The S1 Cafe - Helping Your Espresso Dreams Become Reality

We've had our mini II for about 18 months now. Recently my wife noticed that our usual double shot's had started to overflow the 2.5 oz bodum shot glasses and she had to manually shutoff the machine, whereas before the machine would shutoff perfectly as the glass was almost full. Our shots would always take just a tad over 30s and were wonderful. Now to get the glass full it takes almost a minute. Any ideas what could cause something like this? Here's a video of us programming the single button to give us a 16g double shot. Took about 8s for liquid to start coming out and 55s to finish. She insists the Vario and tamp settings have not changed. Pressure ramps up and stays at 9 bar. Disks were thoroughly cleaned before taking this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GQpd9m2jmM

Thoughts?

You may have many clogged wholes on the basket. Clean it well and check against a light to check them out. If basket is OK, check the screens - they might have clogged holes too.

I watched the video and found something to be strange. As the shot progressed, I was expecting the lights showing the brew boiler temperature to go off one by one as temperature drops. They stayed lit for the entire shot. I thought you machine is well warmed up. Though, as soon as you cut the flaw manually, the three lights (91, 92, 93C) went off simultaneously and 93C stated blinking (which is a correct final state). In my experience, these always go off one by one - i.e. gradually. not sure if this has anything to do with the problem you are experiencing, just a not.

Someone held down a button too long and you are stuck in programming mode (note the blinking on/stby light).

Try re-programming your shot volume and you should be fine.

Hi All,

Thanks for the quick feedback! The video is actually of programming the shot dose on the double button so that's why the light's are doing that. We were reprogramming the dose because of the strange increase in volume we were seeing. I'll definitely check the basket holes as I didn't do that. The screens were the "spares" that'd never been used before so they were definitely clean. The manual that came with our mini has no mention of backflushing so we'd never done that. All we've been doing is cleaning the screens and brass puck which was all that our version of the manual mentioned. Could that cause issues?

What exactly is being set when doing the dose reprogramming? Is it simply the time that the pump runs?

RoninTech wrote: Recently my wife noticed that our usual double shot's had started to overflow the 2.5 oz bodum shot glasses and she had to manually shutoff the machine....

RoninTech wrote:Our shots would always take just a tad over 30s and were wonderful. Now to get the glass full it takes almost a minute.

So which is it? Too fast or too slow? I

I'd start by cleaning your grinder before moving onto the the 3-way valve.

What's set when programming is the flow. But, as Endo has remarked on other occasions, the flow meter on the mini is not especially reliable. I think you should backflush from time to time, others disagree - the most important thing is to keep the screens clean. The first culprit when seeing a change in flow is the coffee. It could be the grinder setting, or the coffee itself, or the weather - is it more humid? is the coffee stale? Anyhow, when the flow slows or speeds I simply change the grinder setting usually a small change will solve the problem.

It used to take 30s now it takes 55s. I think that is too slow? It had started putting out too much volume for no apparent reason which triggered us to reprogram the dose as shown in the video.

If that were mine, I'd make a slight grind adjustment.

I could be wrong but I REALLY doubt it has anything to do with the machine.

To be honest, I have the exact same Vario and Mini setup and I'm just totally amazed you don't adjust your Vario setting. If I was to do this I could easily go from 30 sec to 55 sec with just a slight change in dose, tamp or even a fresher bag of beans (or combination of).

But if you're convinced it's the OPV from lack of backflushing , you can easily unscrew it, clean it out, and change the rubber seat if grooved.

I don't understand how you do not changed the vario settings since 18 months ago. I do slighty adjustments to my Vario everyday. Coffee is a live thing, it changes everyday, with the time, humidity and a hundred of parameters more, and of course different beans requires different grind adjustments...

Also, if I were you, I'd do a chemical backflush ASAP. The coffee taste good??

I second Endo on grinder cleaning.

We've tweaked the vario settings over time. It just seemed that something was wrong when one day it was fine and the next it wasn't. I can't see that the coffee could change so much over night? The coffee tastes great. I'll pass this info on to the house barista. Thanks!