Time from cold until ready to brew - Page 2

[cafeIKE]

Ian, do you have stats on getting your Vibiemme up to brew temp (meaning the entire path, not just the boiler) from a cold start? I think you have the thermosyphon in place and am curious how quickly you could get it ready to pull a shot by flushing as many times as needed once the boiler reaches the top of the cycle to get the entire brew path up to normal operating temps. I predict a WAG of under 15 minutes.

If I was in that much of a hurry, I'd probably use a heat gun or blow-torch

I'm not sure that flushing water out the group would do very much as cold water is injected into the HX. If I was in dire need, I'd probably use the blind basket and fill that a few times to warm the snout. The tea towels have worked well whenever I've needed to warm quickly.

[HB]

If I was in dire need, I'd probably use the blind basket and fill that a few times to warm the snout.

That trick reminds me of Jon's backflush cooling flush. He developed the technique on his Vetrano, but I found it worked well on the Vibiemme. Not sure if it applies to other E61 / HX espresso machines and I neglected to follow up...

[zin1953]

As I mentioned in another thread, I have a 110v/20A timer that is set to go off at 5:00 in the morning. Most of the year, my dog thinks it's perfectly acceptable to wake me up between 5:30-6:00 in the morning for breakfast. I stumble downstairs, and the machine is ready to go. The timer turns off at 9:00. (I have it set to come on again at 6:00 pm, and off at 10:00.)

Lately, however, the dog has been letting me sleep an extra hour. Maybe she never adjusted off daylight savings time? But I could probably adjust the timer to go off at 6:00 and off at 8:30, if I wanted to reduce the number of hours the machine is on.

I still have my 110v/15A timer that I used for my La Val. Maybe I should install that in the office? It's a rather small, 7-day programmable timer -- run it from 9-to-5, just Monday through Friday? Hmmm . . .

Cheers,
Jason

[TheCod Father]

Well I only have any experience with my little Delonghi Italia but I am able to get my machine up and running in about 5-6 mins . If I leave it for too long as is suggested for other machines it REALLY heats up and starts purging steam like a Caliope on amphetamines with just about as much noise . Actually it can be quite disturbing to see and hear if you are not prepared for it ...

TCF

[EricL]

While you can cheat Miss Silvia, and it will produce ok results, it still needs a good bit longer to get up get up to full operating temperature. http://www.pidkits.com/warmup.html shows a temperature chart for a Silvia that shows the boiler gets up to temp fast, ~5min, but the group can take up to 50 minutes to reach full operating temp. I try to give it 40 minutes. If I can touch the group without burning my hand, it's not ready. Had this discussion with someone at Seattle Coffee gear who tried to convince me the Silvia was warmed up and ready to go in 15 minutes.
Appreciate this discussion, as i'm scheming on how to convince my wife that I really do need to ugrade to an HX machine. Subtle things like leaving the computer on the chris coffee website, complaining about the silvia, leaving the silvia pulled out a bit to take up more counter space...

[zin1953]

Well I only have any experience with my little Delonghi Italia but I am able to get my machine up and running in about 5-6 mins

My old Gaggia Coffee was the same . . . always off, ready to go in 5-6 minutes. Then again, my Caravel is good to go in about 6-10 . . .

[erics]

Here's some warm-up curves for machines that have been in the "basement" at one time or another:

[another_jim]

I see many machines being used with timers. ... I am wanting to up my game with a better machine, but don't like the idea of 30+ minute warmups... and I would rather avoid a clunky high current timer.

You and the others are optimistic. These machines aren't at their best until they are in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, around 1 hour after warm up. This is true even of the little Silvia, as Eric said.

On the other hand, 20 amp appliance timers aren't all that clunky -- especially after your sense of coffee appliance scale has been adjusted to the levels we tolerate around here

[zin1953]

Yes, my 20A timer is big and clunky. It sits right next to the fuse box, above the dryer, and cannot be seen unless you open the sliding doors that "hide" the washer and dryer.

The 15A timer that now controls the office machine is small and unobtrusive.

(It is shorter than the standard face plate for a "normal" electrical outlet.)

And other 20A times are a lot smaller.

Cheers,
Jason

[coffee_no_sugar]

A fast warm-up is good feature for a home machine. IMHO one Silvia-class machine did this by running the boiler hot so you could pull a shot before the head had reached thermal equilibrium. If you waited for the machine to reach equilibrium, you would get a hotter than optimal shot. To avoid this situation, the inflow water goes through the head so that you could do a cooling flush. Perhaps some of the HXs that run hotter can pull good shots before they reach equilibrium if you avoid/reduce the cooling flush.