Hi,

New owner, learning fast.

I'm using the Double Basket in the Portafilter. Seems like the single can be troublesome and hey more caffeine more fun.

I've dialled in the grind pretty well. Amazing how much it can change between different bags of coffee.

But I'm still working out how the "Brew" actually works, and what Single, Double and Custom actually do.

1. Is it purely that it controls how long the water is poured through the coffee grounds? i.e. Single = 25 seconds, Double = 30 seconds and custom I choose?

2. If it is purely water pour duration, is the difference between double and single largely taste? Or is more caffeine extracted?

3. What do you folk default to?

Many thanks,

A.

1- yes just the duration that the pump is pushing water through the brew head

2- the difference should be negligible. You are trying to get a ratio of ground coffee in, to espresso out at 1:2. So for the oracle it grinds around 20-22g for a double so you would look to extract around 40-45g of espresso. I can't really remember the amount of ground coffee that goes into the single basket on the oracle simply because I never pour singles. I'm pretty sure most people don't bother with singles anymore 😂. So if you want to use the single basket, I would suggest weight how much ground coffee the oracle doses as default.

3 - generally when I had the oracle I would look to extract 40g espresso from the 20g of ground coffee in 32 seconds. This will put you in the right area. The weight of ground coffee can change depending on your grind size.

 

Pretty much what @Karkasaid above - you *may* get good results from a higher yield - for example on some of my HasBean packs I tend to find a ratio of 2.5-2.8 (about 59-60g out) over 30 sec tastes better to me.

Focus on ratio and shot time as they are the only two variables that you have; due to the grind the weight is fixed.