malachi wrote:Day 9:
Finally... on an unrelated note, this morning I swapped out the stock acorn tip that came with the GS3 for an old, brass LM acorn tip. The improvement in my milk steaming has been dramatic. It's far, far easier to get the milk to roll, I don't have to fiddle as much with the pitcher angle and the milk is, as a result, far better textured. With this tip the GS3 is suddenly on par with a Linea for milk texturing.

Sure, find the simple cure for the only minor flaw you seem to have found in an otherwise possibly perfect machine as if the drool factor wasn't high enough already!

malachi wrote:Day 9:

and some are more unexpected (chocolate tones suddenly become dominated by anise and white pepper at higher temps).

That one is a well known phenomenon. You can achieve anise by taking particular beans into a darker roast ~ Vienna (Some Harar, Yemen Ismaili, or even Meru), or manipulate anise with high temp. The poster boy for anise in high temps is Caffe D'Arte's - Firenze. Some roasters consider anise to be an indication of a burnt batch, but I love it.

Actually, I'm talking about brew temp rather than roast degree.
And this seems to be independent of roast degree but rather tied to "chocolate" tones.

malachi wrote:Actually, I'm talking about brew temp rather than roast degree.
And this seems to be independent of roast degree but rather tied to "chocolate" tones.

Read my post again, you can achieve it both ways. With D'arte, the emergence of anise in high temp is so pronounced, you'd think you are drinking a shot of Uzo.

In the past, the theory has been that this is an artifact of high roast temp or dark roast (see your earlier post). As you note, it's often been considered a sign of a bad roast. The Firenze, for example, is often used as an example of such a dark roast - and the anise notes are seen as an artifact of this roast.

People have thus advocated a low brew temp for these dark roast coffees as it has been found that this minimizes the anise notes.

As it turns out, the anise/white pepper note seems to be independent of roast degree.
I've been able to create the same exact flavour from light roasted coffee.

The commonality that I'm noticing from coffees that develop this flavour at brew temps that would be considered higher than optimal for that coffee is that they all are dominated by chocolate tones when brewed at a "correct" temp.

The Firenze - for example - has a really pronounced chocolate tone when brewed at a low enough temp.
The Black Cat, as another example, is deeply chocolate toned - but at a lighter roast than the Firenze.
The Caffe Fresco Daterra is another chocolate bomb espresso - at a slightly lighter roast degree than the BC.
Finally, the Olympia Peru Pinachi is a lovely sweet chocolate coffee - at a still lighter roast degree.

If you brew the Black Cat at 201F - you get heavy, heavy anise notes.
If you brew the Daterra at 201.5F - again, heavy, heavy anise.
If you brew the Pinachi at 202.1F - anise bomb.

What's particularly interesting is that the point at which the change occurs is quite sudden - and that when it does occur the chocolate tones and the sweetness just vanish. Many other flavours remain - although altered. But the chocolate and the sugar are gone.

On the other hand, a coffee like the Hairbender (which is not heavily chocolate toned) doesn't seem to develop the anise notes.
The Hines Espresso... same thing.
The Stumptown Ethiopia Sidamo... same thing.

Weird.

Abe,

At what brew temperature do you find the anise with the Firenze blend?

Thank you.

TRH wrote:Abe,

At what brew temperature do you find the anise with the Firenze blend?

Thank you.

At 202-203f it is a bomb

I'm hoping to get a couple current steam wand tips to try out on the GS3.

While it's great that I've been able to get such good milk with this tip - I don't believe that it is a currently available part so it's kind of useless to most people.

I'm going to see if I can source a range of the current options that would work with this wand.
Hey Terry... You wanna ask Devon "the parts savant" what the differences are between:
LM part# f.134, mz.208 and v.640
Oh... and is the non-acorn LM tip a v.1400?


I know it's kind of silly given that this is a prototype machine and the wand will probably change in at least a few ways before release - but at the very least I'll be able to provide some feedback to LMI on tip options.


One other milk related thing... I'm actually starting to really, really like the lever control.
It took some getting used to - but I like the fact that it's very quick reacting, and that it's multi-directional. I've become reasonably adept at using it and figure it would only take another week or so for it to become muscle memory - especially with the tip thing sorted out.


Various folks have expressed concern about trying to work on this machine if you're left handed.
The lever control is incredibly easy to use and manipulate and takes little to no manual dexterity. I honestly cannot imagine it being a real issue for people.

I think the big issue for many people is going to be the immense steam power.

So there are four folks who have "tester" prototypes now that I know of - and three of them post here at HB.

If the three of us can "collaborate" a bit on our results I figure that we're going to have an incredible review -- and the folks at LMI are going to get some really valuable feedback.


Could be really cool!!


So you two... post up!

It seems that Greg and Andy has either gone into caffeine overdose or they have become part of the LMI Counter Intelligence team. Top secret thermometry and stuff I'm sure.

Ok, so lets hear it....do you think it as good as the rest of us, or should we just PID our Silvias? Inquiring minds, and all that