I have a harder time with my results on my La Pavoni Pro with medium and lighter roasts.
Finding the sweet spot for grind and tamp and dosing. Less crema and body.

any tips?

What grinder do you have? I've noticed myself that if the grind is more uniform, or at least has little fines, it is harder to find the sweet spot. I'm having it easy with Kinu, usually nailing the setting in 2/3 tries.

The other question would be, are you measuring the grouphead temperature? And which generation of a machine? I'm not familiar with the premillenniums but I know many are pulling the shots between 75 and 80 degrees of grouphead temp. Wheres with the millenniums somewhere between 85 and 90 or so.

Less crema and body is to be expected with lighter roasts though. With extremely light roasts I only get a very thin layer of crema. We should concentrate on the taste of the coffee, not its beauty aspects.

With that said, if you get blotchy, broken and very light colored / pale crema it might indicate too high a temperature. Which brings me back to what I said above.

I own both a 2 switch gen2 Europiccola and a gen2 professional.
This is how I like to pull medium and light roasts...

A few questions:
1. What's your grinder?
2. Aligned?
3. Puck screen?
4. Premill or millennium?
5. Pstat setting?

Medium roasts:

Group temp between 72c and 78c (lower temp with higher pstat). Recipe: 14g in / 30-35g out. Grind fine enough that I need to hold the boiler cap with my other hand while pulling. Extraction pressure is medium/high. I like to preinfuse for 10 seconds or so and do a half Fellini.

Like this pull here:
Light roasts:
I use 2 different techniques:

The turbo shot : I usually dose 10-12g and yield 35-40g in 15-20 seconds. Sometimes do a half-Fellini with this as well.


The other technique I use is the Blooming shot as described by John Buckman in the 4th issue of the lever mag:
https://thelevermag.com/pages/issue-4

Tamp: I like a hard tamp. Others like a light tamp. As long as you keep this variable consistent, it won't affect the results much

Texture and crema: The longer ratio techniques don't produce as much texture as a classic 2:1 pull. Still, they tend to tame the harsh flavors and acidity while producing a cleaner and mellow shot.




Hope this helps!

Cheers!

thanks: all good ideas. I am using a Kinu too.
I was trying to get my grouphead temps UP a bit as that seemed to give me better results. I am on the Pre Mill machine.
I agree Crema is secondary to taste.
I find that i cant get my distribution as easily and channeling seems to be more of an issue that i rarely have with darmer roasts...

What do you mean " aligned"?

Aligned flat burrs in a grinder tend to produce a more consistent grind that helps with lighter roasts.
It's irrelevant since you have a Kinu.

WDT is also quite helpful with light and medium roasts.

Since you also own a premill, I'd recommend group temps around 75c and from there, adjust to taste.

Dark roasts are great for those naked portafilter porn shots. Lighter roasts, not so much...
I personally get much better looking pours when pulling with lighter pressure or doing a blooming espresso BUT they don't always taste as good as the turbo shots that are quite ugly and messy.

If you try some of the techniques I've suggested, let me know how it goes!

Cheers!

thank you : I will!!

where is that temp strip in the video from? A nice one

I believe the black and blue strip in Brian Quan's video is the one from Flair's.

any idea how good these are?