Despite the higher quality of my late VAM, the tank is a looser fit than my orange one. You can actually make out the heating element's orange glow when it is heating up.

That said it locks in quite solidly and I don;t get the thermostat triggering when I pull - at least not as a regular occurrence and when it does it has everything to do with the temperature of the water and not the actual physical action of pulling the handle.

Once the kettle is at pull temperature (199 F or so) you can just turn off the power switch.

Okay, so I've had my Caravel for a while now (about a year, I guess), and am enjoying it immensely, but still don't know all that much about them (even less than I thought). It seems from what I've read here and elsewhere that Arrarex and VAM were separate manufacturers, but if so, that confuses me. I have a gray Caravel with no little lever for the boiler lid. Underneath the drip pan, it reads "Arrarex," but underneath the boiler is "VAM."

Can anyone clarify?

Thanks.
Andy

Sure- My guess is VAM is the name of the manufacturer (perhaps V.A.M stands for 'something' Arrarex 'something') - and Caravel is the name they chose for the product. But the early machines were just sold under the VAM mark and didn't have the little Caravel ship or name. Perhaps these early ones were more hand made- and then they started the process of refining the manufacturing process with the first line of Caravel branded machines.

In fact that makes sense from a Trade Mark perspective in that VAM and Arrarex would be the 'house' marks and 'Caravel' would be the product mark.

continuing on from the PF review- here we have 5 different Caravel pistons- it seems like everytime they made a coffee machine they introduced a new change to the design- I am sure there are more variants- in the first photos the pistons are ranked youngest to oldest from left to right:











this is the mother of them all- the VAM piston:






it has no hole in the bottom of the piston- which changes the whole pull. There is no circlip holding the piston to the shaft- it is permanently fixed I think:

Well, I have moved on from my old pre-millennium Pavoni to one of these type 1 machines, and I must say, my first impressions are "wow". I guess pretty much everything has already been said about this machines quality and construction and thought that went into design, but it's kind of sad that they aren't being made anymore. Hopefully with renewed demand for this class of machine some work will be spent to investigate further. I can just imagine a slightly pro-sumer design of this with one open boiler and one closed for steaming milk.

Anyway, my routine was pretty easy to figure out and goes something like this:

(1) Grind 13g coffee (recently just switched from the Mazzer SJ to a Kyocera handmill)
(2) Boil water and try to catch just as slightly larger than pin head bubbles are coming up. Estimated about 200F (thermometry would be a bit more helpful here...eventually I'll be testing out the built in thermostat, but not enough shots yet to have fiddled with it).
(3) Pull a warming flush or two into espresso cup (1-1.5oz total volume) through PF and basket.
(4) Dry basket and fill with coffee, tap to settle grinds and try to fit the 13g as evenly as possible.
(5) Tamp just to level and give about 3-4mm of clearance (about the thickness of my tamper).
(6) Lock in, then raise lever (haven't yet tried a lever raise and then lock in just before water pours).
(7) Wait for gurgling to stop, pump lever until resistance is felt all the way to the top.
(8) Aim for a smooth but slightly heavy pull all the way to the bottom. Pull takes about 30s which seems to make a really nice ristretto for the 13g of coffee and I would estimate anywhere from 0.5 to 0.75 oz depending on how well I do the Fellini preinfusion.
(9) Remove cup, raise lever half way (not high enough to allow water to enter group) and pump a few times. This really clears out the soupy puck nicely and allows a great dry puck to eject every time.

Again, just amazed at the engineering of the machine (in almost every regard). The routine seems like a lot to type out, but really it was pretty intuitive after already owning a manual lever. With a couple small upgrades like a temp sensor (or dare I think PID?!) I can just imagine this beast cranking out amazing shot after shot that can be perfectly reproduced. But on some level the espresso is already so great that I can't imagine going through all the work of a PID just to get temp control, mostly I can't think of a great place to put the thermocouple.

Also not only is my belief that milk in coffee and tea ruins it and is bad health wise, but I am much happier without all the steaming and pressurized boiler and I think coffee mostly tastes much better straight (though I enjoy a very occasional macchiatto). Though on the other hand it would be nice to have a steam wand for company, I probably still won't invest in a stove-top contraption just to satisfy people that would likely ruin such a perfect espresso anyway!

I heard people saying earlier that they use the Caravel as their benchmark machine, and it's not hard to see why. Easy to use, fantastic coffee, reproducibility and pretty fast back to back shot making (which reminds me, any chance of anyone having new baskets made for these beasts?). If you can deal with lower shot volume (or generally enjoy ristrettos more anyway) and don't need a steam wand, there's really no reason not to pick one of these up!

Not sure if this is the place to ask, but has anyone turned a set of handles for the older style of this machine? I really wish I had access to a lathe. My handles are both in sorry shape and I'm not all that concerned with keeping the bake-lite originals. If anyone knows someone who can do it shoot me a PM.

Any other options for handle replacements? It seems to be the one thing on the machine that actually CAN be damaged (besides seals).

re: handles, email Doug at Orphanespresso.

re: the Caravel, I've had a pair of 16g Caravel ristrettos today, and they were just sooo good. I pulled out the scale just for fun and was surprised the little basket could swallow up 16g. But I weighed it twice just to be sure. Then I ground for another shot, and it was also right at 16.0g. Now I've got a little experiment going to dry the pucks and check for extraction of dry solids.

Peace,
PC

Not to take away from Orphan, but you might want to check out this thread, pretty amazing work: Custom Wood for your Espresso Machine

Thanks for the suggestions on handles! BTW any tips for removing the portafilter handle?...seems like it should screw off, but kinda scared to really crank on the thing. Lever handle seems pretty straight forward.

As to dosing...I can barely fit 12g in the basket without considering it overdosed. Even there the basket is rounded for me. If I just dosed straight from doser without tapping and leveled it would probably be 11.5g or less. I've crammed 14g as suggested in with lots of tapping, but funny enough the machine pulls nearly the same even with +/- 0.5g dosing, so doesn't seem too sensitive to dosing to me. Grind size seems to take a big change to make noticeable effect. I'm thinking basket geometry has most to do with this.

The pf handle simply screws off....there is a long threaded bolt inside that goes all the way to the end of the handle. Even with some flaws the old one is worth keeping alive as long as possible since often when removing it the plastic will shatter.

You might have a single basket on the 11 grams dose, although I think the single is actually around 7. We have seen a lot of weird baskets in Caravel machines some bigger some smaller and the only way so far that we think we can tell an original is the small bumps on the side of the basket that act in place of a spring.

The Caravel is incredible. I reckon they don't come from Italy at all, but from some weird Planet Caravel where they breed in countless variations.

What an incredible array of piston designs! many thanks for those pics, Jack.

Useful comment: my "single" baskets from Planet Caravel (and its moon VAM) take around 9g

Cheers

Mike

orphanespresso wrote:The pf handle simply screws off....there is a long threaded bolt inside that goes all the way to the end of the handle.

FWIW, on my middle-era Caravel the pf handle slides off of the metal part of the pf.

Regards, Henry

If I dose straight from the SJ and level, today I was getting 8.8-9 grams. I must have been tapping to get the 11+g before as mentioned. My basket has the bumps on the side, but maybe it has more to do with the age of the coffee as this was only on a 2 day rest.

I really struggle to get 14g of older Yemen coffee into the basket when I want to try updosing, but these days I don't see the point as flow and volume of the shot seem pretty well tuned for the ~9-10g range.

Has anyone tried one of these for the Caravel yet? http://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_ ... ucts_id=48 Or what other PID solutions have people come up with? My thermostat is a bit inconvenient...nice for the first shot if I'm there waiting, but a pain for pretty much everything else as the switch in the back doesn't seem to have a manual on position. It's either thermostat or off, and of course the built in thermostat has a wide dead band because it's mechanical. Given all of that it would be pretty nice to be able to turn on the machine and come back with everything immediately ready to pull a shot just after a warming flush.

Even still with my lame temp management skills the shots are amazingly repeatable.

That solution actually works by just controlling mains power (you plug the machine into the PID controller, and the controller is plugged into the wall - 3300W max load). In other words existing thermostat could be cranked all the way up, or bypassed internally.

For how plug and play it is, I've really been thinking about it...

The thermostat switch is quite simple to bypass. I was rewiring and sprucing mine up a little and temporarily bypassed it.

if you wanted to bypass the thermostat you don't need to rewire it- you can simply adjust the setting screw on the inside behind the on switch. Careful fiddling of that- and the thermostat adjustment screw should be able to achieve an on/off situation with the switch. In fact I have had several caravels that only worked as on/off until I adjusted the screw to get the thermostat working agian.

May not work on all models as I believe some don't have an adjustable thermostat (but I havn't seen one of them in person yet).

I believe the standard Caravel basket (most common by 9 to 1) holds between 12 and 14 grams from memory.

As I said, the I have been dosing 16g into the Caravel basket! This is with a light-roasted N. Italian blend, Musetti, commercially-roasted beans, stored in the freezer. I measured it a couple times to be sure, but I'll try again next week.

I must have some problem with less-than full baskets, because I always get the best results when full. Others have better success with less coffee.

I weighed a couple of the spent 16g pucks after a week of air drying and they were 14g. So maybe 2g of solids were extracted into the cup?

PC

If the coffee is aged normally I'm getting 10g (9g when really fresh), this is with only a slight tap down, but mostly it is just leveled with the handle of a spoon. I've gotten 14g in before, but it's too much work and I prefer the shots a bit sweeter with what I consider to be "normal" dosing.

I think the differences in dosing is just attributed to preference. Due to the shape the basket can be crammed with a lot more grounds, or it can be leveled off for quite a light dose. When I tamp my tamper (43.5mm) bottoms out into the sides of the tapered basket before I get anywhere close to a strong tamp. Still I like this flavor and volume best.

My stock of Ethiopia IMV is now going down, I even hear there might not be great SOs coming from there for a while...