Home-Barista.com

Lambretta58 wrote:I've had that happen a few times.

What causes it?

Never with my Bianca but every so often with my Lambro.

Levers usually have a small air pocket just below the piston. When water enters the cylinder, most air is expelled, but a tiny bit stays on top, and is compressed by the preinfusion pressure. The air pocket is compressed further by the spring force, and when the spring bottoms out, this air, still under pressure, comes out, and dries the puck. Depending on the coffee, this generates some coarse foam, but not usually as glorious as that of DucaiMann. Gravity fed levers don't have this air pocket, hence the usually soupy pucks. However, with the Caravel you can do half pulls and pump air through the puck to dry it. Tedious, but it does work, and also gives a foamy discharge.

Levers usually have a small air pocket just below the piston. When water enters the cylinder, most air is expelled, but a tiny bit stays on top, and is compressed by the preinfusion pressure. The air pocket is compressed further by the spring force, and when the spring bottoms out, this air, still under pressure, comes out, and dries the puck. Depending on the coffee, this generates some coarse foam, but not usually as glorious as that of DucaiMann. Gravity fed levers don't have this air pocket, hence the usually soupy pucks. However, with the Caravel you can do half pulls and pump air through the puck to dry it. Tedious, but it does work, and also gives a foamy discharge.[/quote]

Thank you for this.

There are over-powered gear addicts of all kinds.

If I understand correctly $500K could grab you a pair:

And for what it's worth, if you spend 500K on a pair of speakers, it's at least another 500K for the listening room and ancillary equipment.

Ira

crazy price tags do not necessarily mean that the sound is that good, there are plenty of apparatchiks in audio land, and they love shiny, usually goldplated metal with lots of dials and led's, Amps with hundreds if Watts, distortion figures quantified in 5 decimals....yet they own a sad amount of software.
I'm quite sure that if I built an Amp with a chassis out of solid gold it would sell just because of it's ridiculous price tag....I've listened to audio sets costing up to 400K, only with a few I was happy enough with the sound to an extent I'd want it in my home should I have to budget for it.

Marcelnl wrote:.I've listened to audio sets costing up to 400K, only with a few I was happy enough with the sound to an extent I'd want it in my home should I have to budget for it.

A majority of the public doesn't appreciate or can even assess good sound. Decades ago a young neighbor installed a 10 band EQ in his car. He wanted to show it to me. I adjusted it so that it was relatively flat and sounded pretty.. well.. acceptable. He said, "That's good, but I like this," and cranked the three or four lowest bands to max. I just walked away.

And with the last two generations or so installing massive thumpers in their cars and listening to music at Db levels that can damage the upholstery, the future sales of quality home systems is going to suffer as thy go deaf in the golden years.

a shiny gold plated 30.000 grinder is WAY better...

Yeah sound is like tasting, it's an acquired skill. Some folks havea cute taste or hearing from scratch, some can develop it, some will never know what they missed (if they miss anything that is...ignorance is bliss after all)

Coffee in space:

You may need a NY Times subscription. Original article has links:

The need for caffeine was the mother of invention.

In November 2008, Donald Pettit wanted to drink his tea and coffee from an open vessel. While aboard the I.S.S., he tore out a plastic divider from his Flight Data File and used the magic of fluid dynamics to create an open cup. Until then, astronauts drank everything out of a plastic bag with a straw.

We interact with coffee through aroma as much as through taste. In a bag, half of the experience was gone; Dr. Pettit said that he wanted to add "back the dimension of what it's like to be a human being."

When Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space, went to the I.S.S., the Italian Space Agency in collaboration with Lavazza and Argotec, built a zero-g espresso machine, the ISSpresso. To save her from drinking espresso in a bag, Mark Weislogel, an engineer at Portland State university, designed a true 'zero-g cup' based on Dr. Pettit's invention.

In 2015, as Dr. Kjell Lindgren was preparing to launch for NASA, he had concerns about coffee.

"I love coffee and I was worried that our standard freeze-dried brew wasn't going to cut it," he said.