# Inconsistent shots



## Brad1234 (Sep 30, 2019)

Hi there. I have a sage duo temp and sage smart grinder and am struggling to get consistently good shots. I normally go on grind size 9 on my smart grinder. And work from there.

I'm dosing 17g to get out 34g in a 1:2 ratio. However when I did this on grind size 9 it was taking 33 seconds to reach this output but the shot tasted bitter.

So I decided to go to grind size 10 and go coarser to hopefully get rid of the bitterness but this shot came out in 26 seconds and tasted sour. I'm struggling to get a balanced shot from between just two grind sizes one size is sour the other is bitter. Even though I'm stopping the shot within my range of 34g out.

Any suggestions?


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## El carajillo (Mar 16, 2013)

Try pulling a shorter shot ie at the no 9 setting, dose 17 gms then stop at 28 gms, this shold give you a sweeter shot with good mouth feel. Ie 1 to 1.6


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## Brad1234 (Sep 30, 2019)

El carajillo said:


> Try pulling a shorter shot ie at the no 9 setting, dose 17 gms then stop at 28 gms, this shold give you a sweeter shot with good mouth feel. Ie 1 to 1.6


 I'll try this tomorrow! I've gone through a lot of coffee trying to get it perfect and it's just frustrating me haha!


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## Brad1234 (Sep 30, 2019)

Also my machine has pre infusion (8-10 seconds) normally. Do I take this into my brew time of 28-35 seconds etc? because after the 10 seconds infusion my coffee then only has 18seconds to come out which is very underextracted


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

Yes pre-infusion time is part of extraction time but don't worry about time really go by taste. Some coffees might have bitter notes to them sometimes because of the roast and probably sometimes because of defects/age which maybe you can lessen by decreasing output. Unlikely to be over extracting with your ratio and time...though maybe if it's a dark roast and you're actually running the shot for 43 seconds you could be almost there.


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## Brad1234 (Sep 30, 2019)

Rob1 said:


> Yes pre-infusion time is part of extraction time but don't worry about time really go by taste. Some coffees might have bitter notes to them sometimes because of the roast and probably sometimes because of defects/age which maybe you can lessen by decreasing output. Unlikely to be over extracting with your ratio and time...though maybe if it's a dark roast and you're actually running the shot for 43 seconds you could be almost there.


 Thing is the PF can take like 10 plus seconds and by the time I've reached my output say 34g it's at like 53 seconds and my coffee is so bitter! I pulled an okay shot earlier but still had acidic back notes.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

Acidic = sour?

Ok what are your weights and times from the moment you start the pump? Because earlier you said 30 odd seconds then told us you didn't include a 10 second pre infusion and now you're quoting 50 odd seconds....

Are you purging the grinder? Single dosing? What coffee are you using? Is it light or dark roast? Fresh?

Generally if you're getting bitterness and your shot is taking a long time you should coarsen the grind, but if you do this you get a sour shot? If it's coming through ok and it's taking 30+ seconds you can increase yield to get past the sourness. You could also decrease yield to try to avoid bitterness.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

You may get better responses in the Sage forum. It's always better to use the machine forums.

My recollection from the BE that probably uses the same brew pressure range and 10 sec pre infusion is that generally shot times were over 30secs. The BE is volumetric so no need for me to worry about time.  Made my prep look better than it really was too.

Assuming you are drinking espresso the usual suggestion is to grind finer to increase extraction when this problem crops up not coarser. It could go either way. Beans vary according to where they come from. There is also the possibility of altering time as well. No rules and a necessary but tedious process that has to be gone through even on my americano any time I try a new bean. Practice speeds the process up.

Really it would be best to know *what beans you are using and where they were bought from*. If you happen to be using one that's popular for milk based drinks it could be entirely unsuitable for espresso. In that case the single basket might be an option and may be anyway. Either way I would suggest you at least try the ratio Sage suggest which is a little over 3 eg 18 in 60 out, 10 in 30 out.

I don't use it but one way of counting for infusion is to time from flow. I'd suggest 25 sec but remember when you find something that seems better that's probably the best time to vary that.

Which ever basket you use get a base weight via the razor tool. You may find that you can use 1g less than that in them and maybe over1/2g more. That can be used to provide fine tuning to get round the steps in the smart grinder pro. I used to try all new beans in mine though and never found the steps a problem. The problem with using less is that at some point it results in very messy used pucks. Too much more eventually reduces extraction as the grinds can't fully expand and it also means that the grinder may be set far coarser than it should be. What I found on the BE was that at some increased weight the pucks stuck to the shower screen and very little more stopped that from happening. Even 1/10g gram might do that. The BE does have a 3 way valve though so not sure what the DTP does - the users will know.  I'd hope anyway.

John

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## MWJB (Feb 28, 2012)

Brad1234 said:


> Hi there. I have a sage duo temp and sage smart grinder and am struggling to get consistently good shots. I normally go on grind size 9 on my smart grinder. And work from there.
> 
> I'm dosing 17g to get out 34g in a 1:2 ratio. However when I did this on grind size 9 it was taking 33 seconds to reach this output but the shot tasted bitter.
> 
> ...


 It's unlikely that a change of one grind setting is enough to swing from under-extraction to over-extraction. I don't doubt that some might be bitter, others sour, but I'd guess these are are all under-extracted to some degree. (Bitterness is not caused by over-extraction exclusively).

Do you drink these shots neat? Is there a reason why your output must be 34g?

When you say, "33seconds to reach this output", do you mean that the pump runs for 33sec (giving a bit less than 34g in the cup at this time), then the over-run gets you up to 34g?


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