# 6 week old BE, tiny bit of water comes out, pressure shoots right up



## Gromov (Jan 21, 2019)

Hey all, I have bought Barista Express end of January. It was all good until about 2 weeks ago. Once the double shot button is pressed the pressure shoots up and only later a little bit of water starts to come out, shot of course is nowhere near double.

When this happened, descaled and cleaned it and the issue went away. However it all happened again yesterday. Again descaled it, ran the cleaning for probably 6 times already but nothing.

I am using reverse osmosis filtered water. Out kettle has been scale free since day one. Which makes me think scale build up is probably not even the problem. We use the machine 3-4 times a day

Ideas?


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## joey24dirt (Jan 28, 2017)

Have you removed your shower screen to be cleaned?


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

What is the weight of coffee you have ground into the portafilter? Not the weight of beans that go in the grinder.

What grind setting are you using? Does changing this have no impact on the amount of coffee in the cup?

If your water is RO, scale is unlikely, more likely is the effect of puck of coffee between the brew water& the cup.


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## Gromov (Jan 21, 2019)

joey24dirt said:


> Have you removed your shower screen to be cleaned?


Yes. Both times I've done there was barely anything there.



MWJB said:


> What is the weight of coffee you have ground into the portafilter? Not the weight of beans that go in the grinder.
> 
> What grind setting are you using? Does changing this have no impact on the amount of coffee in the cup?
> 
> If your water is RO, scale is unlikely, more likely is the effect of puck of coffee between the brew water& the cup.


I don't have scales to measure it. But the grinder dial is set to about 2 o clock and the other one I've tried moving from 4 to about 8 without results. Once it completes a double shot grind i tamp it and add just a little more, been doing that since the beginning and it was giving me good results. And now it just freaks out.


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

Gromov said:


> I don't have scales to measure it. But the grinder dial is set to about 2 o clock and the other one I've tried moving from 4 to about 8 without results. Once it completes a double shot grind i tamp it and add just a little more, been doing that since the beginning and it was giving me good results. And now it just freaks out.


You were getting away with an odd prep before, now you're not. You're putting too much &/or too fine ground coffee in the PF.

Gut some 500g (or more g) @ 0.1g, or 0.01g scales off Amazon. It'll make your life easier. Put 18.0g in the PF each time.


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## Gromov (Jan 21, 2019)

MWJB said:


> You were getting away with an odd prep before, now you're not. You're putting too much &/or too fine ground coffee in the PF.
> 
> Gut some 500g (or more g) @ 0.1g, or 0.01g scales off Amazon. It'll make your life easier. Put 18.0g in the PF each time.


Ok, thanks for the advice, need the scales anyways. Also with my regular setup the pressure dial was within the correct espresso range, doesn't that mean that everything is correct?


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

The correct pressure is what is needed to get a well extracted shot into your cup. Too little likely means you have ground too coarse/too little coffee in the PF & too much in the cup. Too much pressure means you won't get much/any drink out & have ground too fine/put too much in the PF.

The correct pressure is a range that makes a good cup, there is no one correct pressure. Most people make espresso with no knowedge of what their actual pressure is.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

You could also follow the suggestion on various Sage videos and I think the manual.

Set your grinder to 8, Add grinds to the portafilter, tamp and use the razor tool. If the puck rotates = trying to remove too much. Then adjust grinder to suite your taste.

If nothing else this will tell you if the machine is ok. When you are adjusting the grinder just one step at a time especially when going finer.

John

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## Gromov (Jan 21, 2019)

Guys, thanks so much for your help. Turns out it was my mistake, the coffee was too thin. What happened is I ran out of one coffee brand and the other one needed grinding settings changed, the fact that completely slipped my mind.


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## jlarkin (Apr 26, 2015)

Gromov said:


> Guys, thanks so much for your help. Turns out it was my mistake, the coffee was too thin. What happened is I ran out of one coffee brand and the other one needed grinding settings changed, the fact that completely slipped my mind.


Good news!

I'd still go with MWJBs advice, you can really start to get the best out of coffee when you're putting in a repeatable amount and ideally also weighing the coffee out into the cup as well .


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## Gromov (Jan 21, 2019)

jlarkin said:


> Good news!
> 
> I'd still go with MWJBs advice, you can really start to get the best out of coffee when you're putting in a repeatable amount and ideally also weighing the coffee out into the cup as well .


yeah, I went out this morning to get some coffee and scales. Weighed the grind and it came to 16 grams set to 8. Pressure went up towards the end of the extraction zone and got a good shot.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

The razor tool generally gets hoots of derision. Actually it does 2 things, keeps the dose constant and leaves it level for the sake of a little wasted grinds. Yet another with a timed grinder - output is likely to vary and setting the time to get the correct dose is fiddly. It can be very handy when tuning using a timed grind. Far better in my view that adjusting manually. I want to get on with it and produce a drink so if it worked on the DB would still be using it for tuning via a timed grinder.








Downside - might want to change the dose and it's fixed.

Actually I used nothing else and taste initially - no scales at all. Glad I did actually as I realised early on when I came measuring it that 1 to 2 etc may not be the best way to go. Far better to vary it and find out.

John

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