How to prevent overflowing when brewing with Aiden

Introduction

Aiden is designed to brew fantastic coffee as easily as possible, without a large risk of overflowing or any other messes. However, depending on the type of coffee that's being brewed, the amount of coffee being brewed, and the way it's ground, it's still technically possible for the brew basket to overflow. In this article, we'll be discussing how to avoid overflowing the brew basket, and the variables that contribute to how the water flows. 

How grind size affects water flow

A good way to understand how grind size affects water flow is to think about water flowing through sand and water flowing through pebbles. Water will naturally take much longer to pass through sand because of how small and compact the particles are against one another. Alternatively, pebbles are much larger and create bigger gaps between one another for the water to pass through more quickly. There's less resistance. 

Coffee is the exact same. Water will always pass more slowly through finer-ground coffee than coarser-ground coffee.

How coffee dose size affects water flow

As an oversimplification, brewing with larger batches of coffee will cause the water to flow more slowly in the brew basket. It's also important to note how much room there is above the bed of coffee. Smaller doses allow much more room for water to accumulate, whereas larger doses do not.

This is of course interconnected with what we discussed about grind size and we'll go through a few examples of how everything intersects below. 

Please note: The examples are generalities and might not fit in every situation. They're meant to give you examples of some of the most common scenarios you might see. 

Brewing lower doses

Brewing larger doses with coarser coffee

Brewing larger doses of finer coffee

How roast level can affect water flow

Again, as an oversimplified generality, lighter-roasted coffees are going to be denser than darker-roasted ones. This means that it's going to take more darker-roasted coffee to meet, let's say, a 20g dose than it would to meet the same amount with lighter-roasted beans. As a result, you're going to naturally use more coffee when brewing darker roasts in Aiden than you would lighter ones. 

What can you do about an overflowing Aiden?

To prevent an Aiden from overflowing when brewing larger batches, the best approaches are:

1. Adjust the grind size to allow for faster water flow
2. Space out pulses to prevent too much water from accumulating on the bed

Adjusting the grind size a little coarser is the easiest of the two because it prevents you from having to edit profile settings. Try starting a full number coarser and going from there. 

However, if the grind size isn't able to be changed, spacing the pulses farther out is the best course of action. Try adding around 5 seconds at first and adjusting from there. The important thing is to ensure all of the pulses are edited, not just one. 

It can also be helpful to grind a little coarser if the pulses are spaced out to even out the extraction over a longer brew time. 

Need more help?

Need extra help dialing your coffee in or have any other questions? Please feel free to reach out to us here! 

If you suspect your Aiden might not be working properly, please reach out to us here instead.