Coffee Lab & Roasters · Coffee Lab & Roasters Huila Decaf

Grind 29.5 on this new light roast decaf ran 52 seconds with extremely restricted flow and channeling throughout — but landed a balance 4 and 4 stars. The flavor outcome is better than the shot deserved, and the context shots show a pattern of choked or near-choked pulls across this entire bag so far.

52 seconds is Very Slow by your thresholds and crosses into industry over-extraction territory (>45s). Ratio 2.13 is Normal. The balance 4 with a good quality rating is genuinely surprising given the flow description — restricted, channeling, spout-switching — but Diego's taste is the ground truth here. Worth noting: all five shots on this bag have averaged 53 seconds, and three prior shots hit the 60-second auto-stop. This bean is consistently choking at grind settings that work fine on other decafs.

Coffee Lab & Roasters Huila Decaf is a light roast single origin Colombia at 12 days post-roast, squarely in the estimated peak window. Flavor notes are bright acidity, sweet, lemon — higher acidity profile than your Metric Decaf Huila. The processing method is unspecified, so you can't rely on the EA Washed 'opens the structure' assumption here. Light roast density is likely the dominant factor driving the choke — this bean is behaving more like your Brazil Cerrado (which needed grind 42) than your previous decaf. The balance 4 this shot may reflect the restricted flow accidentally evening out over- and under-extracted channels, not true dialed-in extraction.

Five shots in and still no clean pull — this is a challenging bean. The good news is you recognized the pattern quickly and the flavor read is accurate. Getting to a functional flow is step one.