Hey all.

Do you let the lever go and let the spring do the work or do you use it to reduce, increase the brew pressure?

I have tested the pressure on my m20 leva and found that the starting pressure is around 11 bar. The espresso has a ton of crema and is not very smooth. So I started putting a bit of pressure downward on the lever in the beginning of the pull to reduce the starting pressure and what a difference. The shot is smoother and is much sweeter. I found that by default it stars at about 11 bar and finishes around 5 so by adding some force downward on the lever in the first 1/3rd of the shot I bring the 11 down to around 8 or 9 bar.

Thoughts?

p.s. merry Christmas for tomorrow:)

Well, some state that "excessive" pressure is not a problem, even that its very good and desirable

So it must be you because you have "bad" taste and can't appreciate the wonderfulness of high pressure espresso... There is nothing wrong, don't retard the lever, let it rip! If anything yours puts "only" 11 bars out, you need to beef that spring up to 13 bars.

You can save a lot of space and money by "upgrading" to an antique home lever my Ponte Vecchio. They always brew at 7-8 bar, and the espresso is usually very sweet.

Do you let the lever go and let the spring do the work or do you use it to reduce, increase the brew pressure?

I'll take the OP's question as a non-rhetorical question, Tekomino.

Since I have had a spring group (CMA, October 2010) I had always let the spring do the work and stopped with blonding or according to time by removing the cup. At times, recently I have begun to fill the group with water before locking in and/or limit the flow a bit with reducing the lever. More recently, I added an inner spring to one CMA group. Some shots seem to have more definition than the very agreeable but sometimes muddy shots of the standard. But others seem to have more of a "bite" and remind me of shots from the Pavoni. My limited experience of less than 10 days raises the hypothesis that I may like to have the stronger group available for single origin coffees roasted lightly (is it accurate to call this a Scandinavian roast?) and the standard group for more typical espresso roast blends. As the Scandinavian roast profiles spread for espresso blends** I may like having the stronger group available.

If you find that you prefer the taste of the shots under less pressure, can one of the springs be removed from the M20 group to lower the starting pressure? How many seconds during a good extraction before the pressure reduces below 9 bar?

(**might we see this development from roasters in 2012? -- I mean espresso blends that cause my Pharos to slip because the beans are roasted lightly?)

Chert: one spring could be taken out, but I prefer to hold the lever as I would like to experiment with higher pressure. It stays above 9 bar for about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the pull.

The nice thing is is that I can grind finer and still get a decent extraction but the not so cool thing is that sometimes it makes the espresso quite intense and on some coffees and I loose the light floral notes. But I guess unless we all have Strada's we can't pressure profile as much as we would like to:) . But in a way I like that because I would rather get to know the machine well than be continually fiddling with pressures:) At the end of the day my espresso's taste flipping awesome. I have pulled them on my Aurelia WBC spec and a Victoria Arduino Athena Leva and I prefer the shots from my m20. Granted I have made it a HX Machine and put a Needle valve before the hx so I can adjust the speed of the per-infusion.

If any of y'all come over to South Africa, you must definitely pull around for a cuppa.

At the end of the day my espresso taste flipping awesome...If any of y'all come over to South Africa, you must definitely pull around for a cuppa.

No doubt! And that's what it's all about. Likewise about the invite. HB is a nice internet tourist opportunity but it's even better to see the gear, the restorations and taste the coffee in person.