ive posted so much stuff on this blog that i cant quite remember if ive shared this tip or not, so bear with me if you think im suffering from early onset dementia!
one tip i picked up was that a cafe was reporting terrible trouble with their machine to the manufacturer, but the troubles were not consistent, they would come and go, and this went on for some time
eventually the matter dragged on to the point where a representative from the machine manufacturer decided something had to be done so he got in his car and visited the cafe in person
it was right on opening, right at the start of the day and he enquired if the machine was performing correctly and the first shots were pulled after the usual start of day procedures were run through and he was told, yes it all appears to be fine
so he said to the cafe owners i am going to sit myself down here in the corner where i have a good view of the machine and the espresso prep process and i am going to see if i can spot an anomaly when you tell me that the machine is no longer delivering good espresso
a considerable length of time passed and then the shout went up; its stuffed again!
as a result of the careful observation by the representative of the espresso machine manufacturer at about the same time, the rep had noticed a change, but not in the way the barista was making the espresso, nor in the way the equipment was being used
unlikely as it may sound the culprit was the sun – by sheer good luck he visited on a sunny morning. what had happened is at opening the position of the morning sun was such that it was not striking the hopper of the grinder. however, as the morning wore on and the earth rotated the sunlight began to fall directly onto the beans in the hopper
as incredible as it sounds but the effect of the sunlight falling directly onto the beans was stuffing them in literally a few minutes. they were all slightly incredulous, but the rep left and the cafe owner monitored the situation over the next couple of weeks, and sure enough the cause was direct sunlight falling on the beans, and the feeble UK sun, not the belting heat of texas or darwin or somewhere like that
so hopefully this account will be of use to someone, somewhere who may be struggling trying to pinpoint why their espresso is going all over the place now and then
moral of the story: check that the placement of you grinder does not expose the beans in the hopper to direct sunlight as any time of day and importantly, at any time of the year as the angle moves significantly, particularly if you live closer to the poles than the equator
best
reiss.