Café Kubal Coffee Roasters

Grind Adjustment

Certainly at this point in the winter we are supposed to perform various different exploits to simply do life as normal: put on all those extra clothes, shovel, salt, drive slowly, stay awake when it's been dark for hours. At this point, I often begin to wonder why we are still required to
continue to do everything that we are supposed to do as responsible contributors to this community and also as valiant, pioneering Americans, even when the energy required becomes significantly greater over a long period of four months or so.

For example, yesterday at Kubal we had a new record for most dramatic grind adjustment needed all at once. We always meticulously adjust the grind according to various conditions.
This allows Kubal to achieve a superior espresso. The main conditions are:

1. Relative humidity (the weather) 2. Bean age (a coarser grind setting is usually necessary for an espresso blend that has been roasted two days ago versus one that has been roasted four days ago).

Yesterday we topped off the hopper of our Mazzer espresso grinder not thinking anything unusual except, "oooo. fresh coffee. mmmmmm!"

All of a sudden, later that afternoon, the espresso just stopped extracting -- completely, not even a drop.

What had happened, we discovered was that because the air had been particularly dry the past two days, it had dried the previous batch of our blend more than it usually does in three days. That afternoon was sunny and much warmer than it had been recently, thus melting a good bit of snow causing the humidity to rise significantly.

These factors coupled with the new batch of fresh, oily espresso blend just starting to be ground, caused a clamp down. Wow...

Previously we had never had to adjust the grind more than four settings at once, but because of this alignment of augmented affairs, we had to adjust the grind seven settings and run six test shots!

For the benefit of those that don't know, simply put, we had to jump through hoops, juggle flaming torches, and walk a mile long tight rope just to serve our coffee at our normal standards. Granted, I tend to drive the standards way up in the sky, but those are my own eccentricities I suppose.

Sometimes hibernation seems to be a wise alternative, but so did the Wild West.