# Dumb questions sorry - dialling in / cleaning



## stuartmack1974 (Jan 28, 2014)

Hello all

New to grinding my own beans and just bought and iberital which is challenging me! OK a few quickies:

1. In terms if dialling in, I managed to get a nice 21 sec shot earlier, so can I assume the grinder is dialled in? Bizarrely every shot afterwards was different, so presumably my tamp is to blame primarily?

2. Simple question, how do I clean the grinder? I'm hoping it's not a full in dismantle job, but I'm all ears :0)

3. Adjusting the grind - quite simply I've been adjusting while the grinder switched off and then restarting, this ok?

4, when swapping beans do you always do a full on clean or just run some of the new beans through first and brush out?

Dumb questions from a dumb newbie, but your help would be really be appreciated.

thanks

Stuart


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## stuartmack1974 (Jan 28, 2014)

Just giving this a Bump !


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## jeebsy (May 5, 2013)

1. 21 secs is still a bit quick. You want to aim for 25-30.

3. Don't do that - if you touch the burrs then start the machine that could stall the motor. Is it an MC2 you've got? Adjust while grinding beans.


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

Could be tamp , could be distribution in here pf , could be how many beans you do or don't have in the hopper. . All could change how long it takes for of the same grind to extract. Plus as jeebsy says 21 seconds little fast, but if you enjoy the taste then fair do's...


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## jeebsy (May 5, 2013)

If it is an [email protected] read this: http://coffeeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?14351-Beans-in-Dublin-for-dialling-in&p=135900#post135900


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## stuartmack1974 (Jan 28, 2014)

Brilliant advice as always guys, particularly about adjusting the grind, won't be doing that again. The whole shot duration thing is fascinating. I just poured a 17 sec shot, but the crema was superb, very smooth, fantastic taste. Weird. Loving the journey though!


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## urbanbumpkin (Jan 30, 2013)

Are you weighing the dose that goes in the PF?

If not that may also be impacting upon your shots.

Weighing dose in and the weight of the shot coming out is really good to address consistency when you're getting started.


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## EarwaxUK (Jan 19, 2014)

I've just, in the last 7 days, got my MC2 dialled in properly and would strongly advocate weighing your dose and your output.

Several people here told me the same thing and it's made a world of difference. When measuring output by volume I was getting real hit and miss shots - some were good, more were just OK and quite a lot were horribly over or under extracted.

I've always used the WDT (although I didn't know that's what it was called, it just seemed the most obvious way of avoiding clumps) and since weighing my dose to the nearest 0.1g and my output to the same degree of accuracy my shots are miles better.

As an example, I massively over-tamped one the other day. After 30 seconds I was beginning to see coffee come through. Before I weighed my output, I'd have just stopped the pump and binned the puck, but I decided to weigh it out anyway and it ran to 57 seconds. Final brew ratio was 1:1.58 and it still tasted better than the shots I was pulling in 28 seconds before I was weighing shots.


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