With Eric's you get well,

Eric.

Here's my thought in this:

Eric is an active and helpful contributor to this community. Along comes a spider -er- random company that copies his design and sells it for a few bucks cheaper. What do you get with that? You save a precious few dollars and you have a plastic thermometer in your group that tells you numbers. Yep. It will do more or less the same thing as Eric's. Eric is a big boy and won't get all sad if you buy something on Amazon, but I firmly believe in supporting our community when the opportunity presents itself.

Eric has done oodles of testing and provides excellent advice to all us HB-ers, free of charge. Picking up his thermometer is a great way of supporting his many contributions to, well. Us. I don't want to guilt you or anything, but I wouldn't spend nearly $100 on a clear knock-off when CC has the real deal for $109.50...

Just sayin'

I have owned Eric's thermometer and it was helpful to understand what was going on. I may be, but I don't know that the Amazon link is the exact same thing Eric is selling. With Eric's solution, you know it's the right one, been used by a lot of us here, and it eliminates the heartbreak of something else that doesn't work. I was more than happy to pay him, but I understand where you're coming from.

I have owned a Hx machine in the past, and own one currently. Stepping back and reviewing this post, after I bought Erics thermometer, I noticed that all I needed to flush was until the hissing/popping stopped. I do the same thing on my current lever machine, an Olympia Express Club and Hx Maximatic. I flush just to get hot water through the group and a stable flow At the same time, I've always tended to warm all of my machines up for a while - ~45 min.

Some beans exhibit more static than others, but I've never needed to do WDT or other basket manipulations. I just tap the basket on a hockey puck and what minor clumps exist are gone by the second tap, and grounds are where they need to be.

From there, unless the machine was running too hot/cold, which hasn't been the case, my focus goes to the grind & dose. On my favorite dark roast, reducing the dose within the limit of the basket (16g) mellows the shot considerably with the grind setting.

I personally do two shots a day, one for my wife and I, so it takes a while at this pace to get a process nailed down. I think this is journey, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to arrive. I'm constantly learning something new.

I never knew that Eric was a part of the community here. I thought it was just another company, and that a knock off would be the equivalent of the OCD distribution tool and the Chinese knock off.

But this is different. I will need to do it the right way. Just have to save for it now. Until then, I'll keep on trying to adjust the dance.

Where do I purchase Eric's Thermometer?

I believe you can still get them directly from EricS from his website and ChrisCoffee also sells them. Looks like Eric has 48 on hand.

Cheers!

- Jake

I finally worked a gig and was able to purchase the thermometer. So, at what temperature should I run it in order to optimize sweetness?

I just ran it, and it was showing 197-198 while running through. This is cold, or is this what should be expected in the thermometer?

Only your tongue can tell you what "right" is.

What the thermometer tells you is "this is the same as last time", "... hotter than...", "...cooler than...", etc...

You get consistency and information about how stable the temp was. Did it start low, spike high and then fall again? Did you get a big "HX hump"?, etc...

I suggest you tabulate a bit of data to help you learn your machine now that you have the thermometer. When you pull a shot, make note of your idle temp, the temp when you stop flushing, when you start the shot, the peak of the "hump" and when you stop the shot, along with roughing of all these temps and a quick note of the taste. All this info will start painting a picture of what to do to get results that look like what tastes best for a particular coffee. That's a weird statement, but it's really what you're after.

Obviously there's also the quick things like "flush 2 seconds less next time and see what happens". These exercises are helpful, but a more rigorous approach will leave you with a better understanding of your machine and less frustrated in the end.

Cheers!

- Jake

Thanks Jake,

Good news is this: the machine was incredibly stable during the shot. Varied by less than 1 degree during the course of the shot.

During the flush, it changed a lot. Idled at 197, flushing it went up to 210+, eventually going down... I stopped it at 202. It dropped to 201 while I prepared the puck.

As the shot developed... It quickly went to 198 where it stayed fairly consistent over the course of the shot.

I'm going to stop the flush a little hotter tomorrow and see what happens.