We use the Puck sim 0.2mm to calibrate and also discuss other methods that you can use if you don't have a puck sim.
Decent Espresso Machines
This weeks topic we explain what the flow calibration is and how you can use it to tune your favorite profile or to your favorite roast to become more consistent and balanced in terms of flavor. We also go through what it will change in terms of the quality in cup and also why.
We use the Puck sim 0.2mm to calibrate and also discuss other methods that you can use if you don't have a puck sim.
We use the Puck sim 0.2mm to calibrate and also discuss other methods that you can use if you don't have a puck sim.
updated 3 years ago
We use the Puck sim 0.2mm to calibrate and also discuss other methods that you can use if you don't have a puck sim.
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An espresso machine makes the best poached eggs, because the steam wand is able to keep a gentle whirlpool going during the entire egg cooking process, while traditional cooking methods cannot.
Recipe:
- Set your DE1 to "two tap steam stop" (important!)
- 1/3rd fill a fairly large pot with cold water
- Steam heat the water to 95ºC, while perfecting your whirlpool
- Stop the steam
- Break a raw egg in the center
- Let the "two tap steam stop" continue to slowly circulate the water
- Cook egg for 3 minutes
- Serve
Full how-to video coming soon...
Everything you ever wanted to know (and a bit you probably didn't think you needed) about espresso machine gaskets.
decentespresso.com/gasket
In Milan, Italy, our wheels all bent due to the rough trade show floor, and we've been trying to design a low cost wheel bracket. A big AHA MOMENT came a few weeks ago, when I thought of welding a threaded block of metal into the angle of the cart leg. We made 4 prototypes, and tested them.
The good news is that the new way of holding the wheels is incredibly strong. It held fast, whereas all our previous designs couldn't survive. Alex put 108kg (238lbs) of water on the cart and with Teddy, they push it around the loading dock of our building.
The bad news is that the stress from this test transferred to other parts of the cart, that we now need to address.
- one wheel bolt bent. We think that if we get a wheel that has no nut pushing it away from the bracket, it'll be stronger. We've found a source for wheels like that.
- the bracket pushed away from the cart, because it's only fixed with 2 bolts. We're going to drill 2 more bolt holes that people can optionally put 2 bolts through, to give the bracket a 4 bolt mounting
- the angled IKEA metal leg itself bent. We think that the 4 bolt mount will help distribute the stress more. But that might be a real limit with IKEA's low cost design.
Still, this is a huge improvement. We now have a bracket that doesn't bend, and "only" need to shore up the bits around the bracket, which seems doable, and not expensive to try.
Once we figure this all out, we'll be selling these 4 wheel brackets to IKEA BROR carts, so you can cheaply make you coffee cart really robust, like we have.
-john
It's super easy to make, once you know how.
You'll need 500g (1lb) of white sugar, 1 liter of heavy cream (quarter of a gallon), 4 pinches of salt, and 4 minutes of your time.
It'll last a long time (several weeks) stored in a sealed jam jar, in your refrigerator.
I am using a teflon coated Hexclad pan here. It should be safe at this temperature, because sugar melts at 186C (367F) whereas teflon shouldn't be used over 260C (500F).
It's super easy to make, once you know how.
You'll need 500g (1lb) of white sugar, 1 liter of heavy cream (half a gallon), and 4 minutes of your time.
decentespresso.com/de1app-v141.html
The previous version of the de1app focussed on improving espresso making, so in this version we focussed on everything around espresso: steam, hot water, and interaction with the App.
Steam
- Two tap steam stop: for those that dislike the default "steam auto purge" behavior.
- Reduce electricity consumption by 60% during "hot idle" by easily disabling steam and enabling it when you need it
- Fast switching from Espresso to Steam
- Short burst of steam (under 7 seconds) doesn't do a steam purge, just stops.
Hot Water
- Faster hot water flow rate, and control over it, and less stuttering
- Realtime control over hot water flow rate, same control as with Steam and Flush
- Hot water is now automatically temperature accurate, reducing flow if needed
- Faster starting hot water
Flush
- Control over the Flush flow rate, both faster and slower than previously possible
- Flush auto stop timer in Insight skin
- Too long a flush at too high a flow rate generates a warning, and also triggers group head warmup, to prevent too-cool espresso making
- Realtime control over Flush flow rate, same control as with Steam and Hot Water
App
- Smart Charging: prevents the "tablet battery swells" problem, extends battery life. Automatically keeps battery charged between 55% and 65%.
- Tap-on-blue-colored-numbers throughout the app, to get a full screen data entry page. No more tap-tap-tap on +/- controls
- Enrique's attractive DUI controls now used widely
- GHC Purple LEDs flash each time a profile is update
I was pleased with this most recent episode, not least of which was Cole's "I think found our unlock for these beans" which was the Allongé recipe. These were a *gorgeous* Panamanian Geisha when he made them as filter coffee, so I was "psyched" to do these justice.
Summary:
- The Turbo shot was surprisingly good. Great concentration, I liked the acidity more than the other two presenters. Perfume was amazing. Tweaking the profile made it worse. A slight "flavor hole" on the middle of the palate.
- The Filter 2.1 was quite good, and as Cole mentioned, resembled a traditionally made filter coffee. If he hadn't seen it made, he would assume that's what it was.
- The Allongé recipe really unlocked this bean, filing in that "flavor hole" and broadening the shot overall. We did lose mouthfeel, but it was a delicious coffee, not fatiguing at all, with low acidity.
- After the show stopped taping, we tried another bean of Cole's that was more fruity, and it was far-and-away the best coffee of the day. Where the Allongé approach really excels is in bring out fruitiness in coffee, what Rao calls "fruit bombs", while holding acidity down.
Coffee beans from: https://forward.coffee/
We bought Square Mile's "Il Grifone", which was a one-off roast that was supposed to give us a 3rd wave take on "the best of Italian espresso" for London Prufrock's Faema Lever Machine. Because it was a one-off, we bought more than we intended, and now we have to figure out how to make this aging bean taste its best.
Grind settings:
- the white Niche grinder on the left was on grind setting of "9" and a 15g dose
- the black Niche grinder on the right was on grind setting of "19" and a 16.5g dose
Can we do it? Does it taste any good?
In this episode, we spend an hour dialing in the Rao Allongé espresso recipe, trying different grind sizes, and both the Niche conical grinder and Lagom P100 large flat burr grinder. We also discuss the effect of a filter paper on the bottom of the portafilter basket, and show how that greatly improves the Allongé when make with the larger-flat-burr P100 grinder.
shop.squaremilecoffee.com/products/red-brick
Red Brick is a good, every day drinking bean. It's somewhat lightly roasted, but not too difficult to make a nice espresso from. The price is quite good, and it's what most people visit London's Prufrock cafe, have drunk there.
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Sorry about the audio buzz at the start. We fixed it from 13:45 minutes on in the video.
THIRD WAVE WATER ESPRESSO PROFILE MINERAL RETENTION IN A DECENT ELECTRIC HELICAL STEAM COIL
thirdwavewater.com/blogs/news/third-wave-water-espresso-profile-mineral-retention-in-a-decent-electric-helical-steam-coil
here is where you can read more about Third Wave Water
thirdwavewater.com
What wasn't included in the summary:
-what's the right water?
-Descaling.
-Charging your tablet while you unbox.
-Visualizer extension.
-Data points on graphs.
-Using graphs for feedback.
-Brief look into the manuals.
We went through quite a lot of information throughout the whole zoom. We had some good question get asked that unfortunately didn't make the summary so if you watch the summary and thought it lack some points please watch the full zoom
Our most recent batch of heaters arrived two weeks ago, and we noticed a plastic smell, that seemed to also permeate the steam. That got us very worried.
Every time we get a new batch of water heaters delivered, we do the sniff test. In the past, that's been running steam and several members of staff smelling the steam as it comes out of the machine. Our concern is that some cleaning product, solvent or other chemical used to make the heaters, might remain. We do run each machine for 2 hours before it leaves the factory, but the sniff test has always been part of our process.
In order to figure out where the smell was coming from, Decent Engineer Alfred did two things:
built a hot water recirculation device, sending water from each heater through a fine mesh filter, and turning each area into a aeroseoling device, to make smelling defects easier.
completely dismantled the heater into its parts, and heated each individually on a commercial warming plate.
We found the main culprit of the smell. Though the heaters are made for us, they have needed some reworking, and part of that has been us (at Decent HQ) putting high temperature shrink tubing around red-cable electrical connection. That's been fine, but with this batch, we asked the heater maker to do that for us, and... they didn't use the material we approved, instead swapping in a rubber that smells terrible when heated. That's the black tube on the right. So, we're going to cut them off the 6000 heaters we received, and put the correct shrink tube material on ourselves.
Alfred also found that a slight plastic smell comes from the insulating rubber ring right below the electric terminal, pictured above with the left arrow. Unfortunately, that's difficult to replace, and that has a very specific role, is glued in, and we would have trouble replacing it. On the positive side, we could only detect the smell when we put this part practically inside our nostrils.
Getting to a point where the Decent can get warm, without generating any smells at all, is my goal. Given, however, how many different materials are used (we worried about that cable tie, for instance, in the middle of the heater) it's an ongoing process, or of swapping out every part with another, until we slowly reduce all parts that give off smells when warm.
We do find that the warmth-caused smells drop off massively after a few hours of warm use, which has always been the case, and after 2h at the Decent factory, the machines have mostly lost their smell when warm. But... still, I do think that for a few days, after you get your Decent, you might notice a smell if you put your nose directly to one of the vents on the espresso machine. I'd love to achieve zero-smell, but perfection is hard to achieve. We'll keep working at it....
-john
We also go through the new profile that Shin has created called "We Got Your Back" , which uses some of the techniques he discusses from the zoom . You can find this profile below in our Diaspora forum for DE1 owners.
Profile link:
https://3.basecamp.com/3671212/buckets/7351439/messages/4305622227
Note: apologies I got my terminology mixed up a little and used Robur instead of Conical when describing the Niches burrs.
We still had about 200 machines of v1.42 DE1PRO to build, which is why this newer version wasn't immediately available in the DE1PRO model.
Yesterday, I change the "choose a model" page decentespresso.com/model to let you choose v1.42 or v1.43, and wrote up a page about the difference. The only change is the tablet stand, and this video shows how it works.
If you're indifferent to the tablet stand improvement improvement, you can save USD $100 by buying the v1.42 model now.
I've started taking pre-orders now for the DE1PRO v1.43, and they'll ship toward the end of November.
We've been working extra hard since July to build up stock of machines for the Christmas season. At the moment, we have stock of all Decent models.
The barrage of news about chip and parts shortages has spooked me, and we've been investing virtually all our profits into building up stock of parts. We're paying a premium, of course, but that's much better than risking "factory slowed down or closed", which surprisingly many companies are having to do.
-john
We also demonstrate the differences in the quality of milk at different ml/sec.
This is a deliberately simplified, whirlwind tour of the history of espresso machines, from my perspective. I show photos of important machines from history, that were typical of that stage.
My version of espresso's history is overwhelming about Lever machines, a brief E61 mention, pressure profilers like the Bianca and Rocket R9, and then Slayer, who were the first to suggest a radically different view on espresso extraction, finally addressing the different needs of light roasts.
Many thanks to Claudio and Simone of The Lever thelevermag.com magazine, who greatly aided me through lever machine history in the making of this video. I'm currently working with them on an article-length version of this historical view for their magazine, which I really wish were called "Be-Lever magazine".
-john
For more information: decentespresso.com/overview
While a few of my coffee accessories have been somewhat successful, the Tamping Kit was a dismal failure. I sure learned a lot! The biggest lessons were:
1) just because something costs a lot to manufacture, doesn't mean that your public will value it. In general, while people say they like nice packaging, they don't want to pay for what it really costs.
2) it's really difficult to assemble something that comes together from many different suppliers. The Tamping Kit was frequently unshippable, due to one accessory being out of stock. Each accessory came from a different supplier, and because we were a small company, our lead times were long, and our inventory easily depleted, as we only had money for a maximum of 6 months of stock.
3) selling a bundle to a public who likely already own some of the items, is well-nigh impossible. Nobody wants to buy duplicates
4) don't stamp the name of your specific product on the expensive packaging! If the suitcase had just said "Decent" on it, we could have re-used the suitcase for other products, but because it said "Tamping Kit" it was doomed to be used only for a glacially-slow selling product.
5) if you assemble a bundle of separate products into one, make sure you sell the bundle quickly. Otherwise, parts of the bundle will obsolete, and then nobody will want the bundle of not-current-generation parts. I made 4 major revisions of the tamper during these 5 years, causing chaos.
6) the "Barista Kit" was less of a failure, because it offered greater value (more stuff in the suitcase) but was still plagued by "cannot ship" through perhaps a third of its 4 years of life.
7) Rather humorously, there are company out there that directly copy whatever Decent does, and several are now offering "Barista Kit" bundles (even the same name) in fancy packaging, such as amazon.com/Motta-7580-Barista-Kit-Black/dp/B01GRPC09A - and perhaps they'll read this text, and realize that imitating is only a good strategy is the person you're following knows where they're going. :-D
In the end, it tooks us 5 years to sell out the (only) 500 Tamping Kit suitcase we had made. The suitcase design and mould costs...never recovered. We steeply discounted these (at the end, 50% off) to finally kill this off.
To celebrate the last ones shipping, we decided to hold a "wake" with a Tamping-Kit shaped cake, so that .... it could leave us with a good taste in our mouth!
But, boy, in another sense "mission accomplished" ! We learned so much about manufacturing this dud product, so in that sense, "failure" has been a success.
-john