Monmouth is an old favorite, as is Store Street Espresso if you're in the Bloomsbury/Russell Square area (behind the British Museum). Saw a recommendation recently for Rosslyn Coffee in the city, which looks extremely good, especially if you like lighter roasts. Caveat - this is just from looking at their website, it could be awful

I agree, no reason to think anything is "wrong" here. But if only to satisfy your curiosity, try grinding finer, which should certainly increase time to first drip, and see if taste improves, doesn't change, or gets worse. Try and see! Experiment a bit! You can also play with flow control as Nunas suggests (and I also use

Price adjustment

Thanks for the link Midway! That was perfect!!

Thank for the tip - I am all for Kafatek now

The quote of the separate boiler in the Bianca isn't from me.. just a cut/paste typo.. but I would agree that a separate boiler for the brew water is a huge, huge improvement. The problem is one of marketing hype and flat out errors from both the manufacturers and distributors. WLL designed the Pro 500 HX restrictor and published a

Mohand, The hollow bolt head is not a requirement for an E61 head. The water passage is not concentric with the bolt head. Take a look at the attached image and confirm on your machine. Do you have a way to measure thread od and thread pitch? The dispersion screw should be M10 X 1.0 threads. I'll measure the

A short final post on changing burrs and resetting the grinder's zero point. I swapped in the SSP MP burrs into the grinder: {image} and want to report on some of the things that came up. First off, when I tested the MP burrs in the Jolly, I hated them -- thin bodied, no sweetness, and diminished roast

Paul, I agree with Bodie; there's no one "right" to make espresso, including how long it takes for the soak (preinfusion) stage. That said, you can easily vary a few variables and evaluate the mouth feel and taste. Try grinding a tad smaller and you'll certainly get a longer soak. Or, you can drop your lever to the mid-position as

I'm brewing at the lowest (89 +/- 2 C) setting, medium roasted El Salvadorian and Colombian mix, usually about 6 to 14 days off roast. The mechanism seems to be right on temperature at initial start up and a couple minutes more. It then seems to climb. A longish flush has the water temp climb as high