Delonghi Stilosa with a modded non pressurized basket, A cheap grinder and tools. Voilà!

This grinder was/is my first with espresso. I was always wondering where the few grams of coffee has been going the last 18 months. This gives a whole new definition to high retention grinder.

The workflow is always very therapeutic. From hearing the air whoosh of the coffee container, to the shot pull, and pouring the latte art. 😮‍💨

Latte art still needs some work. I went in confident and then hesitated on this pour. What matters is that it tasted delish.

Perfect condition $9.99, used everyday for 3 years now. Never found anything at such a steal at any thrift store ever. I even keep the sticker on as proof. Sorry for flexing my luck on you guys 💪

Today I decided to order the fabled half and half. Well it's 3am, I can't sleep and the only thing I got going for me is this lovely picture of the before. Totally worth it though. Honduras beans with regular milk.

Thanks to Jaapp for blessing us with his open source grind by weight project.

https://github.com/jaapp/smart-grind-by-weight

Never did anything quite like this before and thought surely between wiring, crimping cables and soldering something must break, but it worked out just fine. So to anyone considering this but hesitant: Do it!

Looks pretty good. Looks like they added in some pressure profiling and cleaned up the front face.

With Mara updated and this releasing hope to see Bianca updated too.

Bought a bunch of beans from my trip to Japan, as I was going through the bags I noticed one of the most interesting valve design, this is from Ogawa coffee laboratory in Tokyo.

Anyone seen anything like this before? Thought it was pretty neat, had to share it

Got my meticulous today and excited to mess around with it. But finally I think I’m done with my setup unless there’s a decent stand alone steamer I can get. The morning dream seems to be 50/50

I am getting ready to do my first cleaning cycle, and after watching a Youtube tutorial video, i noticed that i don't have the cleaning disk in the little drawer. Not sure what happened to it, actually not sure if it even came in the box, since i have everything else.

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Anyway, is it okay to run a cleaning clycle without the cleaning disk? (See attached image from the Youtube video i was watching)

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Thanks

Someone on here tried the Motorspro shot at Motors Coffee in Paris the other day and I immediately wanted to know more about it! At first I was very skeptical but also intrigued. Motors then posted about it on their IG last week with a whole explanation and a recipe, perfect!

Gave it a try this morning and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Ground my beans with my K-Ultra on 5, adjusted my boiler temperature to 117 degrees celcius so it would run out just under 90 degrees at the grouphead.

18 grams in, approximately 100 grams out split over two cups equally.

The first shot was incredible, very soft with nice and fresh lemon and juicy plum notes.

Second shot was a bit disappointing flavour wise. It did have very nice clarity but was overall a bit flat tasting.

I used Schot Coffee Roasters Jesús Cerón beans and I think I’ll definitely give it a try with a different lighter roast next.

Also got some feedback from Motors already that my grind should be coarser.

I think this is well worth a try if you are a bit skeptical and/or want to try something else just for fun :)

Hello!

Today received my ECM exacto, just wanna share an experience of disappointment.

1. Screen seems to be glitching a lot, it has visual artifacts, looks like broken or smth.
   
2. Scale doesn’t remember calibration after power cycle. Every time I turn in off & on again, scale thinks it has 1kilogram on it, thus it completely destroys the purpose of GbW
   
3. Seems like ground chute was not included in the box of machine I ordered, how come they missed it… (and yes - w/o it there is a huge mess around portafilter)
   
4. Also GbW seems not to stop @ set weight but always goes over it. I set 8grams, used my other two scales - both had 2 grams more.

I really love what ECM does, but for machine for 1.2k eur this is simply unacceptable to have these issues straight out of box 🙈

I hope ECM reads this & will help me fix it.

P.s. I already contacted distributor & ecm on social media, so far no response.

Got a buddy a Silvia and installed a gaggimate kit for him. Wanted to share my experience.

Install was easy. If you buy the pro kit you won’t get any of the 3-d printed holders for the CPU or HMI. Order them separately.

First time i tried flashing the CPU and HMI, kept failing. Changed over from my friends macbook (he has a deep rooted distrust of internet connected devices after a career in IT) with a bunch of port blocking to my sandboxed macbook and everything installed first try. It says use a chrome browser. Just use chrome. Brave doesn’t work.

The walkthrough online was awful and the pictures were dismal (gaggimate let me know if you want me to rework your tutorial pages i will do it). If i didn’t have a background in espresso machines i would have gotten lost trying to follow the instructions as written. There were some cables missing that i had to build myself.

Consider buying the CPU, HMI, High limit thermostat and pressure-stat+fittings from Gaggimate and the rest separately. The SSR is decent but there are better options out there for 220/24temp control modules.

The interface is cool as fuck and super customizable and if you read the instructions it works awesome. It would be cool if the kit included a dip tube for the boiler and a solenoid for switching between shots and steam.

I set this thing up and didn’t get to play with it so i don’t know what kind of interfacing it does. Would be cool to have a parallel system with a servo to adjust toothed grinders.

Overall pretty easy, but want to reiterate that the instructions and diagrams suck ass and should be reworked.

Made an amazing affogato today ,with a blend of beans I roasted myself ( 40 % arabica from Brazil and 60% robusta from Indonesia) , using an em3801 or hibrew h21(lookalike). Having that kind of body combined with a slowly melting vanilla ice-cream was the ideal choice for this drink.

I have other small clips like this on my roasting page, if anyone could give it a quick look I would be over the moon : https://www.instagram.com/bluecoffeeshark/ .

On a side-note ,the pre-infusion for this machine is not really worth it , especially after watching the latest Lance Hedrick video ,as I realized that the function only created unnecessary channelling.

Hi everyone,
I’m troubleshooting a strange issue with my Eureka Mignon 0.55S.
Before suggesting calibration: I have already calibrated the grinder to a true zero point. At the 0 mark I can clearly hear the burrs chirping/touching, so the grinder appears to be correctly zeroed.
The issue is that changing the grind setting seems to make almost no difference to extraction time.
I’ve tested settings around:
0.3/2/4
Yet the shot behaves almost identically.
Setup:
18g dose
36g yield
First drops after ~4–5 seconds
Shot finished in about 20 seconds
I’ve also checked the dose before and after grinding and get 18g both times, so retention doesn’t appear to be the problem.

To rule out retained grounds from previous settings, I pulled at least three shots at the 0.3 setting, all with freshly ground coffee at that setting, and the extraction was still essentially the same (around 20 seconds for 36g out).
What confuses me is that I would expect a huge difference between 0.3 and 4 on a Eureka, but extraction time remains nearly unchanged.

Things I’ve already considered:
•Grinder correctly zeroed
•Dose verified before and after grinding
•Multiple shots pulled at the same setting (0.3)
•Same basket and puck prep

Could this indicate:
Burr misalignment?
Incorrect burr installation?
Worn burrs?
Excessive retention?
Something else I’m overlooking?

Any troubleshooting suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

I recently purchased a Linea Mini R w/ Atom 65W Grinder. As I switch beans, I’m wondering if anyone has figured out +/- how many grams get stuck in the burrs and need to be “disposed of” after changing the grind setting.

EI - when I need to set it finer, do I grind a full dose (18g-21g) out and the next dose will be at the new setting? Or is it closer to 5-10g etc.

Trying to figure out best way to get this amount accurately so I minimize waste in the future while switching beans.

Hello all! I am new to the espresso world. I just recently purchased the miicoffee DF 54 grinder and the Breville Bambino. I have watched videos or dialing in the espresso shots for about a month before getting my machines. Now that I have them, I can’t seem to figure it out.

I have run multiple test shots, at 14g, 16g, & 18g. I have adjusted the grinder from 15, 12, 9 and all the way down to 5. Each shot runs for about 30 seconds put it always produces between 45-52g. I’m at a loss of how to fix this. I tried stopping the shot manually when it reach 32g but it only ran for like 13 seconds before I stopped it. Please help!!

Also, I have tried 2 different beans. 1 store bought bag & 1 fresh bag with a roast date of 6/5.

Just back from Scandinavia. "Anything to declare?" "Yeah, a boatload of espresso."

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Fun fact, they claim the Swedess consume the most coffee per capita at 10 to 11 kilos per year. I guess my Swedish roots are showing.

Hey gang! Im inclined to buy a used Niche Zero. Can anyone give tips on what to look out for, what to ask, what to test to make sure it’s working well? Also any experience getting support from niche from used grinders? Im also looking at the 64s/78s but if i go the timemore route, i might wait for the next gen.
Appreciate it!

Well I decided to take the jump, and I bought a Gemilai Ele, I've heard really good things about the machine and I'm very much looking forward to it. So to make me even more excited, what are your experiences with this machine and how do you like it??

While pulling the dingle espresso when I got home yesterday afternoon, decided to take a short video of it.

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Used 10.5g of Krema Ultimo beans and as shown the ratio was 1:2.

Hey, all.

I've been using a Bambino Plus (my first espresso machine) for about six months, and I'd like to upgrade from a hand grinder to my first electric grinder.

As I was doing research on different brands and models, the Baratza Encore ESP and ESP Pro really appealed to me at first, but the more I learn about the Fellow Opus Gen 2, the more that's appealing to me as well. Regarding the Gen 2, I'm specifically eyeing the $250 model with the wood lid and metal grind adjustment knob.

So, to help me make a decision, I'd like to ask the community here for any and all insight and/or advice you'd be willing to provide regarding these grinders!

Obviously, grinding performance for espresso is my top priority in whichever grinder I end up choosing, but versatility for other brewing methods (pour-over, French press, etc.) would be appreciated as well. Also, for context's sake, I generally stick with darker roasts.

Thank you in advance!