The S1 Cafe - Helping Your Espresso Dreams Become Reality

I figured that I needed to up my coffee production to feed that triple basket, so I ordered a Hottop coffee roaster. Now I won't have to roast an new batch for every 5 shots. I envy those of you rich enough to buy your coffee in order to feed that big sucker-

Seriously, have you triple filter owners noticced an increase in your coffee consumption?

Bob

I'm not consuming more coffee but my S1 is!

More coffee or not: That depends very much on the coffee.
I usually put about 17-18 grams into the double basket (again, depends on the coffee), just so the dry puck doesn't touch the screen (I have a low profile screw instead of the hex bolt).
Now I typically fill in around 20 grams into the triple, have more headspace, the coffee expands much nicer, and extraction seems better. I typically end up having dry pucks with the inprint of the shower screen, eventhough there's about 1-2 mm more distance from the dry puck to the screen.
I'm not sure yet, if I like it with all blends, but the addition of that triple filter was definitely a got idea.

For me the benefit of the triple basket not just is the ability to stuff in more coffee, but having the amount of coffee I wish to use expand better and get a better extraction this way.

I don't really notice these additional 2 or 3 grams in my coffee consumption (which might be partially caused by my 'coffee-hungry' grinder http://www.coffeegeek.com/reviews/grind ... ogaut/3007)

Wolfgang

Wow! A grinder that costs as much as the S1! You definitely need to step up to a more expensive espresso machine....

Thanks, Chas :D
First, specifically because of this grinder I told myself I won't upgrade any Espresso equipment for a while;
Second, the S1 is a great machine, I'm really happy with it. I've recently measured the temp profile .

It's really nice and flat. That measurement was taken without any effort to pulse or boiler-cycle, just a shot after the machine has been idle for about 3 minutes and plenty of time spend on tamping (to have the temp probe in the middle on top of the puck). From 3 seconds into the shot until the end I got a deviation of less than +/- 1F (0.55degC) from the average temp value.

One upgrade candidate would of course be the Synesso Cyncra, but I don't think I'll get my wife's approval for that yet

Wolfgang

What was your programmed temperature?

My programmed temp was 94, the resulting temp at the group is 92 on average (3+ seconds).

I had my Fluke 54II offset corrected with boiling water corrected for barometric air pressure and altitude http://www.biggreenegg.com/boilingPoint.htm. Plus I double-checked with a calibrated lab thermometer in my wife's lab.

So I'm pretty sure there's a 2 degree C offset between programmed temp and group temp at least with my S1 (it's very consistent).

Wolfgang

wgaggl wrote:My programmed temp was 94, the resulting temp at the group is 92 on average (3+ seconds).

I had my Fluke 54II offset corrected with boiling water corrected for barometric air pressure and altitude http://www.biggreenegg.com/boilingPoint.htm. Plus I double-checked with a calibrated lab thermometer in my wife's lab.

So I'm pretty sure there's a 2 degree C offset between programmed temp and group temp at least with my S1 (it's very consistent).

Wolfgang

Good work, Wolfgang,

It's not surprising that there is an offset. There has to be a temperature drop between the brew boiler and the top of the coffee puck.

Bob

Bob, you're of course right.

I just would have thought that La Spaz had adjusted the temp setup for that offset, since the user isn't very interested into the boiler temp but only into the group temp.

Wolfgang

wgaggl wrote:Bob, you're of course right.

I just would have thought that La Spaz had adjusted the temp setup for that offset, since the user isn't very interested into the boiler temp but only into the group temp.

Wolfgang

I don't think that the delta T is necessarily the same for all conditions, do you?

Bob

bobroseman wrote:
I don't think that the delta T is necessarily the same for all conditions, do you?

Bob

I don't think so either, if one wants absolute temp measurements they always need to measure the group water.

And absolute norms for one S1 might be different from other ones.

Furthermore the boiling water method to calibrate the thermocouple isn't as accurate as one might think if done in a simple stove-and-pan setup. If you heat water on a stove in a pan you'll have troubles getting an even temp distribution even with continuous stirring; the steam bubbles will be above boiling point and the water itself loses temperature by steam evaporation and radiation (that's why I confirmed against a calibrated lab thermometer).

Well, in my figure above I didn't write the temp setting for a reason, because absolute values actually didn't matter much to me there, the purpose of this measurement was only to look at the S1's temp profile and changes over time. I believe that absolute values are less important than pallate decisions, as long as the temp profile is sufficiently flat and reproducable for each shot.

Wolfgang

Here is my boiing water calibration effort. T1 is the probe. T2 the wire.

Bob



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You lost me on what the "probe" and the "wire" mean.

But I see that there are fluctuations over of almost 1F and you averaged for quite some time. There will also be dependencies of the average on the location in the water vessel, so well, I think it's quite tricky to get a good calibration for absolute temperatures with that method.

Wolfgang

You brought out a lot of goodpoints. I think that the fluctuations are in part due to my thermometer. It is an Extech EA-15 Data Logger. I don't think it's not well suited to ts type of measurement. I'd like to see what the same data taken on a Fluke looks like.

Bob