# Sage Barista Pro Problems



## NapoleonSi (Aug 15, 2021)

Hello,

I have had a Sage barista Pro for only five months and have been really struggling to pull a good shot the last two months. I have studied these forums closely, read the sticky post, various others and watched many YouTube videos, and am now at a loss trying to understand what has happened to seemingly have changed the way it pulls.

I've done all the regular maintenance as and when it has been requested, but feel there is possibly something else I'm doing wrong, or maybe something has happened to the machine to make it not function as it did.

For the first three months I could pull decent shots, with the default burr setting of 6 but the grinder set quite low, around 3 or 4, with 19g of freshly ground coffee (I've only ever ordered from Miles and Rave). Then for some reason these settings started making very bad sour shots with a fast extraction.

I have not done anything differently at all and I just don't understand why this is happening. I've adjusted the burr to 4 now, grinder to 1, and still fast extraction sour shots. Same coffee (newly bought), same weight!

There are further things I can do, like use 20g of coffee, and this does improve things a little by slowing the extraction but the coffee still comes out thin and bubbly, and it just doesn't taste very nice.

The thing that is annoying me is that the machine seems to have changed over a very short time, and I'm just confused as to what may have happened.

Has anyone got any advice on what I can try before I send it back? Thank you.


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## ImthatGuy (Dec 4, 2015)

Based on my experience with the Pro:

- It's extremely sensitive to variations in the beans. A factor might be the type/age/storage of your beans. I buy my beans in 1Kg packs (mostly from Rave) and I do sometimes find I have to tweak after I'm about halfway through a pack.

- It's also very sensitive to the tamp. It took me quite a while to get a consistent, reliable technique. Eventually I ended up with a dosing funnel and a coffee distributor/palm tamper. I grind into the port filter with via the funnel, tap a few times to break up any lumps, very light tamp with the built-in Pro tamper, to eliminate spillage, then a full ramp with the distributor.

I hope something in this helps


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