Printer's Row Coffee Co · Brazil Cerrado

Shot 36 of your 42 total pulls — this was the breakthrough on the Brazil Cerrado after a brutal dialing-in stretch. Grind 42, 28 seconds, balance 4, 4 stars: the first fully balanced shot on this bean. Notes confirm it: even flow on both spouts, no lingering acid or bitterness.

Time is Normal (28s) and ratio is Normal (2.26) — both squarely in range. Balance 4 (Balanced) matches the taste notes exactly. The five shots leading into this one tell the whole story: grind 39 choked at 60s and over-extracted (balance 6), grind 45 blew through in 15s (balance 1), grind 41.5 ran sour at 34s, and grind 40.5 channeled badly at 58s. This shot at grind 42 was the resolution of all of that chaos.

Brazil Cerrado natural process at 13 days post-roast was solidly in its peak window, and the flavor delivered: the balanced, soft chocolate profile the bean promises. The reason grind 42 works where everything finer failed is the natural process — the denser, stickier puck structure of a natural requires a much coarser grind than any washed bean at this dose. The five-shot odyssey from 28 all the way to 45 and back to 42 was the only way to find that. Nothing you did wrong; this bean just had an unusually narrow extraction window.