Had the L1 a few weeks

Tobin Harris · July 2015

Time for a positive post, after all my bitching!

The L1 has been working well for a week or so since fitting the new seals. As I expect most of you found during the early days, you can make some lovely shots with the L1 with minimal learning.

Milk texturing was more of a challenge until I finally decided to try the thermometer that's been sat in a kitchen drawer all this time.

This is no oil painting, but it's rewarding to have something that looks better than nescaffe

My next trick is to stop the pre-infusion drips. Do any K30 uses think that 3.5 is getting rather fine? Using North Star Dark Arches roast. I could go finer I guess or tamp harder (barely press at all).

I'm also faffing about for ages getting the tamp levelling right, so need to figure that out. That makes for a single central column in the pour and no bald patches, but it's pouring slightly quick. Figuring all this out is a good way to take my brain of the stresses of work at the end of the day...

Thanks for the help on here so far everyone.

Matthew Hoffman · July 2015

My experience is that different coffee beans (density, degree of roast, age ...) and numerous other variables (quantity of coffee in the basket, ambient humidity ... ) require different fineness of grinds. Exchanging ideas on forums provides ideas but only personal experimentation will lead you to results that please you.

Matt

Reiss Gunson · July 2015

Hi Tobin

Thanks for posting

Try nutating as that is an excellent way to ensure the grinds are driven down into any gaps

Use full fat milk too

When you become tired of washing the milk thermometer you might want to try Temptags, I think they are very beneficial as a learning tool

Kfir · July 2015

Another recommendation for the Temptags, I love them and they are elegant and very durable.

Regarding the 'pre-infusion drips', assuming you did set up your grinder fine enough to get about 1g per second of espresso during extraction the next step is to verify if the coffee is fresh.

From my experience old coffee is the most common cause for pre infusion drips, also dark roasted coffee usually age quicker than light roasted coffee so if you have an opened bag from last week it may be the case.

Kfir.

Tobin Harris · July 2015

Thanks guys. I'm really happy with the themometer right now but may try the temptags down the line.

Will try finer grind, if that fails I'll assume it's cause it's dark roast. Only opened it 5 days ago, roasted 10 days ago.