u/PuzzledFoundation985

Fam,

I have been experiencing different coffee beans across the US speciality ones and been enjoying my coffee journey so far. Recently got my own SR800 roaster to try experiencing roasting experience as well.

Now coming to the post, I recently saw Lavazza espresso beans in Costco and got tempted to try it once after hearing various reviews on them in Amazon and multiple coffee experts about that being the best Grocery shop coffee beans with a roasting or Manufactured date. Even the one I bought is 3 weeks old from roast date.

The moment I opened the bag of beans that is supposed to be medium roast, I could feel some stale, heavily roasted and very strong flavor out of the beans which is same as any of the Starbucks or Peets Dickason roast in terms of smokiness, darkness and smell. After trying out Speciality coffee, I feel this to be old, almost oily and strong smoky flavor even though roast date is less than 3 weeks from now. Is this expected or did I get a repackaged bag of beans with new MFD date?

Fam, been trying to get the perfect espresso shot with balanced sweetness and bitterness but not able to achieve it till now on my espresso machine.

Approaches tried till now,

- Got fresh beans from multiple speciality roasters with roasted date as fresh as 3 days and taking degassing into picture
- Tried few grinders including espresso inbuilt grinder, Baratza encore & another burr grinder to get uniform coffee grinding
- Use 18g to 19g for double shot of espresso
- Performed preheating of espresso machine everytime
- Tuned grind size as low as 3 and as high as 11 with every grind size in between
- Tested on all roast types, light, medium, medium-dark & dark
- Used both EDT & WDT (both not required together but still tried) for even distribution to avoid channeling
- Performed low pressure tamping and have a puck screen to evenly distribute water from machine
- Ran it between 25s and 35s for my espresso shot most of the times

Looking for suggestions on how to get a balanced shot of sweetness and bitterness based on your experience.

Hey fam, been an avid coffee fan for many years now and tried experiencing roasters all across USA and enjoyed every bit of it. Now, after much deliberation, I thought to give it a try at roasting and got my first ever roaster in form of a used Fresh Roast SR800 with extension tube that I got for a little above $200. It’s used for more than a year and in good condition.

Would appreciate for any tips and suggestions how to make best use of it, may it be sourcing good quality beans, curating the temperature controls, roasting time window for different roasts or adding any accessories which can make the roasting experience better.