nuketopia wrote:I think a call to Chris's Coffee would help. I'm sure they'd be happy to walk you through it.

But I owned a similar HX machine for a long time. It really doesn't matter that your steam boiler is PID or not, the process works the same. I'd set it to a nominal 1.3-1.4 bar of steam pressure. Allow a minimum 20-30 minutes of warm up. When at operating temp, the pressure on the steam gauge should be where you set it and the brew group should be quite hot to touch. That means the water is circulating through it and back through the heat exchanger in the boiler. (if it isn't hot, then you may have a problem in the machine that needs correcting).

Using an HX machine is actually pretty easy. With the machine fully heated, just take off your portafilter, dose it with coffee and tamp it. Before you put it back on, pull the lever and run some water. Observe how the water comes out of the brew head screen. It will likely be "sizzly" and spitty, run it until runs nice and smooth. Put the portafilter on and pull your shot. When your shot is done, then steam the milk.

Although it is usually said you can pull a shot and steam at the same time, in most cases, you'll be happier with the results doing it sequentially. What a HX really means is you can pull a shot, then steam immediately, rather than to switch the thing into steam mode and wait for it to reach steaming temperature, as is the case with single boilers.

You can add a thermometer to the E61 if you like to increase the precision of your technique, but you should be able to get quite good results just by running water until the sizzle stops and water flow smooths.

Enjoy your machine!

not trying to high jack this thread, but if you make two cappuccinos in a row, does the machine need a flush in between?

Thanks

Randy

No, that's a great question!!!!

This is where technique comes into play - if you can't pony up for instrumentation.

A long idled e61 will be over hot. One just used, might be a little cold for the next shot and possibly even colder for the one after that.

There's sort of an art to it, which combines where you set your steam boiler pressure/temperature, how much time you let elapse between shots and understanding what it is doing by the look, feel, sounds it is making and so on.

Or you can install a thermometer in it to be sure, or use a SCACE device to tune your technique. Instruments increase repeatability of process.

I resolved it all by going to the Linea Mini, which is repeatable as a piece of industrial machinery. Now I mostly think about coffee, not so much about how to make it.

nuketopia wrote:No, that's a great question!!!!

This is where technique comes into play - if you can't pony up for instrumentation.

A long idled e61 will be over hot. One just used, might be a little cold for the next shot and possibly even colder for the one after that.

There's sort of an art to it, which combines where you set your steam boiler pressure/temperature, how much time you let elapse between shots and understanding what it is doing by the look, feel, sounds it is making and so on.

Or you can install a thermometer in it to be sure, or use a SCACE device to tune your technique. Instruments increase repeatability of process.

I resolved it all by going to the Linea Mini, which is repeatable as a piece of industrial machinery. Now I mostly think about coffee, not so much about how to make it.

So if you steam before you brew then flush it to cool it down be the most consistent way of doing multiple cappuccinos?

nuketopia wrote:A long idled e61 will be over hot. One just used, might be a little cold for the next shot and possibly even colder for the one after that. There's sort of an art to it, which combines where you set your steam boiler pressure/temperature, how much time you let elapse between shots and understanding what it is doing by the look, feel, sounds it is making and so on.

I Certainly agree with all of that. When doing successive shots my Evo V2, at a ~1 bar boiler pressure I do a short-as-possible cleaning flush and still need to take my time between shots - I know from watching the group thermometer that my machine is a little slow to recover. Shots in succession to me are a lot harder to nail and I also don't get to practice and taste them as much. Even with the E61 thermometer it requires some art, and I spent a ton of time studying EricS' graphs and learning the difference between flush-n-go temps from an idle group versus shots in series. For one thing, with a flush-n-go from a hot idle group, the group temp reading will run a couple degrees lower than what a Scace would read during the shot. But when doing subsequent shots from a cooler group, the group temp reading runs a couple degrees hotter than what a Scace reading would. I had to get accustomed to that. I'm still not good at it, and when dialing in and evaluating coffees I always stick to a predictable flush-n-go from a long idle group.

I don't have anything concrete for Devin as to how to correct the dry metallic aftertaste problem. All I can say is keep experimenting, maybe start with a standard shot (18g in, 36g out, 30 seconds) and try futzing one parameter at a time - finer and coarser, updose and downdose, hotter and cooler, lungo and ristretto to see if you can hone in on what might fix it. When starting on a new coffee I often purposely hit some extremes, especially a long and over-extracted lungo and a short under-extracted ristretto just to get my taste buds calibrated for the over/under taste distinction. (Bitter/sour doesn't always work for me.) You can dilute the short ristretto with hot water so that you are sensing the taste difference and not the strength difference.

Another thing I'd recommend would be to visit some of the local roasters there in Denver. Sample their espressos, and for those that you like, buy some beans and get their recommendations for pulling on a home HX. They may not know much about HX flushing, but may have good general advice about temperature, grind, brew ratio, etc. Novo, SweetBloom, Huckleberry, Boxcar, and Corvus come to mind.

homeburrero wrote:Do the math and I think you'll change your mind about that. Only 3 ml of water, when vaporized, will become nearly 4 liters of steam.

That's true only if it all evaporates, which does not happen when it's falling from an open orifice. The heat of vaporization comes from the water itself once it leaves the group head, so it cools to well below boiling (in whatever atmospheric pressure it finds itself) within milliseconds, which is long before it can boil away. And raising water from room temp to its boiling point and immediately removing the heat source results in only a 1 to 3% loss of liquid volume (there's a lot of information on this in the cooking literature). Bringing it to a boil by reducing ambient pressure from 1.4 bar to just under 1 would result in far less than even the 0.1 ml of steam created when bringing 3 ml of water to a boil from room temp.

This should be obvious because there's a continuous stream of water running from the group head when you flush. If it were all evaporating, there's be nothing falling into the drip tray - the stream would stop at the bottom of a short sizzling bubble if what you believe were actually happening.

nuketopia wrote:No, that's a great question!!!!

This is where technique comes into play - if you can't pony up for instrumentation.

A long idled e61 will be over hot. One just used, might be a little cold for the next shot and possibly even colder for the one after that.

There's sort of an art to it, which combines where you set your steam boiler pressure/temperature, how much time you let elapse between shots and understanding what it is doing by the look, feel, sounds it is making and so on.

Or you can install a thermometer in it to be sure, or use a SCACE device to tune your technique. Instruments increase repeatability of process.

I resolved it all by going to the Linea Mini, which is repeatable as a piece of industrial machinery. Now I mostly think about coffee, not so much about how to make it.

The challenge with controlling temperature for multiple quick succession back to back drinks is not specific to an HX. Even a dual boiler e61 will have trouble with this as the temperature of the brew head and components change.

However for most mortals, the time it takes to steam, pour, then prepare the next basket is usually enough time for the HX and group head to recover. So I would just do a cursory flush to clean the screen and brew again. No need to flush or fuss around. That process. should be just fine for 3 or 4 successive caps.

All that to say, don't obsess over temp. A degree here or there is not going to make or break your shot anyways.

h3yn0w wrote:All that to say, don't obsess over temp. A degree here or there is not going to make or break your shot anyways.

Absolutely!! After decades of obsessive study and effort plus many many machines of varying design and complexity, I've been happiest of all with my bone simple HX machine (a long-in-the-tooth old Oscar direct-connect) and a straightforward routine devoid of ritual. As BB King might have said, the fear is gone!

When I sold my last machine to a fellow HBer, its polished SS was bright as the sun and its PID was a bluish beacon of anxiety. Now I neither polish my prosumer nor poke my PID - I just make great coffee. After a thorough machine warmup, I

• put milk in the pitcher if making a milk drink
• grind / distribute / tamp with a little nutation and a slow steady hand on the tamper
• flush a few ounces beyond the end of the sizzle
• lock in the PF
• start my trusty old timer with my right hand while pushing the brew button with my left
• stretch and texturize if using milk (completed well before the shot is)
• stop the pump at 35 seconds
• pour milk if used
• enjoy......a lot!!

My thermometers are in the drawer, my coffee's consistent day after day, and I can't believe how much time, energy, money and angst I wasted chasing the elusive god shot. We grow old too soon and smart too late.

I went kind of the other way with the Linea Mini. It is a rock solid repeatable machine. It will reliably do the exactly the same thing, over and over. When I set the temperature on the LMLM, it will pull exactly the same temperature and pressure as many times as I want. The Monolith is also very reliable and repeatable.

By employing the science, I don't have to think about the process as much. I'm treated to excellent shot after excellent shot after dialing in a new bag of beans. I can also switch beans and repeatably return to what worked well with that batch. Because my settings have been standardized, I can use the brew parameters that other people are using all over the world, or what the vendor of the beans has recommended.

That's the value of a consistent machine - it is repeatable and the parameters are interchangeable with other people who are also working with standardized equipment.

My process is pretty easy and everything is by weight.

I weigh the beans and put them in the grinder.
Grind and tamp.
I put the PF in the machine a small scale on the tray under the cup.
I brew to target weight and I time shots as a secondary data point. It tells me my grind is fine/course enough when the target beverage weight comes out in the target amount of time.

So I paid for consistency. My second cup is as good as my first, which is as good as the cup I had yesterday.

I think a lot more about coffee now.

It is funny to me that on this site, the "Coffees" section is also one of the slowest message boards!

nuketopia wrote:I went kind of the other way with the Linea Mini.

As I see it, you went the same way I did - you just took it to a higher level. The LMLM is my first choice for Oscar's replacement when he finally passes away (or my start-up hits...). I retired on Dec 31, so we're seeing our budget in a new light made even brighter by the fact that at 70 1/2 (which milestone I reached about 5 weeks ago) I have to start taking required distributions from my retirement plans and the tax man wants his due.

The LMLM is also a simple, rock solid machine like Oscar - it just has "better bone structure". You're not profiling, you're not watching a digital readout while perched on the brew button, you don't have to flush to cool your group, and you don't have to worry about anything. Except for the flush, that describes me too - and Oscar doesn't get fingerprints and smudges on his case. We both enjoy great espresso whenever we want it. Yours is just a bit better than mine.

When Oscar dies (or I can no longer resist the pull....whichever comes first), I'll have to make a big choice because I really want a LInea Mini. It appeals to me for all the above reasons and more. But my parents & family are long lived, e.g. my mother died at 100, her sister at 99, and my father at 83 from the COPD brought on by years of smoking before I was born. And my wife's mother passed at 95. So I worry about being caught up short at 95 with years left to go, and there are times when the extra $2k for an LMLM seems like an unnecessary extravagance when I can get a very fine Spaz for half the price. Then again, if I mentally amortize it over 20 years, the LMLM's less than $10 a month more, which seems like a bargain!

Relative to this thread, you and I are on the same wavelength - set it, forget it, and enjoy your coffee. My brew temp may vary by a degree or two with each shot, but I'm happy with what's in my cup.