HELP PLEASE: Breville Barista Express Grinder problems (suddenly)

[kallie.spidahl]

Hi all.

I've had a Barista Express for about a year (I bought it used). I roast my own beans (City/Full City Roast) and was a barista for a few years and have been very happy with my results. Over the past month or two, I've had to tighten down my grind to the finest settings in order to get a decent shot, and now they're suuuuper underextracted no matter how many grounds I get into it + how hard I tamp.

I was underwhelmed with Breville's customer service response (they're like, "Make sure to use filtered water and fresh beans") just tore apart the burrs per manual and cleaned them out without any better results.

Ideas? How does the dial (coarseness setting) move the burr? Up or down? I'm trying to see with it torn apart if it's doing anything. Perhaps there's something wrong with my knob rather than my burr?

Thanks!

 

[dacoffeeplace]

Hi. I have been using the Breville Barista Express for about 3 years now and love it. It's a great machine for what it is intended to be, a non-professional, home use machine. The grinder is one of the weaker components for this machine. The most common issue is the one you seem to be experiencing (not grinding fine enough). I had that issue with my machine after I used it for a while. Research on the internet revealed that it is a common problem. My solution, which I found on the internet as well, was to add a "shim" to the grinder. The stock grinder has a "washer" in the burr set. What I did was replace the "washer" with a thicker one, I had to grind the washer down a bit to adjust it so the upper and lower burrs did not touch (that would be BAD) Please research your issue more as it could be something else.... any modifications must be done at your own risk and will void Breville's warranty. Goodluck