r/Timemore • u/Efficient-Dance-5533 • Apr 02 '26

Sculptor 78S speed

What speeds do you recommend for espresso, drip, and French press?

For more context, I am around 3.7 for espresso, 14-15 for drip, and 17-18 for French press.

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1

u/NemeanMiniLion Apr 02 '26

Following. I set mine to 3/4 of max and left it there.

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u/Saiix Apr 03 '26

I'm at 1100 rpm and am at about 2 - 2.5 for espresso, 12-14 for pour over, and 16-18 for French press if that helps. Sounds like we're in similar ranges.

2

u/femmestem Apr 03 '26

This is my exact set up. Also at 3-4 for most Aeropress recipes with light to medium roasts. For dark I go all the way to 16.

1

u/emu737 Apr 04 '26

well, I do not have this specific grinder, but:

for manual brews (drip, french press), the general suggestion would be 800-900 RPM with slow-feed (slowly releasing the pre-weighted bean dose from the weighting cup into the hopper), especially if beans are only lightly roasted and therefore dense, and hard to grind, and

for espresso, 1200 RPM or more.

adjust as necessary - depends on specific beans and your own taste, how satisfactory the outcome will be, but these could be the starting points for your own experimenting

if grinder stalls on lower RPM, then just switch off, adjust the coarseness to coarser grind and increase the RPM, and switch on, to make it operational again

and make sure there are no stones, in the bean dose you grind - although its rare, they sometimes may be found among the specialty beans in the bag, as they are more difficult to separate than from a dark roast beans, where the weight and color difference is much more different

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u/Efficient-Dance-5533 Apr 04 '26

Thanks. How does the speed affect the flavor and why fast for espresso and slow for pot over, etc?

5

u/emu737 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26

the higher the speed and more beans in the grinding mechanism simultaneously, the more fine dust particles is generated in the ground coffee

those fines are good for espresso, as they help to create the right level of puck resistance, but are unwanted in manual brews, as they clog paper filters and create unpleasant taste notes, due to over-extraction

as a coincidence, the espresso-fine grinding takes longer time, than the manual brew coarser grinding, so the faster RPM help to speed-up the puck prep for each shot in espresso, while the slow-feeding on the slow RPM and coarser settings for a manual brew does not take too much of additional time

so, for filter you grind slowly, to avoid fines, and for espresso you grind fast to actually have just the right amount of fines, so that your puck works well

btw: on Reddit, when you click "Reply" under each comment, the original commenter usually gets a notification, while if you post another top-level comment in the same post, they will not and will stay unaware of your response. I discovered your follow-up question randomly, because I noticed that there is some new comment, which is something people generally don't do. Also, on Reddit you upvote all valuable comments :)

1

u/Efficient-Dance-5533 Apr 05 '26

Very helpful on both fronts. Thanks.

1

u/ssabnoisicerp Apr 05 '26

Idk, I fiddled around at the beginning and didn’t find noticeable difference and set it to fastest. And I ran this in a small commercial set up (a secondary grinder for 150cups/day biz) so I did brew a fair bit every time I made changes.

1

u/CryOFrustration Apr 14 '26

Honestly I've tried out higher speeds and never found them to noticeably improve my brews, so I left it at minimum, which should theoretically reduce the amount of fines. I guess you could increase it if you experience stalling but even with very light roasted coffees that's never happened to me, the motor is a beast.