diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 7f8af03..f80da78 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -405,9 +405,10 @@ There are three properties for customizing this event locking on transmission:
   considered for transmission. The default is currently 60 seconds but might change in future releases.
 
 * **lock-size** (events): Defines the maximum amount of events which are loaded into memory and published in one run
-  (in one submission per event type). By default, *all* events are loaded into memory. In some future release, this
-  property will become mandatory. This should be set to a value which is not too high so out-of-memory situations
-  are avoided.
+  (in one submission per event type). By default, up to 1000 events are loaded into memory, but this default might
+  change in some future release. This should be set to a value which is low enough so out-of-memory situations
+  are avoided (depending on your typical event sizes), and high enough to allow the needed throughput.
+  Using the value 0 will disable the limit completely, but this is not recommended.
 
 Example:
 ```yaml
diff --git a/nakadi-producer-spring-boot-starter/src/main/java/org/zalando/nakadiproducer/NakadiProducerAutoConfiguration.java b/nakadi-producer-spring-boot-starter/src/main/java/org/zalando/nakadiproducer/NakadiProducerAutoConfiguration.java
index 6cd12cb..dc7dd12 100644
--- a/nakadi-producer-spring-boot-starter/src/main/java/org/zalando/nakadiproducer/NakadiProducerAutoConfiguration.java
+++ b/nakadi-producer-spring-boot-starter/src/main/java/org/zalando/nakadiproducer/NakadiProducerAutoConfiguration.java
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ public EventLogWriter eventLogWriter(EventLogRepository eventLogRepository, Obje
 
     @Bean
     public EventLogRepository eventLogRepository(NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate,
-        @Value("${nakadi-producer.lock-size:0}") int lockSize) {
+        @Value("${nakadi-producer.lock-size:1000}") int lockSize) {
         return new EventLogRepositoryImpl(namedParameterJdbcTemplate, lockSize);
     }