# Dose Control Pro - fast shots / channeling - advice please!



## jimmybee (12 mo ago)

Hi everyone - wondering if anyone can help with my struggles with a new Dose Control Pro (DCP) grinder for pulling espresso shots?

Every shot I pull using grounds from the DCP extracts super quickly, tastes thin and bitter, and is lacking crema, regardless of grind size. I have tried matching the grind size from the DCP to the grounds I produce with my hand grinder (which does a great job - 14g in, 30g out in 25 seconds, for a tasty shot with normal crema). I am keeping everything else constant -- espresso machine, dose/recipe, puck preparation, beans, brew temp etc.. The shots from the DCP grounds come through at about 2-3 times the speed of the shots using grounds from the hand grinder (so the shots from 14g of DCP grounds yield 30g out in ~10 seconds), and end watery. I have tried a whole range of grind settings with the DCP, but the resulting shots are always fast and increasingly watery towards the end. Below is a video of a typical shot with grounds from the DCP (



).

So it seems I am getting serious channeling during the shots using grounds from the DCP. However, it is different to channeling I have experienced previously - the high flow rate occurs right from the start of the shot, regardless of grind size, and happens consistently every time I pull a shot using grounds from the DCP, even if I pay a lot of attention to puck preparation (I use a WDT needle tool to de-clump and distribute before tamping). And I don't have the same problem with the grounds from my hand grinder. So I am really confused.

The standard advice for fixing fast shots is to grind finer, but this has not helped. I have tried grinding as fine as the DCP will go (going to the finest setting on the main adjuster, and the finest setting on the manual adjustment you can make to the upper burr). The resulting grounds are like powder - much finer than the espresso grounds from my hand grinder. The super-fine grounds from the DCP do not slow the shot at all -- I can only guess that I am getting channeling from the very start of the shot, even with careful puck preparation. But when I grind coarser with the DCP, and do my best to prepare the puck perfectly, I still get the same fast shots (I think still caused by channeling). Very frustrating. And confusing -- I cannot figure out how to stop this channeling.

My Dose Control Pro is brand new and so has nice new sharp burr set, and has the new metal impeller which has not seen any wear (I am aware of the issues with wear of the old plastic impellers on earlier models), so in theory it should be working perfectly. However, there do seem to be a couple of quality issues with the ground coffee from the DCP:-

1. My DCP does seem to spit out quite uneven grounds when grinding at the upper end of its range for pour-over/ french press (lots of boulders and fines - image here https://photos.app.goo.gl/Sj9FLdF8cx2NCrLX8). I am not sure whether this is normal for this machine? This variability in the size of the grounds at the coarser end of the spectrum is disappointing, and certainly not what I expected. With a naked eye I can't tell if this variability in the size of the grounds is replicated at the finer espresso grind size (as far as I can see/feel, the fine espresso grounds the machine produces appear quite uniform to me, but it's hard to tell). Could grind size variability be causing channeling?

2. The grounds coming out of my DCP are pretty clumpy at the espresso size range (image here https://photos.app.goo.gl/TcysTf3ZmQTQFDPD9). I am not sure if this is normal? I am using a needle tool to break up the clumps, but perhaps not doing a sufficiently good job of this? Could clumping be causing the channeling?

Thanks in advance for any help -- I feel like I'm going crazy. I have never had this kind of issue with my hand grinder, or my previous electric burr grinder.


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## Stox (Jul 19, 2020)

Have you considered a larger dose? I tend to work at around 17-18g in the basket for 36-43g in the cup in 25-30 seconds, but a lot depends on the beans.

The Sage grinders are working pretty close to their limits when grinding for espresso, especially if you're working with light roasts grown at high altitude. Also, you need to make sure there is not a speck of dust on the carrier mating surfaces when reassembling after cleaning otherwise the grind settings will go all over the place.


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## jimmybee (12 mo ago)

Thanks for this Stox - really appreciate it.

I have tried upping the dose to 16g, but that's the maximum my current basket will take (it's only a 51mm portafilter), and this doesn't seem to make much difference.

I have also tried with some more recently roasted beans, which do slow the shot down slightly, but there's still lots of channeling and it still extracts way too fast.

I have tried to be very careful with cleaning, but do wonder whether there could be an alignment/calibration issue...


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## Stox (Jul 19, 2020)

If you run the grinder without any beans can you set it fine enough to hear the burrs touching? To check this I would set it to around no. 15, switch on and crank the setting finer until you hear the burrs touch (you'll know when you've got there). DON'T just switch it on at no. 0 (or whatever the finest is) because this could damage it.

I think my brand new out of the box Smart Grinder Pro started to make the noise at around no. 2, and for a particularly tough batch of beans I was grinding within a notch of this (i.e. no. 3). If you can't get the burrs to touch you need to change the burr-carrier setting to get it to go finer.

Another thing to bear in mind is that retention is fairly high on these grinders - the first 2-3g out is the back-end of the previous grind so you may need to purge a few grams first thing in the morning, or if you're changing grind settings for different brew methods.


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## jimmybee (12 mo ago)

Thanks so much for this info. I tried starting at 15 and going finer step-by-step and didn't hear the burrs touch at any setting. I then set the top burr adjustment to the finest setting and tried this again. Still no noise of the burrs touching. So I guess perhaps the burrs weren't seated correctly, or something else was amiss.

At that stage I decided that I had had enough of trying to get a completely new grinder to do what it was supposed to do and returned it for a refund. After going deep into the forums and reviews, I decided to pay the extra £30 to get a better grinder -- deliberating between the Smart Grinder Pro and the entry-level Eureka Mignon, and ended up plumping for the Mignon. It has taken some calibration (and swapping out Eureka's filtro pro burrs for their standard espresso burrs), but it now does a really good job. It won't go back and forth between espresso and brew coffee easily, but it does a great espresso grind.

Thanks again for your replies and advice Stox.


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