My thermocouple arrived! So I stuck the little temp pickup (which has been described in the literature as a 'bead' but looked to be more like a braided wire to me) onto the group head near the back and slightly to the side of the flange, filled the reservoir and turned the machine on... prepped a basket and watched the temp rise... and stop at a little over a hundred F.
I raised the handle until water started coming out, then steam, and the temp slowly went up... by the time I was at 185F I had used up almost all my water (Professional). Obviously I'm doing something wrong. How do you get the temp up near 190F without using all your water? Or are my temps unrealistic? The other shots I've been pulling tasted ok for the most part, if a little bitter, but in retrospect must have been pulled at near 140F - 150F judging by tonight's performance.

You only need to release the air pocket so the pressurestat can read accurately and bring your machine up to temp. To do this open the steam valve. Air will escape, then condensed water droplets. Close it when you get steam. Briefly raise the lever before locking in, just enough to flush a spurt of water. Then lower it before you've had much flow. You don't need to warm the group by flushing hot water through it. Remember that the group is bolted to the boiler. It will heat up. Then use half pumps to introduce water into the top of the group but not past the piston gaskets. The group will heat to your desired temp. Now you can gently and fully raise the lever to allow water to flow to and saturate the coffee and press through once you've got droplets evenly coming off the bottom of the filter basket.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! My machine LIVES!

Thanks, Gary. Worked like a charm! So THAT'S why they call it a heat exchanger! yuk yuk yuk!


Still a touch bitter, drawn at 200F. I read some stuff that indicated most beans would be bitter at too high a temp... what's your experience? Is there a 'first' temp that you would draw a new bean at if its characteristics were unknown and you had to work it up from scratch? 185F? 195F?

It is also best to raise the handle whilst the steam is exiting the steam valve, this will get rid of all the air. You can put an olive jar with water in it so the water covers the steam tip while you do the entire bleeding procedure to tell when all the air is gone. As you raise the handle, the air in the group gets expelled too. You can raise it once to briefly expell a bit of water, then pump it a bit without releasing anything, while watching the olive jor. You can use the olive jar technique to test your bleeding technique, then once you know what how to do it, you can do it with out messing with the olive jar unless you change something. After the bleed let the boiler get up to full pressure before continuing.

Are you getting spongy pulls? After you make the shot does the handle stay all the way down? Spongy pulls reduce the shot volume in a very uncontrollable way, and you want NOTHING to be out of control with these machines. Late lock in with raising the handle just enough to emit a little water vapour into the space under the piston and then quickly attaching the portafilter with just lowering the handle enough to stop the flow seems to guarantee no sponginess.

I have a little hour glass that is actually a three minute glass. I find that if I wait three minutes after the thing comes up to pressure after the bleed, and then make a shot without any late lock in everything goes fine too.

Do you have a bottomless portafilter? If so you might have someone else read the temperature of the exiting espresso during the pull with an IR thermometer. It is possible to do this yourself, but it really takes three hands to do this. (Although IR thermometers once cost several thousand dollars, they now cost about $10 to $15.) The important number is what is the FINAL temperature. I like it to be around 93 degrees.