First shot of day “choking out”? [Breville Barista Touch]
Hi everyone! Recently bought a Breville Barista Touch that I’ve been having some difficulty getting consistency with. Initially, I found that I had to run about two or three shots before I could get one that properly extracted. My first two or three shots of the day would usually seem to be a little over extracted, like the machine was choking out, and tasted very bitter with low volume in about 30 seconds.
I’ve sent started running two dummy shots with portafilter and puck screen in the group head before extraction upon waking my machine in the morning, but I am still finding that the first shot of the day tends to choke out and seems to over extract, whereas the rest of my shots throughout the morning tend to under extract and finish in about 24 to 25 seconds.
For example, this morning, my shots looked like this:
Shot 1: 37s for 30mL
Shot 2: 24s for 40mL
Shot 3: 26s for 35mL
The first shot overextracting I think is limiting my grind size, I think I need to go down a few more notches to truly dial in the brew. Currently I’m at internal 5, external 9 on my grinder. Any tips and/or tricks?