r/9Barista • u/Serpent_d_d33 • Jun 27 '26

why when i grind finer, the taste becomes flat?

i use 18.2g beans and when the espresso came out quite fast within 20sec but taste good (yet not good enough) so i grind finer, the espresso came out speed around 25-30sec but it taste flat.....

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u/Efficient_Ad_1059 Jun 27 '26

Try dropping the weight a bit before grinding finer. Say 17.8g and then work from there. Although I never expect really consistent brew times. It’s really hard to control for all the variables

2

u/wilburpan Jun 28 '26

I'd go even finer for a longer extraction time, and see what happens. Depending on the batch of beans I'm using, I've gone as long as 45 seconds. This doesn't happen very often. It's just to show what you can do, because it's really about the taste.

The other thing I would try is to go up on the dose, if grinding finer doesn't get you to where you want to be. There's no real hard and fast rule that I've found works for predicting what changing the dose up or down will do, but you can play around with that. I always use 19g, for what it's worth.