Lelit Elizabeth Super fast extraction problem

Juanjo

Hi.

All of a sudden, and without any warning, my Elizabeth and my Niche have decide to rebel against me. The Elizabeth is pulling the shots way too fast (i.e. 18g in 14″). At first I obviously thought it was the Niche, so I calibrated the burrs again and set it a bit finer this time–same result. For those of you who own a Zero my setting is right now at a 9, which I think is very fine after one month of grinding a Colombian medium roast at 13.

I have an 18g VST precission basket, a Lelit naked portafilter, I do my group cleaning regularly and both preset buttons set to Dave’s settings. I tried both with bloom phase and boiler off as well as the 10″ preinfusion boiler on.

How can this be if I haven’t touched a thing ???

limelight

For reference, I have had my Niche for about a month and still between 14-15 for a recipe of around 20g in and 40g out (VST basket) depending on the medium roast I am using. I have gone down to 13 for some lighter roasts. I assume you have cleaned and recalibrated the Niche as well?

limelight

Nvm. I misread your post. Looks like you have recalibrated the Niche. I’m sure others on here will have ideas.

MediumRoastSteam

Could be environmental change: temperature, humidity, weather, etc.

Grind finer, and make sure you are not moving the calibration collar in the process - only move the adjustment ring.

Rob1

Your mistake was “recalibrating”. You don’t need to recalibrate unless you move the black ring, by doing so you’ve made your settings incomparable to what they were before.

There’s nothing unusual about your grind setting of 9 just as there’s nothing unusual about grinding at 13. The colour of the roast doesn’t determine how fine you’ll need to grind.

It’s not clear whether or not you’ve switched beans but the one thing that’s clear is your grind setting isn’t what it was before as you’ve recalibrated….

Regardless of whether or not you’ve changed beans or they have just changed with age (the required grind can change a lot from roast date up to 3 or 4 weeks and not in a way that’s linear), the obvious solution is to grind finer.

Juanjo

Sorry, I’ve been abroad and could’t respond before.

For some reason I am at grind setting 3 now and the Lelit still extracts 18g in 20″, and there is a lot of density loss in the coffee. The Niche is brand new (one month old). Should I disassemble the burrs and clean them?, although this solution seems a bit too drastic. I am running out of options here.

thank you

hornbyben

Juanjo when you recalibrated had you stripped and cleaned the burrs first?

If you just turned it till it stopped without cleaning first then there will still be some coffee particles in there. This means you can’t get the burrs to touch as coffee is in the way. If you recalibrate to this point then your zero point is not zero and the grind will be a lot coarser than the numbers suggest.

Almost always when shots are running too fast the answer is to grind finer. The niche should be more than capable of choking your machine.

I typically find myself in the 8-10 range with an 18g vst basket.

Juanjo

What you say it makes sense. I will vacuum clean the burrs and recalibrate, but I have choked the Elizabeth at the 7 setting before. That ’s why I feel all this is a bit strange…

hornbyben

Juanjo By vacuum I assume you don’t mean just vacuum. It only takes a couple of minutes to clean properly.

Here’s a quick video, although on mine removing the sweep arms is a lot tighter and more fiddly than it looks in this video.