# Is my grinder bust ?



## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

I thought I might be having problems due to oily beans. While they will have a lot in them they don't look oily, just odd ones have a shine. I've used all shiny batches in the past.

I've used around 350g of them without any problems and a couple of kg in the past on different batches but had switched to a finer grind on this one. All was ok but decided to go back to my previous coarser grind so brush cleaned the burrs as I expected to see grinds stuck to them. They were nice and clean. So set my previous grind setting and obtained a rather low output. I'd expect it to increase when I set coarser as it always has in the past. So increased the grind time but couldn't get sufficient even with that at maximum. Currently I have it set to minimum and grind twice which gives a fraction too much. The output at the finer setting I had been using was fine and very consistent.

Gets worse. I just set the grind even coarser and the same amount came out. The brew pressure gauge suggest that I may be grinding finer than I was at the original settings. It's now at a coarser setting than I have ever used before. The brew water should shoot through.

Can't see how this can be bean related but maybe I am missing something.

This seems to have happened as a result of cleaning and maybe then checking the burr settings at the finest setting without any beans in the machine. It all span very freely, no signs of rubbing as per my experience with a Sage Smart Grinder. Didn't take any effort at all to adjust the setting either. No spanners etc when cleaning just a vac and brush.

Ok the is a Barista Express but the adjustment etc mechanism is essentially the same on all of them, just different methods of turning the large worm wheel.

John

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## El carajillo (Mar 16, 2013)

Strip down and remove burr's, clean thoroughly. Clean inside grinder and exit port, if you have been using oily beans these leave a sticky residue that brushing / vacuuming will not remove, this encourages coffee particles to stick restricting flow / outflow.

Take note of the run / rest time for the grinder.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Think you may be right. I've just checked that the burrs do move when the grind is adjusted. What I think has happened is that my brush clean has blocked the output port so the grinds are being swept round and reground all of the time rather than being pushed out as they should.

So a spanner is needed to get the inner burr out as per the inside a sage grinder post. I know from cleaning that the BE has been upgraded to a metal part to sweep the grinds out. This time I'll find some tweezers to get the felt washer out before any grinds get on it. When I removed the parts on the SGP it was dead clean. The grinder post is here

https://coffeeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?41809-Inside-a-Sage-Smart-Grinder-Pro

Cleaning the chute out thoroughly may be rather difficult. I think the the inner burr is best remove with the lid off the machine so will take a look. That's shown here but more screws at the back now. Note the sizes that come out. They differ.

https://coffeeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?41824-Inside-a-Barista-Expreess

John

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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

Back in business again.I shouldn't have cleaned it so thoroughly. Sage use plastic for the housing including the part the grinds get swept out from and appear to deliberately allow grinds to build up in the base of that to save scouring the plastic away. After cleaning the grind from the beans I am using tends to stick to the plastic.







I only cleaned it out to see that the plastic thing shown in the inside the SGP thread had been updated. I had mentioned in a post on cleaning that it wasn't really needed. I noticed early on that cleaning meant that the grinder would take a lot longer to settle down compared with just running a few 10g of beans through it when a new one is being tried.

I am currently using a grind setting of 10 where as I had never been over 6 before. I have a feeling I'll be running some supermarket beans through it shortly to get it back as it was or maybe re order some more of the beans I tried earlier on but the first one was shiny monsooned malabar. This one is just short of shiny.

The screws that hold the lid on the BE in place aren't Phillips types. I had to use a No2 JIS driver on the one up under the tamper to avoid rounding it off / messing up my Phillp's driver. Pozidrive seems to be a better fit but JIS seems to fit perfectly.

The chute looks like it's made up of 2 parts that clip together. It's clean and empty so I didn't even try to get the clipped half off as it might distort it. Suspect that it would be best to get the entire grinder out but from what I could see there was no need.

John

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