Temperature Mod Complete

I wrote a play by play of the surgery over on coffeegeek:

http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines/179943

More pics of the fitting

Here are some additional pictures of the fitting and probe.











The plan is to drill a vertical hole in the grouphead of my WEGA espresso machine, use a tap tool to thread the hole, and insert the fitting and thermocouple probe into the grouphead. The probe length can be adjusted so that it sits as close as possible to the shower screen, thereby giving me a relatively accurate way of measuring brewing temperature in real time during the actual brewing process.

I plan to have the probe installed on Sunday, Oct 16. Stay tuned.

Bride of FrE61nkenstein

OK - after a long 3 week waiting period while OMEGA fabricated my custom thermocouple probe, it finally arrived in the mail yesterday.

The thermocouple probe is on the left and it is encased in a stainless steel sheath.

The compression fitting consists of a dark colored nut, a compression collar, and the 1/8" threaded fitting.

Here is a pic of the dissasembled parts:

Coffee Roasting

I had an opportunity to visit Vancouver's newest coffee roaster yesterday. Caffe Artigiano is a well known Vancouver cafe (home of Sammy Piccolo, 3 time Canadian Barista champ), and they are now roasting their own beans. Their roasting company is called 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, and their roasting plant is in Burnaby.

They have a brand new 60kg Renegade roaster made by Joper. I saw it in action as they were roasting a fresh batch of their newly developed espresso blend. All I can say is it was impressive to watch.

Vince and Michael were kind enough to send me home with some coffee and one of their brand new cups that they have not even started using in their cafes yet.

I tried this same blend a couple of weeks ago, and I really like it. It is quite different from the Hines espresso that I normally use - it has lots of chocolate notes and is great as straight espresso and in milk as a cappa.

Vancouver is becoming very well known for its specialty coffee scene, and 49th Parallel will defintitely help put us on the map.

FrE61nkenstein Falters

Had some trouble with the temperature mod.

Details here:

http://www.home-barista.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3692#3692

I am working on plan B - more details in a couple of days.

Clean PF

Here is a pic after a quick scrub with espresso detergent.

After every brewing session, I always rinse the PF under my hot water wand and wipe it with a cloth, but this obviously is not enough to get rid of the coffee oil buildup on the PF.

I guess daily dtergent scrubs are in order.

Nasty Coffee Residue

This is a pic of my portafilter after about one week's use.