After a few months of tinkering with my peppina I am now at the point where changing the variables does not seem to be reaching any sort of improvement in the cup, so I thought some advice from the more experienced peppina owners would go a long way.

I installed new seals and from what I can tell the machine is working properly, but most of my shots are thin, with very little crema, and the portafilter holds a coffee soup instead of a puck. I have actually been able to drink about half of them, some were even enjoyable, but I have been having a hard time with consistency.

Is there any reason that I am not getting a puck out of the machine in the end? For some reason I have been thinking that this is a big factor in the results in the cup that I have been unhappy with. My grinder is a rocky (I'm considering picking up a used mazzer and fixing it up, but that is probably a project far off in the future) and I have experimented with a number of grind settings and a wide range of tamps, and used WDT as well. I will be getting a scale to make dosing more consistent, but I am not sure if that will change my situation in the portafilter. Could this be a problem with my basket, or is it possible that the lever/spring loses pressure at the end of the pull to the extent that the liquid does not go through the basket at all?

cheers,

Jason

To establish a baseline, use no tamp whatsoever, with a fine grind, and just settle the basket contents by rapping it a few times on the counter. Leave about 1/4" of headspace at the top. Make grind finer and finer (or coarser and coarser) until you get about 10-15 seconds per lever-pull, if grinder can produce this.

Regards
Timo

P.S. What coffee are you using?

Wondering - by 'puck soup' do you mean some (1/4" or so) water on top of the puck, or do you mean that the entire contents of the portafilter is loose water/coffee grounds with no 'puck' at all?

For ours it seems normal to have a bit of a puddle of water on top of the puck after the shot pull, ours produces pretty consistent shots.

I'll give timo's suggestion a try as soon as possible, but it makes me think that I was possibly using too much coffee? I guess I thought a dose of that size would be nowhere near enough to get a decently long pull. I was using a variety of home-roasted single-origin coffee for a while, but when I was having some trouble improving the shots I got a few pounds of black cat just to keep that one variable consistent.

As for johhnyguitar's question, I wouldn't say that the entire portafilter is uniform soup, but there is not a puck - its more like there is a 1/4" of settled coffee at the bottom of the filter, and the rest is full-blown soup. Hopefully with a bit more practice I can get to a "normal" sort of puck with residual water on top...

thanks for the quick responses!

cheers,
Jason

jobober wrote:I'll give timo's suggestion a try as soon as possible, but it makes me think that I was possibly using too much coffee? I guess I thought a dose of that size would be nowhere near enough to get a decently long pull. I was using a variety of home-roasted single-origin coffee for a while, but when I was having some trouble improving the shots I got a few pounds of black cat just to keep that one variable consistent.

You are right to get as many constants as you can when trying to dial-in the machine, so that the two major variables become dose and grind.

You can change any of the following as you see fit, once things start stabilizing, but this is a good baseline:

-- dose level with the top of the basket if your grind is fluffy (scraping off any coffee heaped above the rim); or ~3/4 of the height of the basket if the grind is coarse and won't compact much; if you are inclined, you can also measure your dose on a gram scale; I would suggest 11-12g in the double basket as a starting point

-- settle the basket contents (give the PF a few gentle raps on the counter or chop-chop-chop the rim of the basket with the edge of the spoon-handle)

-- tamp with no more force than is required to create about 1/4" (~6mm) headroom -- it will take less than one pound of force with a fine grind

-- preinfuse with two or three quarter-pulls (i.e. depress the lever all the way and then let it rise about 1/4th of the way up and press it back down, repeat); no need to move quickly

-- depress the lever all the way down and let it rise to the top under spring-power


The extraction from that point should take approximately 10 seconds. You can make the grind coarser if it takes considerably longer, finer if it is too fast --or you can lower the dose if the extraction runs too slow; at this point in the dial-in, though, I would not increase the dose above the rim to compensate for too fast a pull, because then you would have to introduce a serious tamp to press down the heap, which introduces another variable.


Make sure the coffee is about a week post-roast, give or take a couple of days.

Regards
Timo

I just got done rebuilding our Peppina earlier this week.

We have had great luck with the espresso over the last couple days and I have no prior experience pulling any shots on any other machines.

Initially I got puck soup. Now I get a bit harder puck with a bit of water floating on top.

I think that having water in portafilter is normal for this machine.

My totally uneducated guess at how to get a puck instead of puck soup is to add more grounds and tamp it well so that when you release the lever arm you get resistance and can let go of the lever completely. This is indicative of pressure building up in the system, which puts pressure on the grounds in the portafilter and creates a harder puck at the completion of the pull.

I grind so that the loose grounds completely fill the portafilter and then tamp. I have also found that I need to do two partial pulls after the coffee has started to come out in order to create the pressure on the lever that is so critical to a successful pull. If I release the lever right after the coffee appears, it generally wants to go immediately back to the upright position with no resistance.

Good luck.

chidofu wrote:My totally uneducated guess at how to get a puck instead of puck soup is to add more grounds and tamp it well so that when you release the lever arm you get resistance and can let go of the lever completely. This is indicative of pressure building up in the system, which puts pressure on the grounds in the portafilter and creates a harder puck at the completion of the pull.

I grind so that the loose grounds completely fill the portafilter and then tamp. I have also found that I need to do two partial pulls after the coffee has started to come out in order to create the pressure on the lever that is so critical to a successful pull. If I release the lever right after the coffee appears, it generally wants to go immediately back to the upright position with no resistance.

As you suggest, one or more partial pumps will push water out to the puck and help maintain pressure. With regard to updosing and tamping more heavily... the coffee grains will swell under hydrostatic pressure as they become saturated with water during the preinfusion, and once swollen even a moderate dose that is very lightly tamped or not tamped at all will present the necessary resistance to keep the lever from flying up too quickly -- assuming the grind is fine enough.

Regards
Timo