The S1 Cafe - Helping Your Espresso Dreams Become Reality

Me again.. slowly working through getting my machine sorted bit by bit. Group gauge doesn’t seem to work sitting just below 7.5 whether it’s on, off or pulling a shot.

Likely to be gauge or just the tube bunged up? Any easy ways to check root cause?

Once sorted I’ll try and sort the really average espresso with no crema but suspect that’s probably down to pressure not set right

Unless your incoming water pressure is ~110psi, it sounds like the gauge is bad. If your incoming water pressure is high, it is recommended that you use a pressure regulator in the water line to your machine. It should ideally be around 3-3.5bar.

Pressure is definitely not high! (It’s rubbish but acceptable).

Will find a replacement gauge and possibly a portafilter one - seems like a useful tool when it comes to all of this.

If you have a spare portafilter see if you can just locate a pressure gauge to screw onto the bottom. It's a lot cheaper that way since the portafilters themselves are pretty pricey. That's what I did for my current PF pressure gauge. New S1's come with two PFs so you can use one for a double spout and one for a single spout. I just used the 2nd portafilter intended for the single spout.

Occasionally, I'll see the internal pressure gauges fail as you mentioned without any apparent cause. However, the usual cause is that the entire machine was either dropped or jarred pretty hard.

Great idea. I’ve only got one of but a gauge instead of the spout should work.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been dropped lol

Here's the one I got. It's from a place in Portland, OR (espressoparts.com) which is 3,000 miles from me and probably 7,000 miles from you. Hopefully you can find this part closer to home. One of the advantages in going this route is that the threads will fit on any portafilter. So if you buy a different machine say with a 58mm PF someday, you can move the gauge to the new PF.