I did not examine the interior of the boiler. However, we live in an area with extremely hard water so I have used (contrary to the usual advice) water from the reverse osmosis device. I never have to descale so I assume there is very little scale in the boiler. The water measured was originally fro...

As I said, I used the wrong abbreviation for micrograms. Not only is 6.5 mcg not so bad, but that was water left over from the previous day's brewing. I will later test the water immediately after brewing when the boiler was replenished with fresh water immediately before. As I said, I also want to ...

The re, the reverse osmosis is at 0.3 well below the 15 or 5 regulatory standard. So is the tap water and the water filtered by the Culligan filter. The water that was heated in the Silvia boiler and that sat overnight was 6.5 which exceeded the standard for bottled water (5). I guess mg standards f...

There has been speculation about the effect of lead in brass boilers (and solder) on the espresso produced. The Regulatory Action Level is 15 micrograms per liter, and the bottled water limit is 5 mg/L. I sent four samples to a highly-recommended lab. Our tap water was 1.0, my Culligan carbon filter...

I purchased the parts as shown in CafeIKE's photo and constructed something similar for the Silvia. It was a very tight fit due to how far back the brew head is. (I'll send a photo if someone is curious.) Result: a 1 oz flow in 25 seconds lowered the brew pressure by a little more than 0.5 bar, from...

Much more elegant. But what are the threads? I went to a large hardware store and could not find what the threads are on the bottom of the Portafilter or how to convert to SAE threads. In fact, they couldn't determine the type of threads on the gauge side of the small fitting between it and the bott...

A very belated addition--but.. Brew pressure is obviously important, and a machine like a Silvia is factory set very high. So how do we adjust it down to 9 bar? If we use a blind PF, this thread indicates it will be lower. But how much lower? According to the posts from 0.25 bar to 2 bar according t...

The pressure build-up in the Silvia is non-linear: very slow for about 5 seconds then rapidly up to about 9 bar. I tested this with a Portafilter gauge cracked open to allow some limited water flow to simulate the flow of water through the puck. So there is the option to continue a little beyond 2 s...

Not sure if it's a good idea to add to an old thread, but here goes. I ended up with an offset of 20 F by taking 200 as the reference point using a digital thermometer in a styrofoam cup that substituted for the basket in a bottomless PF. I then tasted my favorite blend at temperatures (using the PID)

Randy: Maybe if I were better at grinding and tamping I wouldn't have trouble either. But the number of posts from Newbies (and I'm a semi-newbie) suggests I'm not alone. Some lever machine fanatics I know don't seem to worry much about tamping or channeling and I think that's because of the gentle ...