# Sage barista express, need help please...



## wilse (Nov 14, 2013)

Need a bit of advice from you guys please.

FIL has bought said machine, as an upgrade from Nespresso machine, I offered to help set it up, but it's more tricky than I expected, as it quite different to my set-up and timings etc.

We currently using 17g coffee (Filmore & Union) with and output of 48g, but this is in around 22s with first drop around 9-10s.

Crema is pale, not bad tasting, but not as good as the in-store demo's which had a great dark crema colour.

Grind setting is 3, with amount at 2pm.

When reading the manual, I noticed you can adjust the top burr (when you remove it) which is currently on 5.

The pressure gauge is just getting into the ideal zone, just.

Should I still aim for the 17g to 34g drink or is this out of the window with the Sage?


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

How old is the coffee you are using at home from roast date? How are you storing it ?

Is the coffee not as sweet as the demo ? Not as strong ? A set of number 17>34 does not guarentee tasty but it does sound like either your coffee isnt that fresh and or you need to go a bit finer to balance the shot possibly .


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## wilse (Nov 14, 2013)

Well for any other sage owners struggling, here's what I did.

1. Bought fresh beans.

2. Set the upper grinder burr (not the adjustment on the side) two notches finer.

3. Reprogrammed the double water quantity, to the 2 to 1 ratio, so now around 36g

Overall, very impressed with the sage, milk work is surprisingly impressive.


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

3 is a pretty fine setting on a BE for the beans I have used. I bought a Sage Grinder Pro to go with mine - yeh having 2 seems strange but I do have a reason. On that I checked the burr settings before using it. I haven't checked the BE. You could do the same thing on the BE. Clean it out and run it empty at the finest setting. What I found on the SGP was that the motor slowed down and went even slower as the burrs warmed up rather quickly - bad news if left on the motor would probably stall. I just changes the burr setting one setting coarser. Now on the finest setting the motor just sounds busy. I doubt if I will ever need to use it set that fine so didn't see what happened if it ran for a long time just for maybe 15 secs or so. If it had beans in that would probably force the burrs open more anyway.

There is a bit of a catch doing this on the SGP. If I had used the timed grind facility there would have been no way of stopping it other than pulling the plug out. if you do this on the BE make sure that you are using manual timing - that just means keeping the portafilter pressed in when the grinder starts rather than releasing it sooner.

However what comes out depends on the beans used. A demo will probably be using an espresso blend and very probably not fresh roasted. Or a fresh roasted blend that does what they want. f you don't want to use fresh beans it may be worth grinding into the dual wall baskets. That will force the pressure up - hence being called pressurised. If you want some supermarket beans that are likely to do what you want try Lidl espresso beans. It produces the same sort of taste as Costa etc do.







I tried some out of curiosity.

Generally you would just grind finer to boost the brewing pressure. I have ground too fine a couple of times and stalled the machine - 15bar wouldn't pump any water through. There is a problem though. The fill level in the basket, its also important. Too much doesn't help. The razor tool that comes with the machine can help with that but some beans might be better with more or less. Tamping can be a problem too. I settled that by pressing as hard as I can, even straining a little because that is consistent.

Personally as I drink long blacks with a bit of milk were a shot goes into a lot of water I don't worry about ratios only taste. I did check it the ratio way once out of curiosity and it worked out under 2:1 however I over extract on purpose - double shot through a single basket - why - taste. What I have found produces the most from the bean is when the pre infusion stage on the BE is obvious. The pump runs more slowly during that and then increases the pressure available to maximum. Zero comes out until the pre infusion pressure actually shows on the gauge. That might be half way or more or less towards the espresso range it shows. The 2nd thing I use is the look of the puck left in the portafilter. I want to see slight signs of the shower filter and some signs of the hex socket in the screw that holds it in place. If that is too clear chances are there is too much coffee in the basket. I use that to judge when to tweak the grinder timer as well - they are amazingly consistent really but the output does change, a sort of slow drift up and down once it's settled down on a particular bean.

I don't use the double basket much but have noticed that it seems to need a finer grind to get the above infusion behaviour. I haven't tried a bean that needs it yet so haven't really sorted it out but have produced strong coffee with it where the infusion is nothing like as obvious so assume it could be stronger still. I have tried a bean where the thing was too big and the single too small. My main irritation with Sage. The main commercial manufacturers produce lots of sizes with good reason.

John

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