My new Compak E8 grinder arrived just in time for Xmas. I have no tree and anyway it would not fit under the tree so I took out my sebenza and cut the box open, unpacking and installing the machine. I expect to put 10-20kg through the grinder before really putting it to the test. Jan van der Weel and I have promised a review for KTC magazine to appear in the spring 2016 issue. So there's time!
Below the list of pictures is a video of a first shot of espresso after dialing in the grinder to find the "espresso" grind, aiming for 30g of espresso in 30 seconds from 18g of grinds in the VST 18g portafilter basket, tamped with the LONDINIUM tamper and extracted on the Londinium L1-P lever machine, monitoring the flow with an Acaia Lunar coffee scale.
This specific grinder has the Lucidate "Red Speed Burr" set for lower friction and lower temperature.
A Box
Opened Box
Hopper popping out
First peek at the machine
Ready for action
Red Speed Burrs
Posing
Hopper filled
Sister E8 next to Big Brother R120
Grinder table ready, next to the little ROK (far left) and the larger HG One (far right)
Can't really say yet. I just unpacked and installed it. Jan and I will test and review in January. The first shots look and taste great though! I have not even methodically compared R120 and HG One inside-by-side shots yet. Could be nice to even do a ROK / E8 / R120 / HG One compare, measuring extraction % in shots that all were 30g in 30s from 18g. Later.
Delicious cup: all the work was well invested! At the end of the previous blog about the pressostat and PID working together , I mentioned that I would like to clean up the xmas tree of wires and have as few cables and probes as possible to visually disturb the classic design of the La Pavoni. Getting rid of the probe that was fastened with copper tape to the top of the brew group was a priority. I wanted to hide a new probe in the cooling fin as close as possible to the brew group. This morning I asked Tije if he could do that. He would need to drill a straight hole of 3mm diameter in the 4mm inner ring of the cooling fin that sits as a tight clamp around the brew group. Always the optimist, Tije set to work: First, Tije made a piece of aluminum to fit the inside of the ring. Drilling a thin hole straight through the curved aluminum, if possible tangentially going through the inside of the ring to touch the brew head directly, you need the support of the temporary insid...
Despite selling one and giving away two of the five monster vintage 'boat anchor' receivers that I had, I still enjoy listening to shartwave radio. The modern iCOM R8600 that I also have has a wider range plus some decoding options but it's not easy to figure out what encoding is used on which frequencies. The SDR-Control app from Marcus Roskosch at https://ham-radio-apps.com/ makes this much easier and also allows some remote control of the receiver so you can place it and an antenna at the top floor of your house while listening downstairs. I also got the SDRplay RSP1B box: This offers a great listening experience at a very low price compared to the iCOM hardware. I had one before and bought one again after a (somewhat limited) Mac version of the software became available. This device needs a computer to be connected to the receiver. For some time now a nifty little device has appeared which not only works standalone, it even allows you or anyone else to utilize the ...
(also see Daily Coffee News feature ) Tije designed and made the following structure for a tiny and cheap fluid bed roaster, to which Jan van der Weel added the Arduino parts, electronics and programming: Sketch by Tije de Jong Jan sourced a very cheap blower (€ 11) to start with, Tije developed and constructed the mechanics, Jan built together and programmed the TC4 / SSR electronics. On his blog, Jan will specify exactly how the TC4 part is combined and programmed and I will copy these details into this blog entry, just as Jan will use this video in his blog. We did a few test roasts to make sure it works at all and it does. Towards the end, the first roast tended to get a flat BT line and airflow was slightly decreased. 200g seems max load of green beans. Second roast a little more power was given to the heater. Next we will try the Background Roast driven by the PID software of Artisan. A week later, with updated software that works better to change the...
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