I was taking a 1977 Cremina apart...removed heating element to soak the boiler to remove asbestos and found the strangest thing inside. Apart from a the walls looking like the White Cliffs of Dover, though I have never seen them, there was residing inside a strange fibrous black thing...and I mean THING!! It feels plastic-y in a way and fibrous and part of it was in the heating coils and the rest was hanging up on top like a bat in a cave. So, what is it, how did it get there, and do you have one inside your boiler? It looks like something that could go bump in the night and I am sure did not really enhance the coffee at all, but....any theories?

I think I maybe know.

My beautiful Alexandrine parrot Jimmy (god rest his deffeinated little soul) had a habit of dropping plastic bottle tops into really strange places. Most notably a $300 Alessi toaster - whilst it was on - with toast inside. The resulting mess was blackish, smelly, melted gunk similar to what you describe. The toast tasted like crap but I digress.

Whilst I can't imagine such a parrot like coincidence of cremated foreign matter, it would seem, more probably that some rotten child has dropped a highly meltable object into the Cremina before or whilst it was on. If it was on, hopefully the escaping steam discouraged the brat from doing it again.

Cremina - cremated. I sense a Latin link.

Seems like a bored kid might have had some interesting idea. As the heating element broke it down particles/pieces floated to the top and they reformed. Have you tried torching a bit of it? Or putting some in various solvents?

Espresso machine meconium.

Huh. As I suspected, it's a koondis!

"Hey - HBers, I have this wonderful Cremina but my coffee always tastes like old burnt plastic! Any ideas?"

- "This is easy: you just need to tighten your grind and reduce the dose."

- "Wrong! - Wrong! - Wrong! You have it backwards! FIRST reduce the dose and THEN tighten the grind!"

- "But you're using a lever machine! How could this be???"

- "Have you checked the TDS? You may be getting 20%, in which case your beverage is ideal even though it might taste awful."

- "No question: your coffee is stale. Anything over eight days, three hours and you get a floor of old burnt plastic under the leather and tobacco overtones."

- "You need a (convex / flat) tamper with a (polished / copper / de-magnetized / fair-trade) base."

- "I got that same taste once but it was with oily beans that hadn't de-gassed."

- "Maybe you have one of those models with an old burnt plastic piston. Oh ... ... wait: that's La Pavoni. Sorry!

- "Nah, it's all those fines from your SJ. A Zar will fix you right up."

- "You know, the elements in the late '70s Creminas are known to overheat if the mineral content of your local water is over 150ppm. I'm sure if you rig in a Flojet the bad taste will go away."

- "Wait a few days: my experience is that coffee never comes out tasting like old burned plastic on Thursdays."

- "Remember 2-2-2-2: backflush every two minutes, de-scale every two hours, rebuild every two days, buy a new machine every two months. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's the only way."

- "You must be using *$s. You wouldn't have this problem with Red Bird."

- "Maybe you need to backflush more often. Oh ... ... wait: that's La Pavoni again! Oh ... ... wait: maybe I meant Faema! LOL! Sorry!"

- "I use VST baskets so I've never have that particular problem. Of course, I'm also using a Linea, so I never have any problems at all."

(Or you could just take that hunk of old burned plastic out of the boiler.)

Reminds me of The Naked Whiz's review of Cowboy Charcoal that reported pieces of the fibrous ceramic insulation from the kiln in the bags, described as "probably as carcinigenic [sic] as asbestos."

Jeff wrote:
Reminds me of The Naked Whiz's review of Cowboy Charcoal that reported pieces of the fibrous ceramic insulation from the kiln in the bags, described as "probably as carcinigenic [sic] as asbestos."

Now THAT is frightening.

drgary wrote:It's a coprolite. Definitely. I hear if you wet those things .... And that's a really old Cremina. Really old if you consider 1977 in dog years. I mean vintage. Kinda like this machine over here on the right. ->

Fossilized animal dung eh? The critter surely must have had a good aim.