Cwilli62 wrote:I'm really enjoying this thread. Unfortunately, I don't have much to currently add to the discussion, as I'm learning (and waiting to get a machine capable of pressure profiling).

Just wanted to say thanks and that I believe these parameters and the status quo in general are well worth discussing/experimenting with.

Thanks for voicing your support of the idea. I have a sneaking suspicion that adding profiling ability to Anna will be quite simple by adding a needle valve between the fitting on the steam valve and the brew solenoid. It's tempting to splice into the 4mm tube between the brew solenoid valve and the boiler, but the dregs flow backwards through this tube when the 3 way brew solenoid exhausts, so clogging could be an issue, along with poor evacuation of the water on top of the puck post-shot.

If you check out the Breville Dual Boiler "Slayer shots"? topic, you can see that folks are pretty excited about this capability. You also have the benefit of a pressure gauge located after the brew solenoid, so you will see the pressure rise slowly at the puck, or drop off as you profile the shot. It's a very effective modification that's gives you exceptional control of the shot and really opens up possibilities for roasts that have traditionally been difficult to extract well.

The really nice thing is that you can open up the valve and your machine behaves exactly like it does now. You gain everything there is to be gained by profiling (verdict still out on exactly what the limits of these gains are...) and you give up nothing.

Cheers!

- Jake

The one thing discussions like this will do is give the manufacturers a long overdue impetus to develop for the end users and not mainly the retailers. Even cheaper machines designed right can deliver exceptional performance, but it is designing them right. manufacturers need to realise that if experimenting with new methods, because we have new functions within some modern machines, this whole area of standard espresso shots is being revisited, questioned and changed. It was once OK to slap a simple HX together and sell it for 1200 USD, it's not OK to do that now and people want to stop shouting "please take my money". It's not good enough (or shouldn't be) to say we're LM and can give you a fairly unexceptional DB machine and charge you 6000 usd.

We need as much of these as we can get:

Control over temperature
Control over pressure
Control during the shot

The roasters to then service the new requirements that come from these changes. This all happens by dumping the HX as a first step...it's interesting but outdated tech. Then experimenting with new pumps, needle valves, dwell time (bloom) and other factors...without the machines costing a ton of money.

I'm trying to help one company bring a remarkably cheap dual boiler to the market, but not a thermocock and tiny brew boiler, but 2.3 litre service boiler and 0.8 litre brew boiler. A variant of that machine will have pressure profiling added, for not a huge amount more. A Dual boiler single lever machines also in the pipeline as well, again designed to be affordable.

Eventually the early adopters force the change across an industry....when I started there wasn't a lot for us to choose from....look what we have available to us now...it just needs to be more accessible. Grinders like the Niche are outliers, regardless of whether you like it or not, it will drive change in the industry (it's why I got involved). We had what they called a 3rd wave in coffee, to me it seemed more like a marketing difference, a 2.5 wave if you like, I think with all the changes in the pipeline we really will have a 3rd wave and it won't be mostly marketing this time. People will have affordable access to machines and grinders with functionality they could only dream about 15 years ago.....and we will start to ask different things of our roasters.