I have bought Bambino Plus + Eureka Mignon and have been playing with it for the last few weeks, and I'm not impressed with the consistency and temperature of the shots I'm getting from this.

I've been mostly doing manual 1:2 ratios (18g) and adjusting grind size accordingly to get the "good times" of around 25sec (+pre-infusion), and what I've noticed is that espresso is never hot enough and sour/bitter, no matter what I try. At best it comes out mildly hot. I am also prewarming machine, running blank shots.

So I first tried running out only hot water which comes out at 60C / 140F. Then I tried to use that pressurized double basket (it's important to use a pressurised basket as it will keep flow rates in a sensible range for the PID to function correctly or at least nearly so) and run few blanks shots through it. The temperature of that was 70C / 160F which was very disappointing.

At this point I'm not sure what else to do, and I've read similar complaints from others with bambino and touch models, I wish I had known this earlier.

Any advice or is this the reality of this machine?

Make sure you warm up the machine with the portafilter in the machine, and then pull 50ml of water or so through the machine and through the portafilter first. That dilf get everything heated up appropriately and reading on reddit it sounds like temps are reasonable at the portafilter with that routine followed.

I realize you said you did that so I'm not sure why your temps are lower, other than just measurement difference. You want to measure what's coming out of the shower without the portafilter, then just make sure the portafilter is hot.

Trust me, I've tried all this, again today, ran hot water through pressurized baskets several time, and while the portafilter gets hot, the espresso extraction is not even close to desired temperatues.

How long are you waiting to warm up? And have you measured shower-screen water without the portafilter?

If you have and your temps are in the 160s, then since others can get appropriate temps out of it it sounds like perhaps something is wrong with yours. But definitely make sure you run water through first (as you are), and measure at the shower screen, not coming out of the portafilter.

I've tried a lot of this already. If I measure it right under the shower screen, it's always between 150F and 160F, never higher. Even if try to run shots, and use the steam in between...

Seems like you want to contact breville or the retailer, your machine apparently doesn't behave normally.

If you measured clear water out the group into a foam cup at 140-160 degF, that is way too cool. There is a problem. Time to call Breville. Or the dealer.

As a data point, On the BDB, which has user selectable temperature, the lowest possible setting is 190 degF, and I don't know that anybody uses it for espresso. (I use 190 degF for single serve drip, but that's a story for a different time and place).

-Peter

The Bambino is supposed to be a very fast thermoblock which as I recall, claims to be hot in seconds, though maybe it's single digit minutes.

Ira

Is it possible there is too much error margin with your measurement method?

Reading this was intriguing to me as I have a Barista Pro which uses the same thermojet tech as the Bambino Plus. I've had my machine for 8 months and while I have played with the +/- shot temp settings, I never took any temp readings so I gave it a try this evening.

Using a steaming thermometer against water dispensed into a preheated frothing pitcher, the highest I was able to read was 150F after running 2 consecutive double shots. Using the tip from a Fluke Food Pro registered at 160F. Using the infrared was even lower at 140F. Getting concerned I started googling for proper grouphead temp measurement methods and the most popular seemed to be the styrofoam cup method (links below).

Not having a styrofoam cup handy, I went with the next best option for me which was inserting the Food Pro measuring tip into the bottom of the portafilter and blocking the hole with foil. Running consecutive shots, the highest reading was 190F. This still falls short of the ideal but there may still be margin of error here.

Seeking low tech way to measure brew temperature
Measuring grouphead temperature

I had the same problem. Sage weren't interested in even entertaining the idea there could be a flaw.

I just don't recommend their kit anymore