John, I am thinking of getting a thermometer that reads the surface temperature of things with the push of a trigger. Have you ever used one?

I played with the different methods I mentioned I used when preheating with the pressurized basket. The one that heated the piston the least was the one where I pressed the water out immediately under pressure. The one that heated it the most was letting the handles drop on their own. I also put the pressurized basket on with the handles held up with string. That keeps the water from dripping out of the pressurized basket.

With the method where I fill the basket and press it out right away the piston is hot, hard to keep back of hand on at all, but not hard to touch with finger tips. Letting handles drop on own while grinding and tamping is very hot to the finger tips. Takes a little over 2 minutes to get the bottom of the basket.

Hoping to get a thermometer to take a single temperature reading of the piston when taking portafilter off.

Ken5 wrote:John, I am thinking of getting a thermometer that reads the surface temperature of things with the push of a trigger. Have you ever used one?


Hoping to get a thermometer to take a single temperature reading of the piston when taking portafilter off.

If you are talking about an IR thermometer that shoots a beam at the device.. anything shiny will not read correctly. You need to put a square of matte tape or something similar on it. I've used these to measure temp of an E61 group.

I don't own an IR thermometer. I'm sure they're the ticket for certain applications but so far I haven't had a real need for one.

They have certain nuances. The amount of IR that is emitted depends on the temperature of the surface you want to measure. But it also depends on the reflectivity of the surface. The more reflective it is the less IR it emits. A perfect mirror will not radiate at all.

So the temperature of your shiny stainless steel piston will read low on an IR thermometer. Some of these devices allow you to adjust the emissivity. You'd have to calibrate that since you won't know in advance what the emissivity of your piston is. You could put a piece of tape on the piston face but it's a hot, wet environment and the tape probably won't stay there. Plus you might not want to drink even a small amount of tape adhesive or whatever else might leach out of the tape itself.

The thing is, the piston isn't really at a single temperature anyway. As long as you can get reliable measurements that you can compare with one another then you'll have useful information. The actual, accurate temperature of the face isn't as important.

Bluenoser wrote:If you are talking about an IR thermometer that shoots a beam at the device..

They don't actually measure by shooting a beam. The laser is just for aiming purposes.

Are there any Robot owners out there who are getting great results paired with a unimodal flat burr grinder & light roast coffees?

I've been working with my new Lagom P64 Unimodal the past week, have been trying a lot of different variables (one adjustment at a time) such as time (grind), dose, lever pressure, etc.

I have yet to hit a really good sweetness & clarity taste point with my espresso. I haven't ventured outside the 2.5:1 to 3:1 ratios as I understand that to be ideal for light roast unimodal "EK" style espresso. This style has been new to me as I have never worked on pulling unimodal espresso in the past, so I have been using what seem to be common guidelines of faster shot times (25-ish seconds), less pressure, and coarser grind. Though I have also tried more pressure & finer grind at times.

Overall my espresso has been good, just not great. I am finding a common muddiness to most shots at either end of the dose & grind spectrum. My basket prep has always been RDT & WDT, rarely am I getting channeling and the pulls look great overall. Just not tasting as I would hope with good acidity, sweetness, and flavor clarity.

I have been pre-heating a bit but not as thoroughly as I used to, so I think that will be my next step in my tasting trials, giving basket/portafilter/piston a really solid pre-heating.

Any other feedback or experience would be greatly appreciated!!

Hi zigg, it sounds to me you're doing all the right things, but I'll defer to the more experienced folks around here. The one point I can think of is that you mention that the Lagom P64 is new. How new is new? It's my understanding that new burrs tend to produce more fines than once they are seasoned, which might be the cause of your muddiness and less than unimodal distribution. Second I've been trying the opposite way on shot time for light roasts, so a smaller dose with 14 g in 35 g out (2.5:1) and a finer grind to get ~50 s shot times. Results have been pretty good, but I'm by no means an expert.

Best of luck though and report back, I'm one of the folks waiting on my own 64mm flat (DF64 from Espresso Outlet), so I'm curious how it's going to compare against my hand conical.

Thanks Mike. The grinder is new to me, the previous owner had it since December and only used for pourover, estimated about 4-5lbs of coffee has run through it.

It's been tricky with the unimodal burrs for me honestly, i'm wondering if the burrs actually never really seasoned properly mostly being used at coarser pourover settings. Often when i'm trying to pull faster shots at coarser grinds (as advised for EKspresso), its really common that I get channeling, even with all my attention on proper basket prep.

I'm also wondering if my Robot pressure curves are less than ideal, typically I am pre-infusing with light pressure for around 5-8 seconds, then slowly ramping up pressure till I achieve a flow rate of around 2g/s. I've tried some ground coarser with less pressure, and some ground finer with more pressure, neither is getting me closer to more sweetness & flavor clarity.

I have the high uniformity SSP espresso burr set arriving on Monday which I am very excited to try out. I want to focus my efforts on those burrs for a while and see how well I can do, will probably season them with a few lbs of old beans and then get started from there. I think these burrs will more cater to the world of espresso I have knowledge and experience in adjusting by taste.

Ah one thing to try. Sprometheus advises against a slow ramp up, as there's too much possibility of disturbing the puck. I find it better to go straight to brew pressure after the preinfusion. In fact watching the video again, I might try skipping the preinfusion altogether. Why not, it's not like I have to program a pressure profile.

mikelipino wrote:Ah one thing to try. video advises against a slow ramp up, as there's too much possibility of disturbing the puck.

I don't understand what was going wrong with the video guy's pulls but lots of people, probably the vast majority, do a low pressure pre-infusion and then gentle ramp to full pressure without any problems. How he came to decide that "the Robot suffers from some pretty serious puck lift issues, especially when ramping up slowly" is very curious. I doubt he really knew if the puck was lifting or not. But if it was, what the heck was he doing?

I've seen his video mentioning the puck lift concept, which is interesting. Not sure I fully buy into the concept being real since so many people are getting so many great results. Though maybe it does happen at certain pressure ramp speeds/times.


I played around with faster pressure ramp time on a few shots this morning with no conclusive results, but I will have another go at further pressure ramp variations & see if that improves some of my channeling issues.