Thank you guys for the help on my previous question...

I'm a week into my Pavoni Professional and Illy espresso honeymoon, and I still have no crema. I've tried tamping light, tamping hard, and in between. I've adjusted my Pstat so that I top off at 8.5 Bar on the gauge, and pull my shots then. I was higher before my adjustment at about .95 - 1 bar. I'm using a double filter basket, and oddly enough I think I have had more luck with the single shot filter.

I suspect my problem must be in the amount of espresso I'm using, or tamp pressure. When I pull my shot, I get not much resistance and the results are a bit bitter. I get coffee drip from the spout in about 2-3 seconds. The Illy grind appears to be fine grind to me. Do I need to invest in an older model Zassenhaus hand grinder?

Is this Illy and Pavoni marriage doom? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Commandment #2.

Ten Espresso Commandments

You need to file for divorce. Dump those nasty, stale illy beans and get some hot, fresh beans from one of the recommended roasters on this site. Stale beans = no crema and bitter taste.

PS: what kind of grinder are you using? Without a decent burr grinder, you can't make espresso.

Coffee#1 issue.
Grinder?#2 issue.

leicamshooter wrote:When I pull my shot, I get not much resistance and the results are a bit bitter.

Without sufficient brew pressure, no crema. There's insufficient resistance because (a) the grind is too coarse, and/or (b) the coffee is stale. Evidently you're using Illy preground coffee, so it's likely both causes.

leicamshooter wrote:The Illy grind appears to be fine grind to me. Do I need to invest in an older model Zassenhaus hand grinder?

Of the Four M's of Espresso, you've violated two.

Grinders make espresso. Espresso machines just make water hot and push it through the grounds.

Babbie's Rule of Fifteens*:
Green coffee is good for about fifteen months.
Roasted coffee is good for about fifteen days.
Ground coffee is good for about fifteen minutes.
Extracted coffee should be served in fifteen seconds.


*Various environmental and conditional influences, along with variations in blends and beans, will change all of these parameters a bit one way or another, but you get the idea...

Pre-ground coffee shipped by boat from another country is probably a lost cause. Even the best machine in the world is gonna give you grief.

Beezer wrote:PS: what kind of grinder are you using? Without a decent burr grinder, you can't make espresso.

I think he's using pre-gound. That explains a huge potion of the problem - beans and grind.

Yes, a good hand grinder that is capable of grinding for espresso will work wonders for you, even if you are dead set on using Illy beans and move to their whole bean cans, though you'll get better results with beans from vendors that sponsor this site.

Everything you read here about fresh bean being better and a grinder being necessary is true. Once you get there, it's another universe.

However, in the meantime, a few tips:

1) Illy is vastly overrated. I think it's mediocre, even among the pre-grounds. How the hell did it get it's reputation?

2) Yes, you can get a decent crema and decent taste with pre-ground coffee. "Decent" meaning here that it's drinkable, but don't expect anything approaching the taste of fresh beans etc. But it's not as bad as you might think when you visit this forum too often.

3) Unfortunately, it's only decent one, two days max after you opened the pack.

4) I don't know where you live, but can you buy Segafredo Espresso Casa? It's the best pre-ground I've tried (Lavazza "Qualita Bar" or something was better, but it's discontinued). An alternative might be some coffees by Vergnano.

I can tell you that Illy makes a decent cup when it's first opened (assuming whole bean)....but only on the first day for me, and only on my Caravel (maybe other machines too, but don't know). When I had the Pavoni I tried it, but Miss Pavoni hates non-fresh coffee. I couldn't get any decent results from a local roaster who said they just roasted that day...obviously he was lying due to how much crema I got and the other problems.

Long story short, my Pavoni demanded such freshness that I had to start home roasting. If I had been in the US at the time I probably could have just ordered online and stored frozen properly...but at that time I couldn't. The good news is that even poor to decent home roasts were much much better than stale anything else.

In the Caravel this isn't as true, for some reason it's better suited to extracting from more stale coffee. Still...life is too short to try.