I just bought a la pavoni professional and am still experimenting to get a good result.
I read many tips about preparation , grinding , tamping and follow them as good as possible.

still - I am struggling for good result. I doubt of the quality of the equipment I got with the machine. especially the tamper (useless) and the baskets. I am still waiting for my 47mm tamper to arrive n hope to get better results but I think there must be other reasons.

my crema is most often like torn apart, just getting like puzzles or bricks of crema but no firm all surface covering one. (see picture) . I tried raising the cup almost touching the portafilter to not drip down and breaking the crema , but still same .....

I tried different grind sizes, tamping from almost none to very hard , but unless I grind very fine and really force the machine the crema is not satisfying at all. It can not be the coffee too, I use only freshest beans and grind seconds before pulling a shot.
Can somebody tell me what is the perfect ground weight for each (single or double shot) basket I tried from
8 to 11g for the single one increasing in 0,5g steps and trying with different tamping for each . still nothing seems to work.
are there other things I might have to check? is it necessary to change the original parts with custom ones or even other brands to get better results? what about the often seen bottom less portafilter? does it improve quality too or is it just a nice look....
any help appreciated

A La Pavoni Professional will create very nice crema with its standard parts, comparable to an Olympia Express Cremina. If you've ordered a 47 mm tamper you must have a pre-Millennium machine with a 49 mm basket. For a double basket perhaps try 14 to 16 gm and coarsen the grind accordingly. I have a bottomless portafilter on mine* so I can use the slightly deeper basket for the Elektra Microcasa a Leva, so I usually dose 15 - 18 gm. You'll find that too fine a grind makes you pull very hard for very little crema. Someone else wrote that the feel of the pull should be like moving a knife through frozen butter. Also some people grind just fine enough that they tamp only to level. Others grind coarser and tamp harder, but a perfect tamp is less important than even distribution and enough shower screen clearance to lock in the portafilter.


* The Elektra basket will fit into some La Pavoni pre-Millennium portafilters but not others. I had to chop mine out.

The 1974 to 2000 groups have at least two very different types of Portafilters. The early one would certainly not take an Elektra MCAL basket whilst intact. The early ones are attached to their handles with 10mm threaded rods. Later ones use the same 12mm diameter and thread of the group handle. The early ones also seem to be made of some kind of non-zinc bronze type alloy that seems harder than the brass of later ones and also more orange in colour when they are not chrome plated.

The later ones are much deeper.

I do not know if there be other types than these two. The later ones hold MCAL filter baskets with no problems. The MCAL ones, I believe, are not as ridiculously overpriced as La Pavonis?

The different types of portafilters are interchangeable on the 1974-2000 groups, however.

thanks so far...
yes its a premillenium one... I just found out that its true with a very fine grind you work very hard for not too good crema too.
I will maybe start experimenting with the double basket now.
do you think it might be a problem in the group head? i mean the water does not equally distribute out of the head cause of dirt or damage?

I think most people have problems with the single basket. I never use mine!

You also must tamp correctly. The coffee needs to be very level when you start, and you need to put perhaps the force produced by 15 kg on it, 150 N or so. I always use 15 grams, and use a discarded triple beam balance for the purpose.

You must also be careful to be sure to get the air out of the top of the group before the first shot. With a pressurestat model you should raise the handle momentarily all the way whilst you are bleeding off air through the steamer. With the two switch model, you should raise the handle momentarily after the pressure release valve starts to hiss loudly, and before you turn off the high wattage (800 watt) element. You need to wait about three minutes or so after the machine comes up to pressure to make the first shot. These La Pavoni machines depend on steam above the piston to heat the group. Unfortunately after two or three shots this can be too effective, and you likely need to have a technique to cool the group down, such as immersing the bottom of it in a container of cold water.

I am able to pull singles. It just takes practice. But the main point is increase the dose and make sure the grind is coarse enough to yield crema. The other thing is watching temperature at the group to make sure you're not burning the shots (more often) or pulling them too cool. I've added a thermometer to my group.

There's a nice old thread here on how to pull shot after shot without overheating:

Two hours of good temperature shots with a Pavoni

In my experience, the Pavoni is one of the more challenging levers to get dialed in, but once you do get it dialed in, it produces some of the best shots. Looking back, it took me about 3 months to truly get my routine dialed in to where I was consistently pulling good shots. The first month resulted in a lot of sink shots with no crema at all and a lot of me muttering 'why does anyone think this machine is worth a damn?'. The variables everyone describes - grind, dose, tamp, temp mgmt - just take time to figure out, and a good deal of experimenting. One very good piece of advice you will find on here is to only change one variable at a time...otherwise you don't know what you adjusted that made an improvement (or made things worse).

I'm probably an outlier, but I found that once I had a routine that worked and was easily repeatable, I stopped weighing doses.

I guess it's not very comforting, but your best friend in this is patience. As long as you are using fresh beans and have confidence that your grinder is serviceable for espresso, the rest will come with time.

grog wrote:In my experience, the Pavoni is one of the more challenging levers to get dialed in, but once you do get it dialed in, it produces some of the best shots. Looking back, it took me about 3 months to truly get my routine dialed in to where I was consistently pulling good shots. The first month resulted in a lot of sink shots with no crema at all and a lot of me muttering 'why does anyone think this machine is worth a damn?'.

I was lucky I started with a Millennium Pavoni that has a pressurestat. I'd been scared off from reports like that but found it easier to use than my pump machine right from the start. With a pre-Millennium the challenge is temperature management but others have gone there before you so if you follow that old thread I linked above you'll be fine.

Yep - I love my Pavoni now. In some ways, it wasn't until I started getting consistently good shots that I realized how poor my early efforts were. For me, anyway, it was certainly worth the effort to get it dialed in.

47mm?

49.6 works best.

Back off on the grind a bit and use fresh/high quality beans. You shouldn't have to use any sort of major force on the lever. Also, don't over tamp. Just enough to push the coffee down into the basket is all you need. It should be a smooth, gentle process. If it's a struggle or a violent sort of thing - where you are fighting the lever - then you are off on the grind or tamp (most likely the grind).

It should be a gentle process, with a very slight amount of resistance at the lever. Also, a naked portafilter helps a lot with diagnosing channeling problems, etc.

As far as double shot basket from the Elektra, those are nice (and I have one here that I use all the time). However, as Gary points out, it may interfere with the portafilter (if it's not bottomless). The single shot Elektra basket also works really well and tends to aid in better extractions in my experience.

Ray