. 15 in, 25 out. 5 grind on the Niche. EPHQ14 Ridgeless basket. Luca’s flow based profile, at a 1.9 ml/sec target, though the actual flow was considerably less during the back half of the shot (2 ml/sec declining to 1). The weight flow was 0 for about 20 seconds, until the pressure built up sufficiently to get the weight flow going, which then rose to 1 gr/sec. Total shot time was 45 seconds.
I went for a fine grind and also boosted the ml/sec until I got a BAR that climbed above 11. I started dialing in the shot at 1.3 ml/sec and ended up at a 1.9 ml/sec target to get the BAR up where I wanted it. This one hit 14 BAR! I find that the higher pressure increases body while also giving me the strength and flavor profile I want, from my medium dark decaf beans.
With this bean (Milano decaf, from Vancouver) a 5.0 grind with no double tamp works better than a 7.0 with a double tamp.
The key is a combination of fine grind and puck resistance. With another decaf I had to drop the grind to 1.5 AND double tamp, to get the pressure up!
Here’s the Visualizer link https://visualizer.coffee/shots/ac8a9e88-78c6-4a9d-9f4b-16c0fcf50c59
And a graph image:
Interesting that the pre-inf flow was set at 8 ml/sec, to help get that body that I like, and the pre-inf time was set at 4 seconds, but the fine grind created such puck resistance that we never got that initial fast/high prefil that I had before.
Interesting that this shot was so different from an earlier one (April 17) that was equally tasty and looked like this: https://visualizer.coffee/shots/b9a5d930-f72b-4721-b8bd-5dd0e1292c3b
Note the much higher/faster initial flow and shorter time period until the weight flow started. Same bean. But in this shot a much lower ml/sec target (1.3 ml/sec) was all that was required to get the same end result.
But then I had cleaned and recalibrated my Niche Z between these two shots, so that was likely why I took me about 6 shots to get back to where I was before with this bean. 🤪