I've noticed the last day or so that when I make a shot I hear a weird sucking kind of noise then water is coming over the top of the portafilter whilst making a shot. Initially I thought it was because I had too large a coffee dose or had tamped to hard. I have reviewed these so I can eliminate that as a problem.

My main suspect is now I've had the machine for nearly a year and despite regular maintenance (backflush) the seal around the portafilter may have perished? I've read on here a few times they often need replacing annually? I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything important first.

Before the problem had arisen I hadn't actually changed anything in my technique, simply the volume of espresso I'm making now I don't have to hand grind each shot

Thanks
Bruce

BruceB wrote:My main suspect is now I've had the machine for nearly a year and despite regular maintenance (backflush) the seal around the portafilter may have perished? I've read on here a few times they often need replacing annually?

Six months is more like it. They're cheap to replace.

Yep its the gasket, just buy a few and replace as needed, they dry out and crack after a while leading to these problems.

Not sure your machine and how you use it, but as you are almost certainly aware, every machine I know of has a rubber/plastic gasket to make the seal around the portafilter and grouphead. The gasket material decays over time, heat being the number one culprit of accelerating the process. If you leave you machine on all day, 1 year is an average life span. HX machine's groupheads often hover 50 degrees warmer than thermoblock or dedicated brew boiler machines, and can deteriorate much sooner than 1 year. Proper care would dictate replacement about every year (depending on how you use your machine). As mentioned, easy to do. I would remove your grouphead screen while at it and give everything a good cleaning.

Thanks for the information/confirmation

For anyone else's reference I have the Silvia, typically on around 30min-1hr every day, weekends are much longer if not all day.

From what I can understand you'll be looking for RA36.301.030 which is the 'home' version of the gasket. They do a commercial version as well but it doesn't sound like it is compatible with the Silvia.

So I have replaced the seal, the first two shots were fine, but after that the problem started happening again. I have dialled back the grind, it didn't help, nor should I have to from my understanding (I thought the process was to find the choke point, then from there increase the grind size until a decent extraction was being achieved; I write this as my understanding may be flawed as a beginner?).

I am at a loss as to what now may be causing the problem, I'm reluctant to really wrench the portafilter into place to achieve a better seal, as I don't see that being helpful in the long run, nor have I had to do this in the past.

Any advice at this point would be much appreciated.

BruceB wrote:So I have replaced the seal, the first two shots were fine, but after that the problem started happening again.

For what it's worth, the Silvia that I owned years ago required considerable torque to seal the portafilter; I had to brace the side of the machine with one hand and tighten with the other. Once I upgraded, I had to break myself of the habit of overtightening. Most espresso machines require less than a 1/4" inch turn past gasket contact to seal. I remember tightening Silvia way past the "red dot", otherwise it would drip drip drip. My advice: Don't bother with a new gasket, just tighten it harder.

BruceB wrote:I thought the process was to find the choke point, then from there increase the grind size until a decent extraction was being achieved; I write this as my understanding may be flawed as a beginner?

That's one way, but Fine tuning grinder setting with minimum waste offers a better "by feel" method to get in the ballpark that saves time and coffee.

HB wrote:For what it's worth, the Silvia that I owned years ago required considerable torque to seal the portafilter; I had to brace the side of the machine with one hand and tighten with the other.

Ditto. I think that is the normal experience with the Silvia.

I had the same experience for the 5 minutes I owned a Silvia.
OO

doubleOsoul wrote:I had the same experience for the 5 minutes I owned a Silvia.
OO

I used my Silvia quite happily for almost three years, until Jim Schulman talked me into buying an Isomac Zaffiro at an SCAA show.