I know! you can see in the front angle video how fast it turns blond. I tried turning down the extraction time from around 15sec. to the current time but it's still watery yuck.
Hopefully someone here will know an apx. time I should be shooting for. According to posts here on HB the extraction times for Super Autos are really short.

Maybe if I put it's guts into a PC case it would make better espresso?

My humble Saeco Vienna tops out at about 15 seconds and is more like 10 seconds most of the time.

Does it grind by weight, volume or time?

Can you you check the brew pressure?

It might also be somewhat telling if you can feed it some other beans ground from your personal grinder via the decaf chute.

(Is it as loud as it seems in the video?)

Too bad it tastes like Star#$%^@%$

Ann

Everything is adjustable. I just need to get familiar with the programing. The grind seems to be adjusted by time and the brew pressure is adjusted by the pump opv, I think. Pump pressure starts the shot at 9 Bar and drops to about 8.5 during.
This is my first pump machine but from what I have read here on HB that seems about right.

It had a code flashing occasionally "dep", that was not in the owners manual so I called Astra today and found out it means the h2o softener needs recharging and the machine will not work properly until I reset the counter. Hope springs! Perhaps thats why the shots are off.

Look out "BuckStars" if the Astra makes comparable drinks in limp home mode they are toast with it properly set up.
How sad to be using "BS" espresso as a bench mark.

Yes this thing is really loud. It fits in perfectly at the shop The guys love it and are working on a plexi glass side panel so the Robotic Barista can be viewed and critiqued.

I reviewed the drink history of the machine (cool feature). Since 1998 it has made: 6589 espresso drinks, 4525 of them milk based.

I will defiantly use use the grinder by-pass next trip. I'll haul the super jolly down and do some dose/grind experiments.

Thanks for the input, I'm trying to think like Rube Goldberg and design a homebuilt version (not).

Been enjoying the Astra saga. Looking forward to the next installment!

-John

Thanks John,

Looking forward to the next installment!

Me too! I shook some time free to work on it this Wed. and Thurs. So will hopefully have an exciting and tasty conclusion to post.

I just found this thread and.. I wanna know how the long term has worked out!
Cheers
Richard