You can use water that minimizes scale buildup to a point where you shouldn't ever need to descale. I think with regular maintenance and soft filtered water, you'll only need to do this very rarely in the machine's lifetime (if ever). As far as I know, if it ever comes to that, most people let professionals do the work on

I've been asked to not say too much about the inside of the optical portion so I won't go into depth on what all is there, but it's in a tube that's a few inches long mounted outside of the sight glass, which on a Diedrich IR-12 is pretty usable for that purpose

When filled, the ct2 can pull 5 back to back shots easily. It also excels with lighter roast but I found I needed to preinfuse for 1.5-2 mins. Everything under 1.5mins came out sour while around 2 min mark was bright. Also had to use the smaller basket for all lighter roast to increase extraction ratio. I am looking to

I've checked again. It is a ground cable and found the other side of it as well

I've tried both doing a "double pour" into the brew chamber and letting the portafilter/basket heat up on the steam from a kettle, but feel like I'm not getting it right. Maybe I'm doing something else wrong. You're probably right that I should zoom in on one machine type. I do enjoy the experience of a lever shot and have

Espresso Vivace sells their well-known Dolce blend green or roasted, so this is another where you can try roasting and compare your results to theirs. {link}

Definitely looks like an Anti-Vacuum Valve of some sort on the top of the boiler level gauge:) . . . interesting location The two yellow wires near your pump might be for a thermal cut-off fuse that slips into that slotted area on the pump. I can't quite see if the wires are connected to the pump

Did you increase dose by 0.5 g when switching from metal to paper? Wonder if the wetness is due to more head space

The more the better... In six liters you can easily dissolve one kilogram of citric acid. However, it really depends how crusty your boiler is. Maybe 500g will be plenty to get light scale buildup off your boiler

Ah, darn. I was actually hoping you meant SSP and that they had changed their minds about 98mm LS's