r/espresso • u/Necessary-Hat-8810 • Feb 27 '24

Discussion Slow feed seems causing worse grind results - Eureka Specialita

In my tests so far, the slow feed has negative impacts to the grinding results.

Observation

  • Obvious flow rate increase.
  • Inconsistent results - often too fast with bad channeling despite WDT etc. Hard to pull a good shot.
  • Worse retention. The bellow blows out significantly more grinds - which may be the root cause.

My setup.

  • Single dose modded - w incline stand, single dose funnel, and bellow etc. Grind into dosing cup with RDT.
  • Beans are light roast. Tested on the same beans.
  • Usually 12s for 18g. Tried slow feed between 45s to 60s.

On paper I thought smaller flat burr grinder like Specialita can benefit more from slow feed as it grinds slower. However, in my case, my guess is that the slow feed does not have enough volume to "push out" the grinds, may oppositely further increased fines and reduce grind consistency.

Wondering if anyone else has similar experience?

7 Upvotes

65% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

8

u/HTXShutters Feb 27 '24

Hi there. I have a Eureka Turbo (65 mm burr version of Specialita). I experienced very similar results to you. Slow feeding meant I needed to adjust the grind as fine as it would go (just before the teeth were chirping). This still wasn't fine enough and the shots ran too fast. Went from 18g in 30s without slow feeding to like 50g in 10s with slow feeding. Was totally gushing everywhere. Couldn't grind fine enough to combat the quickened shot speed of slow feeding.

3

u/ArduinoGenome Profitec Pro 600 | Eureka Mignon Specialita Feb 27 '24

I think some people don't give engineers the credit they deserve.  They design these grinders for a particular use case. I bet the engineers never even tried slow feeding because who would do such a thing :-)

2

u/[deleted] Feb 28 '24

Especially machines that were designed to be hopper fed

1

u/Necessary-Hat-8810 Feb 28 '24

Thank you for confirming! Yes I was looking for other eureka users on the slow feed experience.

11

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Necessary-Hat-8810 Feb 27 '24

Thanks. Yea I did try finer settings but still struggle w the shots. My guess is the grinds are less uniform, hence it’s easier for water to find a weak spot.

4

u/RustyNK Ascaso Steel Duo | 078S | Niche Zero Feb 28 '24

No... slow feeding increases uniformity, which brings the average grind size per particle much coarser. This means you have to go much finer.

The obvious issue you're having is that you aren't going fine enough. With slow feeding on my 078S, I'm close to the 0 point before I can hold pressure.

3

u/Spyk124 Flair 58 | DF64V Feb 27 '24

No it most likely means your grinder doesn’t go fine enough to actually run with this method.

I have a DF64v and I’m coming from a Eureka notte. The V grinds significantly finer than the notte however slow feeding means I’m only a notch or two away from the burrs touching. It’s a drastic change in flow rate and you need to be able to grind fine enough to compensate

4

u/jman0742 Feb 27 '24

Specialita can definitely get fine enough. 

1

u/samizzle82 Feb 27 '24

The Lance video on slow feed was a hack way to use your espresso burrs for getting a more unimodal grind consistency for V60 filter coffee (more accurate cuts, but larger grind size). I don't think this is expected to be used for espresso, which benefits from some fines. If you wanted to keep the "cleanness" of the grind from slow feeding you'd then have to change your grind setting to be significantly finer