# Baratza Sette 270 - V60 and espresso without changing shims?



## brabzzz (Apr 14, 2017)

Ok, so 6 months on, no complaints whatsoever.

Fast, fluffy, lovely volcano-like mound, bugger all retention.

Great workflow. Ram portafilter in, press button, blink, tamp and go.

Having just started faffing about with V60/Aeropress, i've found that i won't grind coarse enough for a V60. Which was surprising.

I have installed both shims and espresso hits the mark at step 5.5-7 on the 1-31 scale (1 being finest).

Various docs online indicate that 1 shim shifts the grind by 6 steps, so if i removed a shim, i'd be at the very end of the scale for espresso.

The Aeropress went fine. If one applies enough pressure, i guess hitting any extraction time is doable.

V60, i was aiming for 20g coffee, 330g water, V60-2 size in a total of 3 mins with some probably-irrelevant faffing in that time.

Sette was set to step 31 - as coarse as possible.

After 3 mins, i had maybe 5mm of liquid left

The sheen went and it was dry at 4m10s.

Now if i was aiming for that, great. I could just chuck the tablespoon of liquid and forget about it - it makes no difference, in the great big scheme of things.

Maybe the recipe is off (is it a bit wild?).

I guess i'm just a bit peeved that with 31 steps to play with, miracles are not delivered.

At some point i'll remove the shim and see if i can get it useful at both ends.

Maybe with stock (not VST) portafilter, one could grind less fine for espresso and definitely lose a shim?

How many shims have others put in their 270s?


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

OK, first, why the need to finish the 20:330g brew in 3 min? How did the 4:10 brew taste?

How are you adding the brew water (pulse sizes & timings)?

If you make smaller brews at the same grind setting, they will extract less.


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## brabzzz (Apr 14, 2017)

Hmmmm. That is a good point. Not seeing the wood for the trees perhaps. Blinded by the 3 minutes (as per filter coffee course...) and being at the limit of grinder adjustment - and ignoring the fact that it was a pleasant tasting brew. Good, bad, great - i don't know - little compare to it to. But fine enough i had a second shortly after that!

The timings were 60g water in, stir, after 30s start pouring the remaining 270g over the course of the next minute.

I guess i'll stop focusing on the grinder being at the end of the range and play with the other variables first. Which would be logical


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## poppa (Nov 11, 2017)

I think I read somewhere that the Sette produces more fines than other grinders, even at coarse settings - I remember a thread somewhere (maybe not on this site) where people were complaining of sediment in their brewed coffee. If that is the case, it could be that the filter is getting clogged with fines and thus slowing the drip beyond what you would expect. Might be worth looking into?


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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

poppa said:


> I think I read somewhere that the Sette produces more fines than other grinders, even at coarse settings - I remember a thread somewhere (maybe not on this site) where people were complaining of sediment in their brewed coffee. If that is the case, it could be that the filter is getting clogged with fines and thus slowing the drip beyond what you would expect. Might be worth looking into?


There's no distribution info for the Sette, so amount of fines relative to other grinders isn't known. It's more likely that it is just limited in range of adjustment & doesn't go coarse. You can work around this by making smaller brews &/or pouring brew water in fewer & larger pulses, or one pour after bloom for your largest brew size. You can brew acceptable V60 with a massive range of grind sizes.


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