Hello I am new to this forum and would like to seek your expert advice.
I have been making successful filter and French press coffee for many years and bought my coffee freshly roasted from our local shop – the gas fired roaster was actually in the window! Alas the shop still exists but I guess the roaster must have retired since it has now become a coffee/tea shop selling light food.
Thus started my conversion to real coffee! First the green beans and I tried the dog bowl method of roasting – not very successful as my very old paint stripper wasn’t hot enough, then my Prima popcorn machine with some degree of success although tiny quantities and variability. This spurned me on to buy a ‘proper’ electric roaster (CR-100) that works surprisingly well – and no chaff all over the kitchen!
About 18 months ago I was given some tokens redeemable at Lakeland stores and like an idiot bought a lovely orange Francis X1. This has two baskets one for pods and the other for ground coffee. The pods are OK if individually foil wrapped but they are NOT expresso even though it is 10 times better than the stuff sold at work.
So I turned my attention to the ground coffee baskets one for a single shot - that went straight back into the box but the double shot was pressed into service. My faithful Dualit grinder when turned to its finest setting could provide sufficient ground coffee to fill the double shot basket in around 10 seconds or so. However the crema was cinnamon rather than the beautiful red-brown foam produced by the professionals. Trawling the web I discovered that the extraction was too fast – I get first drops after 4 seconds from pump switch on and 2 ounces in 10 to 15 seconds. Further reading pointed to the grinder.
What a shock! I would need to get a grinder at least up to the ‘Rocky’ standard and the holy grail seemed to be the Mazzer Mini for the home user. Here was serious money! It would cost around 180 UKP for a Rocky or similar and a whopping 380 – 430 UKP for the Mazzer.
This reminded me of a similar trail of exploration that I travelled several years ago with vinyl records and Hi-Fi. It was once thought that you had to spend most of your money on the loudspeaker but this upgrade often yielded a poorer sound. Then a small UK company called Linn brought out what was then a very expensive turntable the Sondek. Linn turned the industry upside down by stating the (now) obvious – that you must spend the most at the front end in the order: turntable, arm, pickup, cartridge, amplifier, loud speaker. The reasoning goes that any detail lost at the front end cannot be replaced no matter how good the rest of the chain.
Espresso is like that and I could see that no matter how good the green bean was and the care taken to nurture it to perfection it could all be lost at the front end. Roasting and the grinder equates to the Hi-Fi front end that presents the details from the roast that is then extracted by correct tamping and pressurised water.
I could see it before my eyes all again and I knew that it would in the long run be cheaper (relatively!) to go straight to the Mazzer Mini. I always grind my coffee freshly as ground coffee loses its aromaticity very quickly and goes stale. So I bit the bullet and bought the Mini E doserless model.
With which I am disappointed.
I know it is me. I am doing something wrong. On the manufacturers setting No 6 I need two presses of the double shot button to fill the basket. However the coffee comes through the X1 faster than with the Dualit. Making the grind finer say 5.4 on the dial means that I have to press the double dose button 11 yes eleven times to fill the basket. Why does such a big machine that has 64mm burrs take so much longer than my baby Dualit?
The manual was pretty basic and there were no installation instructions as such. Perhaps something needs to be unlocked? Unblocked?
Also rather than the grind coming out as a powder there is a tendency to form clumps which doesn’t fare well for channelling through the tamped coffee.
So far I have put around 200 gram of coffee through the machine (I’ve only had it since Saturday) most of which has been thrown away whilst trying to get a suitable grind. Another problem is that the grinding adjustment ring is stiff even with the motor on. This means that fine adjustment is difficult as once sufficient pressure has been put on the ring ‘jumps’ several notches.
Any help, advice, words of comfort/consolation would be very much welcomed and appreciated.
Many thanks for your help in advance,
Darth Vader
May the sauce be on all your chips…………..