Espresso

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AEROPRESS, nothing else even compares on cost to quality.

I've had one for a good 5 years now, the first one was destroyed by my partner when she left it on the back of the cooker. I order another straight away. if you want to save the planet (TN) buy a reusable filter.

it is a work of genius, it is so simply that you have to wonder why it hadn't been done before.

is it a cafetiere? no, this is a mistake that everybody makes, it is closer to a drip filter than anything else but with a little bit of pressure (not enough to make espresso but enough to compress the grind somewhat). the real benefit of it? 5 seconds to clean it, no dragging a spoon round the get the last of the grounds out.

it's a slippery slope, you start to get in to recipes, inverted brew methods, grinds, pressures, temperatures etc. it's a mini science experiment every morning and it's great (I have a book of experiments, I felt the need to write it all down)


grinders.
hand grinders are ok.
hario mini mill does a good job for consistent grain size. (costs the same as the below machine grinder though).
ignore blade grinders, always go with a burr.

this is the best budget machine grinder you will find. ok on grain size and consistancy, a few bits of chaf and it will not tolerate stones.

https://www.ukdapper.co.uk/delonghi-kg7 ... pYQAvD_BwE

contrary to popular belief, you do not have to spend the earth to make decent coffee, much like tools, if you are willing to take the time and learn the tricks you can make anything work. think it's MikeG whos signature says to acquire skills not tools, same goes here.

now, of the the coffee shop on site to buy my beans for the week, it's a real independent with an owner who knows what he's doing.
 
I agree with novocaine about the Aeropress, it's great. It really comes in to its own for having decent coffee at work as the clean up is so quick and easy.

I've got the same de'longhi grinder that Novocaine recommended and it's good enough for me. A nice thing about it is that by undoing a few screws to take it apart you can adjust it so that it'll do an even finer grind suitable for espresso.
 
Oh do tell, I bought that grinder and gave up on it because it (mine) won't even go down to a proper filter grind, never mind espresso or nearly so (for Aeropress).
 
novocaine":30fi1hbg said:
AEROPRESS, nothing else even compares on cost to quality.

...this is the best budget machine grinder you will find. ok on grain size and consistancy, a few bits of chaf and it will not tolerate stones.

https://www.ukdapper.co.uk/delonghi-kg7 ... pYQAvD_BwE

I use an aeropress at work. I agree that it makes better coffee than a cafetiere and it is also easier to clean. It does not make espresso though, regardless of the claims. You can not get a decent crema. If you drink anything other than espresso, this may not be much of a problem.

We used to have one of these DeLonghi grinders. I modified it to grind finer. It wasn't up to the task of grinding fine enough for a proper espresso and it is night-and-day difference between this and the Eureka. However, again if you don't drink espresso, it probably doesn't matter as it does make decent coffee.
 
samhay":2lx840cf said:
novocaine":2lx840cf said:
AEROPRESS, nothing else even compares on cost to quality.

...this is the best budget machine grinder you will find. ok on grain size and consistancy, a few bits of chaf and it will not tolerate stones.

https://www.ukdapper.co.uk/delonghi-kg7 ... pYQAvD_BwE

I use an aeropress at work. I agree that it makes better coffee than a cafetiere and it is also easier to clean. It does not make espresso though, regardless of the claims. You can not get a decent crema. If you drink anything other than espresso, this may not be much of a problem.

We used to have one of these DeLonghi grinders. I modified it to grind finer (assume same mod as mentioned above), but it wasn't up to the task of grinding fine enough for a proper espresso and it is night-and-day difference between this and the Eureka. However, again if you don't drink espresso, it probably doesn't matter as it does make decent coffee.
 
eezageeza":1xjthf12 said:
woodbloke66":1xjthf12 said:
Once the bag is opened, we also keep our beans in the freezer - Rob
Interesting - not heard of that before. How long can you freeze it for? Do you defrost it in daily batches? I assume you have to defrost it and can't grind frozen beans???

We used to freeze our coffee. Stopped years ago as I couldn't tell the difference.
From memory you can grind from frozen. The grinder warms things up pretty quickly.
 
Jake":1n2760pf said:
Oh do tell, I bought that grinder and gave up on it because it (mine) won't even go down to a proper filter grind, never mind espresso or nearly so (for Aeropress).
It's basically just a case of moving the limits of the courseness dial that's on the side. It's dead easy, although if you go too far then you'll end up grinding the burrs on each other so make the adjustments incrementally would be my advice.
Here's a random video I just found on how to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7eYgXd5ruU
 
look what you've done now Marcros! I have been umming and erring about getting a proper coffee machine to replace my terrible pod machine for over 2 years.

I had managed to get far enough through the many lengthy essays written by coffee aficionados on machines to decide a Gaggia Classic was the model to go for, but then got cold feet due to the cost and the fact I don't really need any more hobbiess to obsess about. Now your post has made me go and buy one anyway!

like you I've bought an older used one - I've ordered a repair kit (o-rings etc) and will let you know if I ever get it back together after it arrives and I attempt a service.

Next step is a grinder - let us know what you get. The coffee-people seem even more nutty about grinders than they are about the actual coffee machines, so good luck!
 
samhay":2n4cs5wk said:
I use an aeropress at work. I agree that it makes better coffee than a cafetiere and it is also easier to clean. It does not make espresso though, regardless of the claims.

Totally agree - it's much better at producing a long filter-like coffee (after dilution).

Nothing other than an espresso machine can produce espresso if that is your bag for some reason.
 
I think the uk importer is Gaggia Direct. That's where i bought my bean to cup machine.

Their service details are here https://www.gaggiadirect.com/maintenanc ... epair.html - service prices included on there too.

The have branches in Elland, Castleford and Braintree.

They offered me some good advice when i bought my gaggia anima, which resulted in me buying the basic machine not the most expensive.
 
Handpresso or minispresso are worth a look if you dont want to spent the equivilant of most people monthly on a machine that fills most of your kitchen side. :D
 
I use a Rancilio Silvia, a Mahlkonig Vario grinder and a calibrated SS tamper (bought in the States).
I buy hand roasted beans from Monsoon Estates who do a great tasting decaffeinated as well as other types. Buy 4 or more packs and delivery is free.
The have the dates when roasted on the bags so can use them at their peak taste.
However I freeze them so that aspect dose not count for me.
I use water from a Brita filter but descale periodically and back flush the portafilter regularly.

I used to dabble in the Coffee Forum but that is another very expensive slope to follow.

I’ve tried all types of coffee machines and appliances but as somebody else has pointed out, you can only get an expresso from an expresso machine.

Rod
 
I think all espresso afficionados will enjoy this guy:

In pursuit of the 'God shot'



Determined to make perfect espressos at home, Tim Hayward squandered absurd amounts of time and money on gadgetry most of us have never heard of, only to produce cup after cup of average coffee







<image001.jpg>

Hide quoted text
On the espresso trail ... Photograph: Getty/Vegar Abelsnes Photography



I bought my first espresso machine in the 1990s. It was a La Pavoni Europiccola, a small, retro-looking chrome job with a big lever you yanked down to express the coffee. It looked great on the counter but made vile coffee, was a pipper to clean and constantly threatened to explode in a shower of steam and shrapnel. When, one glorious day, it blew a gasket, I seized the opportunity to upgrade, but I needed advice.



A reasonable person might assume that coffee obsessives would gather in coffee shops, but these days they lurk in the labyrinthine OCD souks of internet chatrooms. In pursuit of the perfect home espresso - what they call "the God shot" - I gleefully joined their ranks, kicking off the most expensive and pointless addiction of my life.



The ideal espresso (according to the Instituto Nazionale Espresso Italiano) is a 25ml beverage extracted from around 7g of finely ground coffee, using water at a temperature of 88C, passing through the grains at a pressure of 9 bar. See, dead easy. It should be thick-textured, having emulsified many of the oils, retain most of the volatile aromas and flavours of the bean and be capped with a thick colloidal foam layer - "crema" - reddish, creamy and flecked. Each one of those factors is minutely variable, potentially causing thinness, bitterness, under- or overextraction or - the ultimate humiliation - a thin or patchy crema.



My first mistake, according to my online coffee-nerd chums, had been to buy a manual machine - they are spectacularly inconsistent. So I invested in the legendary Rancilio Miss Silvia (£310), the cheapest acceptable electrical-pump machine and, for a few blissful weeks, I chucked in a couple of scoops of ground Illy every morning and got out a nice little espresso. Then, one day, the crema failed to appear.



I returned despairingly to the chatrooms, where it was suggested that my problem was with the grind of my beans. Who knew? After much debate and guidance, I purchased a Rancilio Rocky (£180), one of the cheapest grinders operating with "burrs" rather than blades, which give a consistent grind without compromising the volatile oils. It was still expensive and took up as much counter space as a small shed. The fresh-ground beans definitely improved the flavour, but now the texture of my "shot" was inconsistent.

Millions of people probably get great coffee every morning with a standard home machine and ground coffee from a supermarket. I was starting to worry that, with a process that has as many variables as pulling an espresso, once you're daft enough to go off piste, things get monumentally messy in a way only explicable with chaos theory.



Emails flew, recommendations were exchanged and argued. I could, they suggested, work on my "tamp pressure" - that bit where the barista scrunches down the grounds into the "basket" on the machine is crucial to the brew. I was, they said, going to need a tamper, custom-made for my machine and tamping hand by Reg Barber in Vancouver. After shelling out £75, and hours of practice with my new tamper on the bathroom scales, I got the hang of applying consistent pressure when packing the grounds, but still the perfect crema eluded me. "Temperature,", suggested the Nerds. "The mechanical thermostats on the boiler of your machine can be inaccurate to at least 10 degrees either side - you need to "Pid" your machine," wrote one.



A Pid is a small computer used in labs and industrial-process control to manage temperature. To fit it, you need to find secret instructions written by obsessed academics, hidden deep in websites. You need to ignore all the disclaimers about blowing up yourself and your coffee machine, you need to persuade obscure component suppliers that you are not a bomb-maker, and then you have to take your machine apart and rewire it, thus invalidating any manufacturer's warranty. "It's like a Jedi building his own light sabre," the Nerds said. Which, in truth, is how it felt, until I switched the damn thing on and watched the entire PID unit quietly melt. Obviously Darth Vader never confused the blue and the brown wires.



Another hundred quid and a fortnight later, my machine was Pidded, accurate to within a hundredth of a degree and still turning out rubbish coffee, which was when they recommended I take an angle grinder to it. This is a fashionable new modification where you chop off the bottom of the portafilter (the bit you put the coffee in that attaches to the machine) so there is nothing between the bottom of the basket and the top of the cup.



This allows you to examine obsessively the flow for the characteristic "tiger stripes" of the perfect shot, but shoots half the coffee up the front of your shirt when you hit the "brew" button. Things were getting out of hand. In the following months, though I tried 18 different types of coffee, rebuilt the brew head and fitted an electronic timer to allow the machine to get up to temperature before I woke up, the God shot eluded me.



Today, my kitchen bench looks like a Bond villain's lair. I have invested hundreds of pounds and countless hours only to produce average coffee inconsistently. And what do the Nerds have to say? Apparently, the real pros are drifting away from espressos to experiment with syphon pots, those things resembling two spherical glass vases stuck together that put so many 1950s hostesses into the burns unit.



I've learned a painful lesson. When Giovanni Gaggia filed a patent for an espresso machine in Milan in 1947, it was designed to make coffee in industrial quantities at serious speed. Professional baristas get results because they use huge machines that deliver a thousand shots a day. The hand processes like tamping become consistent after the first hundred. To become barely competent could take me years.



The boys in the chatrooms will denounce me as a heretic, but I now know that, for me, the best espresso will always come from an Italian standing coolly behind a big machine, not an obsessive Englishman throwing money at a small one.





Then his follow-up article;



When I wrote in these pages about how I'd wasted months and far too much money in a fruitless quest for the perfect home espresso, the feedback I received was overwhelming. Coffee obsessives from all over the world sent advice and, after following their suggestions, I started pulling some really quite adequate espressos.

So when my machine recently melted down in the chromed equivalent of a teenage sulk, I was bereft. How could I make a decent coffee without an espresso machine?

I have spent weeks trying and perfecting other methods, including one for brewing "cowboy coffee" which was tweeted to me by a Texan caffeine addict and involves using a bandana as a filter. And I've learned that there are good cups of coffee to be had without the huge investment in a temperamental, steam-spitting appliance. Here are my top four methods - a couple of established stalwarts and two new discoveries.

Cafetiere
All coffee brewing systems work by passing water through coffee grounds. The big difference is the pressure they can exert. An espresso machine does this at nine times atmospheric pressure, while the cafetiere, that fixture of the middle class dinner party table, does it with the pressure of the host's forearm.

You can get a great cup of coffee from one of these but you need to follow a few ground rules. The water should be little short of boiling and the coffee should be less finely ground than espresso or it will clog the filter mesh. The steeping grounds should be stirred immediately before the plunger is used, and if you find yourself having to fight to get the knob pushed all the way down, stop. Pushing against a clogged mesh can make the edges of the plunger deform and shoot boiling coffee up your arm - it's hard to do that and still look insouciant while handing round the Elizabeth Shaw Mint Crisps.

The cafetiere can't extract as much oily loveliness from the grounds as an espresso machine so its coffee is better drunk long, with milk. However, using more than the recommended "one scoop of coffee per person and one for the pot" will give you a stronger and better-flavoured cup.

Moka pot (caffetiera)
The familiar aluminium Moka pot - half-Dalek, half-Italian Futurist sculpture - is almost unchanged since Alfonso Bialetti designed it in 1933.

After filling the bottom half with water and the central basket with grounds, it is heated on the stove. The enclosed bottom half acts like a pressure cooker, raising the temperature of the water several degrees above boiling so it extracts far more caffeine as it blows through the grounds with that burbling sound.

Real aficionados know to pull it off the heat when it's only halfway through its gurgling cycle and the truly obsessed (OK, me) can purchase a small weight that sits on top of the delivery tube inside the pot, increasing the pressure-cooker effect and producing an almost correct crema - that slick foam that coats the surface of a freshly-made espresso. Purists say that a Moka pot can't produce a proper espresso but served with hot UHT milk (its sweetness compensates for the slightly burnt taste the high temperatures give the coffee), in a cornflake bowl with a pain aux chocolat to dip in, it tastes so much like being on a French holiday that it has an authenticity all of its own.

Syphon pots
Syphon pot coffee makers were briefly popular in the 50s and 60s. They looked like a school physics experiment involving two spherical glass flasks and a spirit lamp, but they make the very best jug coffee (as opposed to strong shots produced under pressure). The bottom globe is half-filled with water and the top is dosed with ground coffee. As the spirit lamp heats the water the air above it expands, pushing the hot water up through a central tube and over the grounds. Once the top globe is full of coffee, the heat source is removed and the cooling air in the bottom chamber sucks the liquid back, under pressure, filtering it through a plug of its own grounds.

It's fiendishly clever, strangely fascinating to watch and produces coffee of an entirely different character to the previous two; a gentler and more subtle brew. For this reason, these retro machines are fiercely competed for on eBay with ridiculous prices (I've seen up to £200) being paid for original boxed versions, which is a little unnecessary because they're still made to the original specification by the company in Surrey that invented them in 1910.

The syphon pot is a thing of beauty. It's the gentlest way to make sensitive brews of costly single-estate coffee for considered appreciation amongst aficionados. For me, however, it hasn't the necessary raw caffeine power for my morning jolt.

Handpresso
A beautifully engineered gadget that marries the bicycle pump with the filter mechanism of an espresso machine for a truly portable shot. The ads, of course, show tanned and lithe French couples knocking out perfect demitasses on the deck of their yacht, but could it work for a groggy Englishman standing in a Camden kitchen in his pants? Amazingly, yes. Even the shakiest hands can drop in one of the convenient ESE pods - the European standard coffee equivalent of the teabag - top up the reservoir from the kettle and pump ferociously. When the tiny pressure gauge in the handle reaches 16 bar (16 x atmospheric pressure), you line it up with your cup and push the button.

The Handpresso produces a real espresso without the big machine.
 
SUPERB post gregmcateer! Had me falling off me chair! Thanks.

There is always the Jura series of espresso machines that I linked to about a thousand pages back! Expensive yes, but doesn't take up half the kitchen of a Manor House, AND long-lasting, easy, quick, and cheap to service!

And yeah, I almost forgot, produces a decent espresso too!
 
my Gaggia Classic has arrived - a bit grotty, but working apart from a couple of leaks on the boiler and a broken steam arm.

The mating face on the top half of the boiler was rather pitted:

ltvFtkz7ijYZma8eflQcRXQnhq2mtv2n0XrRhIv7A-OMYCd2L7VcWE5ER6iAYAstnRLavFku764x_53nPPXlzEEkpoyc95tlcN6FUlJCxrd1gdTOoHVEOI261HxsAAmB7zMileOolCd5veS76KWfXHxgbZEyJSVWIm0MuH497A7dEh6yax2C_zomsYY3rt6FOHgAYFwEHhgVxJRR9hpRPSFkYPQ6ytsVxxUDdJRgEc-gauiqUcm1QhgwcupwG2qqVG11Pw8QaR_0FZbqvkMLYeI7Ay7YbkD2mEEsg5qvPjtqDg6ewMcRk37JrhLC0NhW0av1qX7UDMn6AnEPROU4oI_-J127k_H_WDeATcH3oh9oW20ShlPdpAxFHoIGZAVPru3h2WIro4ww5s3rwieQ9OtAh_xfVDe4sFCCG967ggZSyzNJt6tzs5LPoga84WKuOlShmOJ61Fs60tYl09J0_1p7Xnx02EgG2kaagIzth4inLfquJec5jd7-jr_0aH6kw4ZjMhhD8znJKwUcvYEswkCllwplrS043DWN7SFIcTBi6LHlncFxTJZNXAG9vrrqLghgCUlLqWKbgVKIrH_CtNHNuu_BGHZ-2W4gWih5wgEN59Y1gBTUIa9EvfyNhnUEicP-hsUiaJeKYaX0B61ixtrIBn2ihDY4mTDxkA5ERC6JN9NWsHfnqs0EqY1GuxaKE8gnNHd4CRrjEFfYK6evzw20C8ScIvph1SQ7r8IAmXo_Hw9V=w2040-h1530-no


luckily years of pointlessly flattening perfectly good second hand bench planes meant I knew exactly what to do:

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After the 4th day of this lot wife complained that "I had spent a fortune on a broken coffee maker, cluttered up the kitchen table all week and yet had not actually made any coffee cuts of coffee", which is typical the kind of nit-picking comment I have to put up with!

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suitably motivated I have now finished the boiler and put the machine back together:

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number of cups of coffee made is still zero, but I am getting there!
 
Interesting pix nabs. May I ask what the metal is on that flange you flattened please? From your pic it looks to me like pressure die cast "pot metal". Can't be surely, cos AFAIK that contains a lot of zinc which I understand (perhaps incorrectly) is almost "instead death" around pressurised steam?

Anyway, nice clean up job Sir (& if that flange is "pot metal I bet it flattened off a LOT quicker than a steel plane body). ;-)
 
good job nick. I have the same strip down to do, but am waiting on a screw to arrive so that I can test the machine before I start. I have a full set of seals ordered from eBay for a tenner, some chemicals from eBay, and a couple of upgraded parts to replace the grottiest of what is on the machine.
 
AES":lelw21ek said:
Interesting pix nabs. May I ask what the metal is on that flange you flattened please? From your pic it looks to me like pressure die cast "pot metal". Can't be surely, cos AFAIK that contains a lot of zinc which I understand (perhaps incorrectly) is almost "instead death" around pressurised steam?

Anyway, nice clean up job Sir (& if that flange is "pot metal I bet it flattened off a LOT quicker than a steel plane body). ;-)

The top part is aluminium, and the base (the so called "group head" ) is chrome plated brass. You will not be surprised to hear that the best choice of boiler materials is the source of endless discussion amongst the coffee nerds. Woe betide anyone making the wrong choice as it will almost certainly explode/give you metal poisoning/create inter-dose temperature fluctuations/make not very nice coffee etc.
I'm approaching the making of a first actual coffee with a degree of trepidation.

And yes it was a *lot* less work than flattening the sole of a plane .
 
I use a Rocket double boiler machine. Italian. Fully agree about soft water. Mine will be plumbed in if I ever get my new kitchen finished, but for now I fill with filtered water from the fridge.

With Eureka grinder (which is excellent but a bit messy). The hopper is not very big, but that's not a bad thing really as the beans are always fresh from an airtight container.

Still also use a Nespresso occasionally if I am only likely to have one cup in the day.

Drink a lot of tea as well :)

Beans are a black art. I know some people roast their own. Can't be bothered to do that. Still on the search for the perfect mild and creamy, flavourful bean.
 
AJB Temple":uzcersjg said:
Beans are a black art. I know some people roast their own. Can't be bothered to do that. Still on the search for the perfect mild and creamy, flavourful bean.
South American beans seem the best for a creamy cup. African beans are always quite "bright" which seems to be coffee nerd speak for battery acid.
 
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