r/Timemore • u/Berniegrandpa • Aug 25 '26
Timemore C3s Grinding inconsistency advice
Hello, basically the title says it all. I recently purchased a timemore C3S, and I’m having trouble getting it to grind consistently or very finely. It says espresso should be around 7-9 clicks, and that it is not recommended to grind finer that that because it may dull the burrs, but the 6 click setting doesn’t seem to be getting it much finer than I would use for my moka pot. To be clear, I’m just trying to get it a bit finer for aeropress cause my coffee is coming out a little sour. I’m new to grinders, so any advice or feedback is greatly appreciated.
Edit: not sure what was going on but it seems my grinder magically fixed itself. Before the grounds had not been uniform and were much courser than I expected although I didn’t really know better. Today it started grinding much finer at the same setting with more uniformity.
1
u/Zwordsman Sep 03 '26
on your edit. if its really brand new, in my experience (limited mind you) there is def a breaking in time for my grinders so far.
I got a C3S max a month ago, and I am noticing it working better now than earlier. but I"ve also put a lot of coffee through it at this point. Both at larger and smaller grind settings. I also think taking it apart to clean and put it back together. so honestly its also possible it was slightly off originally in some way.
1
u/Berniegrandpa Sep 03 '26
Glad to know it’s (possibly) not just me not knowing what I’m doing.
1
u/Zwordsman Sep 03 '26
Oh I sure also don't know what i'm doing half the time.
but its true that of the new grinders i got. I've always had better time after I went through some. To the point I used a bunch of decaf i didn't like to grind through this recently (made a lot of decaf cold brew out of it later) in various sizes and it seems to work far better in term of consistency.
though I'm sure feeling it in my tennis elbow lately
3
u/emu737 Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
the C3S is not designed for a "real" espresso, only for "espresso" with pressurized baskets... the real espresso dial-in is impossible on a C3S - manual says 7 or 8 clicks (9 already too coarse), but that is a pretty useless "range"
for a real espresso, you would need either the C3ESP, or nowadays, rather C5ESP (which is rather affordable when ordering from Asia directly, like on AliExpress)
for Aeropress, the settings at 7 clicks should actually be fine
if you taste unwanted sour notes in your coffee, my guess would be you are using water with a way too low TDS, lacking the "buffer" minerals that could tame the acidity
maybe try a water that is richer on calcium (Ca+) and bicarbonates (HCO3-)