...split from LMWDP Rollcall by moderator...



Hello Levergirl,

Your love for the Achille was a big driving force for me to take the plunge! I'm getting a bit better at dealing with the HX but I think I'm still not there yet. You said:

Levergirl wrote:Basically, I watch the waterdance, and when it stops, I set up my shot and wait about 5-10 seconds before I start. Otherwise, its too cool.

Also, I let my puck infuse at the top of the lever pull for a few seconds (10-15) before I pull the shot (like the LP). This seems to give me better crema and no bitter taste at all.

If you wait for the puck to pre-infuse for 10-15 secs., wouldn't the water get too hot once again since it really takes no time to past the correct brew temp. again?

This weekend, in order to not overheat, I flushed twice instead of once, then I quickly lock the PF and start the pull. The green light is basically off the entire time when I'm pulling the shot until the last few secs. Do you think the brew temp. was too cold? I didn't taste any sourness in the shot - it was ok but not much crema at all. I haven't been using that 'perfect creme disc' that came with the machine, have you?

I'm a real newbie at managing the temp. on a HX. I was overheating everything, and now I think I'm underheating..... just can't get it right.

Also, I put duct tape over the hole on the panarello so the froth is much more acceptable.

Hopefully, a day will come when I can make better espresso with the Achille than the LP.

Thanks for your help, Carolyn. Will always appreciate all the help I can get!

Jan

Jan, I have no fear that you will be surpassing the shots from your LP with your Achilles in very little time.

Heres a few observations I have with my Achilles since I have had her for the past month.

First off, where is your pstat gauge set to? Mine is 1.0-1.2. From reading and experience I like that level. It gives me just enough time to work without rushing.

I am not sure what Levergirl means by flushing and then setting up her shot. I think of dosing and tamping as part of my set up and would never try that with any HX machine. I grind, dose, tamp and have my PF reading and waiting. LG waits 10-15 seconds - I don't. It is up to you and your own machine. There is no magic time - only the flavor in the cup.

As LG said, watch for the dance. I will caution/note that you should not rush it and pull too fast. Within reason, the slower the pull, the better the temperature drop. A count of 2-3 per pull is where I am. A 1 second pull, regardless of the number and I get burned shots. My current rule of thumb is one full pull after the water stops dancing. If that means I am in the middle of a cooling pull, then so be it - I re-cock and pull again.

I then immediately lock the PF in and also do a small 10 second pre-infusion. If your pstat is set high you may not be able to get as long of a pre-infusion, but with a slow cooling flush I am not having any problems. After 10 seconds I re-cock the lever and pull my shot, making sure never to go over 30 seconds for a pull or I am just begging for a burned shot.

Finally, your taste is the key. If it tastes great, then that is all that matters. As for crema, throw that stupid disc away. I am glad you are not using it. If you are not getting crema, I would say it can only be one of two things (in this case). Either your beans are too old (how old are they?) or you are not pulling hard enough. It is going to take more pressure as compared to your LP. You have to overcome the 10lbs or so to get through the HX and you are going to need more pressure due to the larger 58mm basket.

Jan,

I agree with John. Check your pstat. Mine is set similar to his, around 1.1.

I learned something new about the Achille this weekend. No water comes out (no pre-infusion) until you start pushing the lever down. With the LP, the water comes out when you lift the lever all the way. I ran the two side-by-side this weekend, and then cleaned them side by side and noticed this difference. If you watch the video on the Achille Buyer's Guide (go to "Reviews" and find the Buyer's Guide - it takes too long to wend your way all the way through all the posts), you will see Dave (Cannonfodder) pump the lever up and down a couple times before pulling his shot. That's the preinfusion. I don't pump it, but I do sort of push it down to get a little water out to preinfuse.

John is probably also right about the age of your espresso, but it could also be your grind. I found with the Achille it is almost impossible to choke the machine. I have a Rocky, and I grind fresh beans on about 7, having set 0 as the disks are touching each other. For the LP, I can't grind any finer than 10, or it chokes.

Also, you really need a decent tamper. That plastic tamper that comes with the machine is not adequate. 58 mm tampers are relatively easy to find online, and won't set you back much.

You will really, really have to push the lever down hard (I have to put my non-dominant elbow on the counter to pull that hard) to get the espresso out, but you get definite crema. Don't push too fast, or it will blond.

I am not sure what Levergirl means by flushing and then setting up her shot. I think of dosing and tamping as part of my set up and would never try that with any HX machine. I grind, dose, tamp and have my PF reading and waiting. LG waits 10-15 seconds - I don't. It is up to you and your own machine. There is no magic time - only the flavor in the cup.

BTW, what I meant was I put my portafilter on the machine (set up my shot) immediately after the cooling flush - the shot is already ground, dosed, tamped, and waiting next to the machine when I flush. I agree with John, you absolutely have to do that ahead of time. I wait the 10-15 seconds because I found my water was too cold if I didn't give it a little recovery time. Probably I am taking bigger flushes than he is. But when I measured the temperature right after a cooling flush, it was only 140 degrees, too cold. Wait those few seconds and it comes back up to about 190. Wait longer, and you'll have to flush again. I agree, it recovers pretty dang quick.

Where are you in New York? Can you get really fresh roasted coffee? John and I both roast our own, so, I can tell you for sure it is fresh!

Gaggia is no longer providing the perfect crema disc with the Achille. Apparently, it didn't actually work that well and tended to get clogged.

Anyway, the bottom line is, crema is all well and good, but does the shot taste good?!

Good luck!

For more info on how the piston pump works on the Achille, you may want to read the Heat Exchanger Lever Operation section of the Bench forum - Buyer's Guide to the Gaggia Achille.

These are all great information, John, Levergirl and Dave! Thanks!

I will sure try your method tomorrow and let you know.

My pressurestat is at 1.0-1.2 so that seems right. I do use fresh beans because I'm now roasting my own using the Bravi with greens from Sweet Maria's. I sometimes buy freshly roasted beans like Black Cat (yummy) and Ecco Reserve's Espresso just for variety. Also, I don't roast or buy beans that I can't use within 10 days time. I use a Rocky Doserless and I set it to 8. I also do all the prep (grind, dose, tamp) before doing the cooling flush and I've a decent metal tamper to do the job - none of those plastic tampers.

On paper, it seems like I'm using the right tools, beans and grind. I just have to get the timing right, the amount of water to flush, how fast to pull the flush, how to do the pre-infusion, how long the entire pull, etc. Not trivial, really.

Usually when I make the first cappa, the pulls aren't as tough but the second cappa's pulls get very tough. I must be building some nice muscles! I guess I'm not flushing enough in between the two shots.

Ok, good to know that I can chuck that perfect creme disc away. I didn't think real home-baristas use that.

Levergirl - yeah, I also found out (a couple of days ago) that no water comes out when you lift the lever to its highest position like the LP. I was waiting and waiting for the coffee to drip down and nothing until I pull the lever down half way.

Well, tomorrow I'll try John's suggestion and see if I improve. Thanks to all of you!

Jan

Do not think of the Achille as a lever machine (don't shout I know it is a lever) but a heat exchanger pump machine with a manual hand pump instead of an electric pump. All the heat exchanger rules apply.

I pull one lever stroke beyond the flash boil. So if stroke one boils, I pull a second. If part of the second boils then I pull a third. I want one full lever pull with no flash boil. Then I immediately lock in the portafilter and pull the lever twice. There is no negative pressure in the brew chamber with the upstroke like most levers because of the design of the machine, so no ill effects from using one and a half or two full pulls.

cannonfodder wrote:Do not think of the Achille as a lever machine (don't shout I know it is a lever) but a heat exchanger pump machine with a manual hand pump instead of an electric pump. All the heat exchanger rules apply.

Okay, I suppose that could be heresy, but it makes too much sense. Besides, until I started reading home-barista a few months ago, I had no knowledge of usable pump machines. My understanding of such things extended only to Krups machines, etc. All I knew about that was, I'd take my LP any day over one of those.

So, HX was a foreign concept to me. I bought the Achille based largely on Dave's User Guide. I've since come to know that it is a stranger in a strange land. The only machine of its kind (so far). Okay, the not overheating thing was a clincher!

At Dave's suggestion, I went back and re-read the Buyer's Guide yesterday. In fact, I went through 12 pages of posts yesterday in the Bench version. My head was spinning.

Temperature surfing, pressure measurements, etc. are beyond my ability or desire. But there was much to learn in all those posts.

However, having spent 20 years making espresso on an LP Pro without the benefit of this fine forum and others like it, I may be slightly less picky about my espresso than you guys. I will (with my head down) admit that I never cleaned my machine. It was, in fact, my overzealous descaling (for the first time in the time I'd owned the machine) that led to it needing to be repaired and my sudden decision to purchase another machine. It seems lime scale might have been holding the heating element together.

Don't get me wrong, I can absolutely tell the difference between a sour shot and a bitter shot. My other hobby is wine tasting. But think if you will, after spending my life in the desert, subsisting on charcoal from s****bucks and home espresso from a filthy machine, anything that comes out of the Achille is pretty much gold to me.

So, I read the Bench version of the Buyer's Guide with one nagging thought in my mind:

I'm a surgeon. I can just imagine Dan and Dave following me around, measuring how much pressure I apply to the knife, scissors and forceps. Advising the proper amount of torque to apply to the colonoscope for the hepatic flexure versus the splenic flexure in a female versus a male patient. This thought amused me so much yesterday, I found myself almost wishing I had numbers to share. (And by the way, there are people who *do* study these things, in labs, and publish their data. Most of us surgeons are not smart enough to use it). I rely on my brain and experience to tell me how hard is too hard, how soft is too soft, exactly how much torque to apply to negotiate that curve.

I put this out only for your amusement. I'm going to keep trying Dave's methods to improve my espresso from the Achille. But I'm also gonna tell ya, hardly anything makes it into the sink. So far, nothing on the Achille compares to how bad life was pre-Achille! And by the way, she is spotless. Joe Glo is a wonderful invention!

Thanks!

Levergirl wrote:I'm a surgeon.

I just make coffee and keep all the flashing lights in the computer room green and fix the amber ones.

It just takes a little experimentation and exploring. There are no rules in espresso, just guidelines. Don't be intimidated by the machine or coffee. After all, it is nothing more than a water heater in a shiny package with a hand pump and some cooked and crushed seeds in it.

Thanks, Dave and Carolyn for your input.

I just made 2 cappas in a row and there is definitely improvement over my earlier shots but still hardly any crema. I notice shot #2 is better than shot #1 in taste though. Why is that?

I let the machine heat up for 20 mins. with the PF attached (bled some steam out of the wand after a few mins. upon start up to get rid of the false pressure inside the boiler). I notice that the PF is only lukewarm even after 20 mins.! My pressurestat stays in between 1.0-1.1 at all times. Then I pulled one lever stroke to just get the PF slightly warmer but still, nowhere near where it should be.

I grind dose, and tamped. Pulled 1 stroke and watch the water dance and then 1 extra stroke with no flash heating. Locked the PF in right away, pulled a 1/4 pull to preinfuse the puck for 10 secs., then a full stroke for about 29 secs. resulting in a 1.7-1.8 oz. double shot.

To make the next shot - I dumped the puck, wiped with a dry paper towel, grind/dose and tamped. It took me about 1.5 mins. total to be ready. I pulled 1 full cooling flush stroke only. Locked the PF, pulled a 1/4 pull to preinfuse the puck for 10 sec., and then did the same as the first shot. This shot tasted better than the first one but still hardly any crema at all (only a very thin layer on top). I only pulled one cooling flush stroke since I thought 2 strokes maybe too much?

Like Carolyn, the surgeon, I read the Buyers Guide to the Achille also - all 12 pages. It was good but definitely had more information than I would ever need to know. I'm glad that at least I'm not overheating the shots like in the beginning and my cappas are good and aren't sink shots although I would like to get it to look like Dave's video with so much crema. I definitely use very fresh coffee so I don't get it and at first I thought maybe everyone was using that perfect crema disk to get all that crema but obviously not. What am I doing wrong?

cappafan wrote:This shot tasted better than the first one but still hardly any crema at all (only a very thin layer on top). I only pulled one cooling flush stroke since I thought 2 strokes maybe too much?

By my count, this was 2-1/2 strokes:

[gvideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4043661748505691855[/gvideo]

But I may have had the pressurestat higher than you. As for the low crema production, I'll guess it's a combination of not enough lever pressure and slower extraction rate. If you look closely in the video, you'll see my reflection in the grouphead and my underhand grip. I'm short and prefer to lock my elbow and grip from beneath, using my weight to pull down the lever. It also helps with the consistency of the pull since very little muscle strength is required.

cappafan wrote:Like Carolyn, the surgeon, I read the Buyers Guide to the Achille also - all 12 pages. It was good but definitely had more information than I would ever need to know.

The first site reviews were written with the help of private peer feedback (e.g., the Cimbali Junior review had at least 10 peer reviewers). The idea of the Bench is to share the ins and outs of the review process; a lot of it is low-level detail that's only interesting to gear heads and engineers. The Buyer's Guides hopefully distill the generally useful points of the Bench research and the majority of readers won't bother with the background materials.