Lot of stuff on my mind today …
I had a fantastic day visiting Hazel and playing with coffee yesterday. We had a ‘cup-spar’, which involved us presenting each other with four ‘triangular’ cupping sets (for example, two cups of A and one of B - the objective is to pick the odd one out). Hazel had no trouble at all picking the sets I gave her; I had more trouble. I’m quite silly really; I could pick D from the As, and C from the Bs; but then I had trouble distinguishing A from the Ds or B from the Cs! First lesson of the day: don’t second guess yourself! I’m planning on entering the NSW Cupping Comp in November despite my less than brilliant efforts yesterday - it’ll be a fun experience if nothing else. 
We also did a lot of dosing practice. So - figure out your routine, of dosing, tapping, distributing, striking off and tamping - then instead of putting the PF to the group, tap out the puck and weigh it. And repeat and repeat and repeat - trying to keep your accuracy to within 0.3gm. I was surprised how accurate I can be - if I concentrate - and how quickly you just know if it’s going to be over or under dosed. Need to get me some scales …
Have to add at this point that I got my Christmas present this week. Drew says I can play with it until Christmas, but then I have to let him wrap it on Christmas Eve. Suits me perfectly. This is it …
Loving playing with it. (I’ll post a bit more about tamping later - I’m enjoying experimenting with the convex base).
All the grinding and dosing and what not with Hazel’s doserless BNZ has given me a severe case of doser-dislike. Stupid whack-whack-whacking the doser lever. I’m thinking about converting my Super Jolly to a doserless if the necessary parts aren’t absurdly priced … it’ll save me having a massive pile of grinds all over the left side of the bench anyway.
I digress … yesterday … so, after a very fun day (Thanks Hazel!), I was driving up Balmain Rd and remembered the cupcake shop I’d noticed on the way in - I had to stop …
Came home to have a quick but lovely afternoon tea with Jess.
I’m sure there was something else I wanted to muse about … hmm …
those cupcakes were pretty damn good! Good to cya, albeit briefly…
Sweet present. What sized baskets are you aiming to fill?
Jess - great to see you too!
Sam - I replaced the Giotto’s baskets with LM doubles. In theory, they’re 14g baskets. In practice … well, with Hazel’s Lm baskets, with the grind we were using yesterday and no tapping - just fill and strike off - it was 15.7g. I expect if you ground finer you’d fit more in …
My ‘repeatable dose’ (half fill, tap x 2, fill to top, tap, stockflethy-strike off) was between 17.9 - 18.1g. (ish - sometimes it got up to 18.5ish!).
Nice Chrissy pressie - looks very familiar ;)…. actually, come to think of it, it’s exatly the same, even the spacers - great baristi think alike ;)…. though, did you get the black top or the white?
That’s great news about the Cupping comps - you’ll be killer.
I reckon I’d miss the doser on my SJ…. but I wouldn’t mind having the BNZ doserless.
That’s a pretty similar dosing tech to mine I think. I 2/3 fill, tap twice on the bench/edge of doser (this is my variable on how much I want to updose - i.e. I tap harder for an updose), overfill, stockfleth-esque (one fingered, I’ll have to show you that one, it’s my new thing), strike off. I’ve recently got rid of my tamper tap too.
Sounds like you had a great day though!
Hey Dan - got any red stuff left in the bloodstream or is it all caffeine now?
I have the white top on the tamper, not sure how I feel about it.. probably look better with a design on it.
And you wanna know what else is crazy - I do a one-finger stockfleth too! I just developed it fully yesterday - need some new calluses though, PF is HOT!
White! Cool, at least we wont get them mixed up… ‘cos you know, we hang out heaps with our tampers and stuff…
anyway, yeah, so the reason I use the one finger is ‘cos I kept burning myself on the stupid nub (lug) that sticks out the side of the pf and is burny.
I didn’t have any espresso today, all CoE Costa Rica and Clover… to try and detox myself a bit
Brought back a batch though from BBB and Padre (East Brunswick Project). You could definitely smell which was my bag on the plane.