Here's another way to accomplish the same thing.

Fullsack wrote:My Pavoni shots improved by down dosing using a rolling finger sweep to remove some of the coffee. It ends up between 12 and 13 grams. Leveling with a straight edge overdoses the basket.

Fullsack wrote:

Here's another way to accomplish the same thing.

I take that single basket of coffee, leveled, and flip this into my double basket, for a slightly low dose. Is that what you do?

For a slightly higher dose that still misses the dispersion screen, I overfill the single basket, cover with the double basket and toss (Mr. Brown's Dispersion Technique/double basket flip), then level, and transfer to the double basket to be distributed and tamped.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the last tips!
I was trying to over dose my old Pavoni thinking this can get me better results and I actually got the opposite. In the last few tries I got bad results. The espresso started coming out before the 10 secs wait with handle raised and pressure was low.

I took the advice and tried to does less (3/4 of double basket). I actually dosed full double basket, cleared it with the edge of a knife so it will be just fulling filling the basket and then I tamped hard resulting in the double basket more or less 3/4 full.

This time the espresso did not come out before the 10 sec wait when the handle was raised!
The pressure was good and the shot I got was really nice. One of my best shots so far with this machine.

Thanks again for the tip. It was really helpful.

BTW - How do you pull the shot? Do you use the Fellini move?

Hi gang - I have been estranged from my Europiccola for about three years due to an international move and about two months ago we were reunited. Just the other day I was in a local café and noticed they have a Diedrich's Roaster. I ordered a shot that wasn't drawn very well, but the coffee seemed pretty nice so I tried a couple of the beans and was impressed. Of course it was Friday and they had been roasted on Tuesday (always this week, huh). Anyways, the fresh beans got me interested again so I looked up this forum and found this thread. After reading through the whole thing I was so motiviated that I ran upstairs to pull some shots even though it was 8 pm. To make a long story short I have been pulling some of the best shots this machine has ever given me. It's amazing the difference in flavor to my fully automatic. Just wanted to thank you all for your input and thanks "sbenyo" for staying committed enough to get the old pros out of the woodwork and into your thread!

I've been using my pre-millenium pro for the past couple of months and I'm pretty happy with it.
I'm using all the tips I got and even though I'm still not getting the "god" shots I thought I will get, I'm able to produce decent espresso shots that are pretty good.

I still have some thought related to the pre-millenium pro model. When I use it I get gauge pressure reading of 1.1-1.2. I know that in the new pro model the pressure gauge reading is 0.8-0.9.

Is there any reason to change the pressure in the pre-millenium pro model?
Is there any difference or design limitation for the pre-millenium pro model to produce the same quality espresso shots as the new millenium model?

Well, there's a few of things to say.

Firstly, as far as I am aware there was no design change that impacted on the most desirable pressure setting and pre and post-Milleniums have been set to more or less the same values, which can easily change in transit. If anything one could argue that a higher setting is more acceptable in the new machines because of their claimed superior cooling (from design changes which quite coincidentally bring down manufacturing costs).

Then, those pressure gauges just give you an idea of how things are going from day to day; they're not in any way super-accurate. In another words adjust the gauge to get the best results for you.

The Pavs generally come with the p-stats set to around 1 bar, sometimes a little bit higher, and of course they cycle over a range of around 0.2 bar.

The lower you set the p-stat, the slower the Pav will overheat.

The lower you set the p-stat the more smooth and creamy the result, but the more "blended" in flavours. If that's your style of coffee - particularly with American beans - aim for around 0.8 as the upper limit.

If on the other hand you prefer brighter coffees, like Ethiopians, which can also have a lot of different flavours in the cup, taking the p-stat up a bit will give you a slightly less rich cup but a clearer, more delineated one. Here around 1.0 or even as high as 1.2 would be your upper limit.

If you don't want to adjust for type of beans all the time, a setting of 0.9 is a good compromise.

Lastly, the higher the pressurestat setting, the higher the pressure with which the water comes through the shower head and preinfuses the coffee. Frankly I find this is influenced much more by machine design than pressure stat setting, and in fact all of these differences are pretty subtle.

My advice would be to continue getting used to the machine until you can produce really consistent espresso the way you like it, and only then consider fine-tuning things by playing with the pressure stat. Both machines are set within an acceptable range and could in fact be closer to one another than the pressure gauge readings suggest.

Lastly, obvious as it sounds, it's worth making sure your eye is level with centred on the gauge when reading it!


Cheers

Mike

Hi Mike,

This is a very enlighting explanation of pressure and gauge reading.
Do you know if the higher pressure reading (1.1-1.2) can affect the amount of crema I'm getting of is it only a factor of the beans I use?

I think the best suggestion is to keep things as they are and perfect my shots as much as I can.
As soon as I am able to get good shots consistently I'll consider playing with the pressure.

Thanks!

I just happened to find the following hint (from Nov 07) in some kind of user manual for using pavoni pro:

"One problem that may arise when making espresso is producing "Crema" . This problem arises
when you understand the basic nemesis of crema, which is high water temperature. High
temperature can cause the coffee to have a strange taste that runs from burned to bitter to
"chemical", particularly with decaf. For professional models the gauge should top out a 0.7 or 0.8
on the gauge, it should never go past 1. bar, this setting will let you produce the correct espresso
and give you enough steam for cappuccino."

I hope the higher gauge reading I have does not affect the espresso I produce as stated above...

Why not just try adjusting it down to 0.8 bar or so and see if you like the change? If not you can raise it back up to maybe 1 bar, and then if it's still worse to you, back to 1.2.

As mentioned it's hard to say "1.2 bar is bad" when most of the gauges aren't accurate enough to be able to say it's actually at 1.2 bar. Your machine could actually be at around 1.5 bar or so (because of calibration), and that might be too high. Just try using it as a relative value, and not absolute and you should be good.

Thanks for the advice.
My exact gauge reading is less than 1.2 more like 1.1.

I think I'll leave it like this for now as it seems like the factory setting.
I'm using a pre-millenium pro (1993) model and as far as I know these machines were calibrated like this.

I also think the p-stat on this machine is glued and cannot be easily changed. I don't want to break it before I'm sure it's going to improve my shots.