Siliconslave's how to make espresso thread

It could be that you brewed 2 similarly over or under done cups?

What water do you use? I used to Brita filter my tap water but I made the change to an Osmio which is RO water plus remineralisation to around 30ish tds. I'm now pretty sensitive to the smell of chlorine from regular tap water.

Too much alkalinity really mutes tasting notes.
 
Cheers, guys.

I don’t think either cup was over or under extracted, but it could be the water (tap water) or the CO2 aspect.

I’ll try tap water vs. bottled and see if that makes a notable difference. I’ll also leave it a few days before I try it to let the new beans degass a bit.
 
Tbh I only rest coffee if it's for espresso everything else is grinded day it drops through the letter box. Any manual brew with a bloom stage will cover off any degassing.
 
It't not only degassing (if at all ?) which inhibits making espresso with just roasted beans - I thought you were waiting for oils to be distributed homogeneously -
- doesn't that issue also impact flavour with filter coffee
I only drink espresso or instant (does c'arte d'or let the beans rest before grinding ... & drying )
 
Might be that your not getting the flavour from the beans if the grind and ratio isn't right, have you tried cupping both - could be they end up being close enough that you can't taste much of a difference but it's more likely that they need a bit of tweaking to get the full flavour out of both.

The other thing I find is the I initial taste can be really missleading, takes time for your taste buds to adjust (the reason pepsi wins all the taste tests but is constantly outsold by coke...)
 
New addition to the family

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I remember when I first got the Mignon, I was super impressed with the build quality. The Helios is a TANK.
 
It's time for us to order again and we'll likely be going back to Rave. White Rose was good but the delivery costs make them more expensive per kg.

The malabar at Rave is better in my opinion too. White Rose's Rwanda Blueberry Candyfloss is great though.
 
Cadder said:
It's time for us to order again and we'll likely be going back to Rave. White Rose was good but the delivery costs make them more expensive per kg.

The malabar at Rave is better in my opinion too. White Rose's Rwanda Blueberry Candyfloss is great though.
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Agree here...that said I had ordered 2x 250g bags of Malabar last week from White Rose after successfully tweaking my machine with a much less finer grind. I'll be back with Rave after this however.
 
Cadder said:
How do you rate the Mignon? Is it the Specialita? I still need to upgrade from the in-built on my Sage BE.
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This is the first iteration of Crono with the espresso burrs. The Mignon is an amazing grinder if single dosing isn't your priority. It's been a real workhorse that has just been delivering since day 1.

It will be a HUGE step up from the integrated grinder.
jpaul said:
Lovely body - die-cast aluminium googles saying, the mignon was a specialista or drip grinder ?
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The Mignon has mainly been stepping in for Filter Mon-Fri but I do hate changing ranges for filter and espresso. Dialling it back in takes a try or 2.
 
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What feels like an absolute inevitability we are looking to upgrade from our Sage barista express + smart smart grinder pro. Although we're still enjoying both machines they definitely feel at their limit with some of the lighter roasts we have been enjoying recently. In terms of coffee consumption we're on two espresso + milk drinks a day and then the odd filter coffee at the weekend.

Feature wise from an espresso machine we'd really be looking for something that keeps tinkering to a minimum (but still has the option to be able to), although I'm relatively happy to spend ages dialling in my wife just wants something she can turn on and get a good coffee out of. I think I've talked myself into the Profitec 600 it looks like it has everything we would ever need from a machine. Only drawback and thing we'd miss from our existing Sage machine is the warmup time but I appreciate in this market segment with the different pumps/boilers used it's somewhat unrealistic to expect turn on -> pulling espresso shots within a matter of seconds and nothing a remote plug couldn't solve.

Grinder wise I'm a little torn, although the idea of a single dosing machine would be perfect I'm again conscious of the 'faff' of measuring out beans etc and if the benefit would really be worth it. We'd also need an 'all in one' grinder - as we'd still want to maintain having filter coffees as well so been looking at a Eureka Mignon Specialita of some kind.

Am I missing any other obvious options I should be considering, we'd be looking to spend £2.5k all in for a machine and grinder.
 
I'm a decent owner and understand your anti tinker tablet stance. Btw Once you get to grips with it you really can use it as a pick up and go machine but there is that inital period of understanding .

If you're into the lighter stuff get a machine that has flow rate profiling and is temperature accurate. Lever for the dark stuff
 
the Mignon isn't great for turning from espresso to filter and back so i'd look at the niche zero / duo, fellow opus or Timemore Scuptor.

Profitec is a decent dual boiler and once you have everything dialed in shouldn't be too bad to use without tinkering, but to get the best out of it you will always have to have a play with it.

Very jellies of the Decent ownership, again I get the impression once its setup you could have a 'just make me coffee' button pretty easily, but the devils in the setup
 
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OG said:
I think I've talked myself into the Profitec 600 it looks like it has everything we would ever need from a machine. Only drawback and thing we'd miss from our existing Sage machine is the warmup time but I appreciate in this market segment with the different pumps/boilers used it's somewhat unrealistic to expect turn on -> pulling espresso shots within a matter of seconds and nothing a remote plug couldn't solve.
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yes the superior temperature stability requires metal mass and longer heat up, versus jet thermocoil on BE.
temperature control on HX machines is now pretty good for espresso & milk drink creation - I'd contemplate an HX with advanced flow control and rotary pump over double boiler - like Bezerra Aria.
One of the limitations I've seen on HX (my bezerras just 1.3L) is hot water availability for cup warning, where boiler takes time to recover for good steam generation - not sure a DB would fix that though.
 
thewanted said:
The gears in my Sage Oracle Touch's grinder sound awful, so it's off to propresso.co.uk tonight for a service.

Their Google reviews look amazing, so fingers crossed!
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Paul @ ProPresso did a great job, with a remarkably quick turnaround time. The machine was very heavily scaled inside, despite me thinking I had done an okay job of descaling it. It turns out that even with softened water, you need to do it much more frequently than you'd expect to.
 
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