jchung wrote:For true penance, you must buy your coffee from 7-11 after the carafe has had a chance to sit on the burner for 3 hours.

I'm willing to do penance - not suicide.

Just another data point. Sent my 920XL in for maintenance. Breville is sending a new unit back to me as replacement. Just got the notice today and confirmed with Breville support on the phone. Already sold the replacement 920XL and having it shipped to my friend in TX directly from Breville. Now just need to ship him all the accessories.

Congrats. If you hadn't re routed your brew path through the needle valve for Slayerlike profiling on your BDB, and if you dabble in super light roasts, you will enjoy having flow profiling capability on your DE. You should join in the various discussions here at HB that involve flow profiling, like the BDB Slayer shots thread, and the Bianca thread, in addition to the DE thread. Flow profiling is still new enough that we will all learn more than isolating ourselves just to our own tribes.

-Peter

Don't worry. I've been subscribed to all of those threads for a while now.

I Recently sent my BDB in for repair and got a mystery "descale + sofltware update".

Before sending out the machine, i was setting preinfusion to 55% and 25 seconds which usually got me 1st drop before/just after full pressure. Sometimes pressure could build up to 5-7+ bars during preinfusion.

Since this "software update", the pump seems to cut off/limit pressure below 2.5 bars for the entire preinfusion period.

I even had one instance where the pump flat out cutoff during preinfusion...

I am curious to know if anyone else had the chance of experiencing this?

FYI, i have been resisting BDB modifications and sticking to its "stock" capabilities of using preinfusion + water tap discharge to pressure profile.

Up to now, I am likeing this update! No need for preinfusion water tap discharge to keep it under 3 bar!

Lot of stuff in here... I'll try to address it in order...

-If you set your time to zero and press and hold the "manual" button, you can pre infuse as long as you like, (until you see first drops) and when you release the button, the pump goes to full. Just thought I'd throw that out there because not everybody knows it

-Re your pump cutting off during pre infusion, I've not had that per se, but on my six year old -900 I had it where it would be reluctant to pre infuse, then eventually it would not pre infuse at all. Replacing the pump, which I did myself, did not fix it. So I sent it off to Breville. They ended up sending me a new machine. In my case, I think the problem was on the control board. But I think lots of low power pre infusion is hard on the pump, so a pump change might still fix it. According the the Aussie repair men on another forum, changing the pump usually fixes it. Fortunately, it's pretty easy and the pumps are not terribly expensive.

-RE resisting modifications: The Slayer mod (which actually gives you more capability than Slayer, is fully reversible. It's almost not like a mod. All you are doing is re routing existing tubing, plug and play.

-By the way, pre infusing until you see first drops, then running the pump full, then tailing off the flow rate towards the end of the the shot is a classic Slayer shot profile. It tends to improve light roasts quite a lot. If you are happy doing it this way, no need to mod.

-More thoughts: one of the key "ingredients" of "Slayering" is very low flow during pre infusion. On the order of 1-2ml/s. You can measure this by pre infusing into a cup on a scale for 30s, the weight you get in grams is also your volume in ml. One of the reasons for the Slayer mod is you can get it really low. But again, unless you are playing hard with super light roasts, you are probably fine not doing it. Still if you do the mod, you lose nothing in the way of extraction capability. You can still use the machine like stock by opening up the needle (water knob) and using the machine as you always had, before the mod.

HTH

-Peter

My kids did this. Not me. I promise

I just received a brand new replacement BDB. For those that are counting, this is my 4th different machine in 7 years!

Anyway, this model comes with the new filter system. I have a year's worth of filters for the old system. If anybody is willing to pay shipping, I'll send them to you. Just PM me.

Nice.

FYI, to order a replacement for the the new conical style filter (which was not in stock on the web site), I contacted customer support by email. Price was $14.10 shipped.
I have yet to try but I want to see if the old filter style holder works with the new tank. If it does I will use the old filters, much less expensive.

The old filter holder does work in the new tank.

However, I don't trust either the new or the old system with the health of my machine. I use a proper external, espresso filtration system instead. I've only had one legitimate machine replacement in nearly eight years, and that was due to a fault that developed on the main board.

I use an old "bean bag" filter not for the long used up ion exchange softener beads, but for the extra particle trapping provided by the white filter floss.

-Peter