Blonding too fast. Profitec 700. - Page 3

Beginner and pro baristas share tips and tricks for making espresso.
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JmanEspresso
Posts: 1462
Joined: 15 years ago

#21: Post by JmanEspresso »

Ahh. A water issue.

Not surprised myself actually. Ive dealt with enough water issues over the past couple years to drive one insane.

I actually thought I was going insane for a little bit. Seriously, lived in one house, the espresso was excellent no matter what.. I could use any coffee I liked, always could dial shots in no problem. Move to a new house, new water and so new treatment system, everything goes haywire. The water coming in is superbly hard, AND has Iron. Treatment system massively softens the water, and does what it can for the iron, but, basically, no matter what kind of tweaking I did, all I got was hot, thin, garbage. And of course, the water was the last thing I checked. Did a lot whole of blaming the problem on the equipment(the problem is almost always with the PBTC..how many times have I said that??), with no improvement.

I eventually, after some serious hair pulling(seriously, I was getting f'in pissed), I gave up, and started using bottled water.

Is it a pain to have to go to the store and get 5-6 1.5liter bottles of Volvic once a week? Does it annoy me that I cant get Volvic in a 5 gallon to run a flo-jet? Wouldnt I love to be plumbed in to the horrendously expensive water treatment the house has? Yes. Yes. Yes.

But.. Does my espresso finally taste excellent again?

Yes.

Glad you got it figured out man, I know how annoying it can be when you're literally checking everything, every aspect of each piece of equipment, and nothing makes sense. Coffees that you considered to be easy as heck to pull mouth coating chocolate bombs, turned into, thin, hot, astringent cups of sh^t. Its enough to drive anyone up the wall.

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erics
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#22: Post by erics »

Nice chart, Eric!
Thank you, Pat.

But my not mentioned point is that there should exist a similar chart for machines fitted with stainless steel boilers and one for machines with copper boilers (perhaps slightly different). I am a mechanical engineer, almost 50 years removed from my last college chemistry class, but I will see what I can do with your post as regards filling in the blanks with Robert Pavlis' formulation. Naturally it would be best for several forum members to post test results and I would average the numbers.
Skål,

Eric S.
http://users.rcn.com/erics/
E-mail: erics at rcn dot com

nuketopia
Posts: 1305
Joined: 8 years ago

#23: Post by nuketopia »

I'm lucky in that the Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring I normally see is from the Weed plant. Testing it with aquarium testing strips and a TDS meter shows it a little softer than the last published analysis. I compared it with 3 liters of Aqua Panna and found no material difference in espresso quality.

The Jonstown version of CGAS looks like it would work fine with dilution with distilled or RO water.

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JK
Posts: 626
Joined: 12 years ago

#24: Post by JK »

I'll add my two cents..
I had my Pro 700 for several weeks now.. I just lowered E1 to 24 not 34 on the F scale..
This has helped a lot with shot quality..

If you add E1 + T1 on C and F scales and do the conversion E1 F at 34° is 10° higher than the C sales temps..

I'm guessing you all know this but since I just found this info I though I would spread it around..
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I'm on a Mission from God!

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