Now that my daughter is almost 2 and I have a little more time on my hands, I am going to get back to developing my Barista espresso making skills. I have tried twice without success, but I have read more postings and I have decided on a course that should get me where I want to be. The overwhelming amount of variables when it comes to pulling a decent shot from my Faema Faemina is frankly quite daunting. The path that am taking now is to first find the grind setting window that gives me a shot in the desired 25-30 second time frame by only varying the grind setting. I will stick with 14g of weighed Heartbreaker beans, and a setting of 10 on my Preciso grinder, stepping up a setting at a time until I get the a flow just faster than my target. Then I will back up in smaller increments to slow the flow down. I realize that as the grind is made coarser, the volume increases. That means that I would have to compress the same amount of grind more to fit in the same volume of the portafilter. Unless someone has another suggestion, I'll try to keep the weighed quantity constant for this experiment. Doug Garrott mentioned to me that thermal management is critical in mastering the Faemina, and I have thermo strips attached to my group head to monitor temperature, and by turning the boiler on and off I can prevent the group from overheating. For now, my concern is just to find an appropriate grind, and then start tuning the taste. My fresh beans should be in the mailbox when I get home.

If you can verify that the pressure release is set up to give you about 0.3 bars pressure on the low setting, you'll go a long way towards conquering the temperature management on the Faemina. I've found mine to be pretty stable at that setting, Doug Garrott set it up for 0.3 bars and I later verified it with a steam wand pressure gauge. I do cool the portafilter in a cold water bath between shots but do little else and don't have any temperature measurements added to the Faemina which I wanted to keep as original as possible.

I do love my Faemina, but...it is one of the most finicky machines I've used in terms of grind, right up there with the Comocafe. When you hit dose/grind/tamp just right, it can produce excellent shots. Sounds like you've got a good plan as to dialing in your routine with this machine - looking forward to hearing about what you learn.

I'll be watching as well. Finally got the last of what I need to replace the piston rod seal(I think), as it started leaking from the top of the group bad enough to retire it 'till that could be addressed. It's been so long have forgotten a lot of my routine. One thing I remember is that a firmer tamp seemed to work better than a loose one.

My lever routine was to bump it slightly for pre-infusion, hold for 10 seconds, then complete the pull followed by a Fellini. Holding at the bottom didn't seem to make much difference. Also have the pressure release set to .3 bar on Low. Startup was on High, then kicked it down when it started to hiss. I also got in the habit of filling it each time.

As far as dose and grind goes, will have to start from scratch again... Will poke around some of my previous threads to see if there's any tips there.

Seocnd all of this, I am still fine tuning my Faemina skills and I can vouch for the impact of the grind.
Tamping imho is not that much of an issue as long as the shower screen stays clean, but distribution seems to be one (perhaps due to the narrow and relatively high filter basket?)
temperature is quite stable imo and setting the pressure bleed valve to your liking does wonders (can someone remind me which way the screw should be turned to increase pressure, keep forgetting..)
i'm enjoying the results so far, finding a real good roaster with nice coffees helped as it seems that the Faemina is quite good at bringing out coffee flavours, also the bad ones.

Enjoy!

I have already run into a few problems. First, I noticed that the fine setting on my Baratza Preciso was moving during grinding a shot's worth of beans. I already spoke with Baratza last week after reading about problems that people were having with the adjustment rings, and they sent me a replacement for free, but the replacement parts have not arrived yet. (nice CS, Barattza!) The second issue extracting that I have stumbled upon is how exactly to time the extraction on a Faemina when a double shot requires one to pull the lever twice. I have been operating on the assumption that I should give a total of 30 seconds, 15 sec for each lever pull for a double. Does this agree with others who successfully extract doubles from their Faeminas?

Yeah, the volume of the cylinder is not large enough to pull anything else than a double tiny ristretto imo. i always end up doing one and a half or two pulls as I only make double espressos (low volume ones). Personally I dot really care how long the pull takes, the result is more important but for dialing in a grind setting timing shots helps.

I have read that pulling a double shot makes tuning a espresso shot a little easier, because the volume of two gives you a little wider window to shoot for. In the case of the Faema Faemina, I think that pulling a double makes the job more complex because of having to pull the lever twice. For that reason, I am going to go to a single shot in my learning exercise. I should receive my replacement Preciso adjustment rings today, so I'll switch to my single basket and 7g of weighed beans after my repair job when I try pulling again this evening.

Had a very good shot this morning. 14g of Victrola Triborough espresso, ground on the somewhat coarser side in a Dienes 708. Flush the group, lock in PF, pull just enough to open the gommino, hold for 15 seconds, pull all the way through, pause for just a couple of seconds at the bottom, and release.

This yielded a delicious, dense and creamy shot with plenty of crema. You can assist the lever near the top of the return if it is stalling somewhat.

I find that too fine a grind results in more watery shots. A grind that is appropriate for a Europiccola, for example, is too fine for the Faemina.

Grog, did you pull the lever only once for your sucessful shot?