Thread: Coffee Enthusiasts

My 2008 Saeco Odea Giro all in one brewer has served us well for almost a decade now of active service.
Cost avoidance at Starbucks, Timmy’s, etc down by 100% so the ole girl owes me nothing.

Replaced the automatic tamper o ring last fall and of late she started to drip constantly at the frothier wand. I could live with that but the internal pressure safety switch had started to detect the pressure loss during injection and initiated the abort function. Dumps the puck before the coffee brewed. Get frustrated, repeat, have an instant instead.....
So instead of giving in to temptation and buying something new I figured I owed it to the Saeco, and my wallet, to look inside and see if I could do something.


This is the three way valve that is leaking.

Surprisingly not a sealed plastic unit, thank you Bosch!
I can take this apart, so pop the c clips and get the innerds out for inspection. Must be a pinched o ring I figure. .

Hmm, not a bad o ring after all. Actual erosion of the pin and bosses has developed some slop in the left right slide function. Zero is no longer zero and the water is leaking through the gap.
Guess my descaler regimen is a little aggressive, hehe.
I will order a new valve but for now I filed off about an 1/8” of material from the hard stop to allow me to go a bit past zero when I turn off the frothier and seat the stem.
Should work, I hope.
Put it all back together and hit the decant button after selection charge and size of cup.

No leaks and a great cup, look at that crema!

I use lavazza la crema beans in my rig.
Cheers men.

For the life of me I couldn't recall having Cuban beans before. Siphon tasted great.

Originally Posted by Theoman

For the life of me I couldn't recall having Cuban beans before. Siphon tasted great.
...snip...

Their vacuum packed ground coffees are also great in a 'moka" pot. Cafe Bustelo and Medaglia D'Ore are good ones to have on hand for the times espresso does not meet your need, or the god machine is busted
JMO
~Richard

Gentleman, I'm considering upping my home roasting. I have a few guys who are buying coffee from me now, not much profit but they are beginning to mention the coffee I roast to others. So as I'm looking at roasters, I'd like some input from you that are more experienced than I am.
Looking on Sweet Marias, I see they have the Hottop roaster. Have any of you used this or own one? I know it's a bit on the higher end of roasters in it's size range, but I know it will beat the hell out of my Fresh Roast for the amount of coffee I am beginning to roast.
I'd love the Aillio Bullet, but that might be going a bit overboard at this point.

Any and all input is greatly appreciated

Yeah, the Bullet is dreamy but its price is hard to justify (well, if you are roasting for sale, then may be).
I'm personally using the Behmor 1600+. Great little thing (cheap too), but the lack of BT probe makes it somewhat of a challenge to achieve good repeatability of City+ and Full City roasts. Lighter or darker are not a problem, but when you want to stop right at (or just before) the beginning of the second crack, a direct temperature measurement would help immensely. When roasting only for myself I don't consider it to be a big problem - it even adds some more variety to my coffee drinks. But if you want to sell it, I think repeatability is more important.
Personally I have no experience with the HotTop, but all I've read about it was very positive. You can even hook it to a computer to log the temperature curves.

Thanks dimab, I appreciate your input.
I agree the hottop's ability to be hooked to a computer to record the roast profile is a plus.
And being able to stop the roast at the exact same time is also a great function, as you said, repeatability is very important.

I recently got bit real hard by the espresso bug...



I have a roaster that came with the machine, but have yet to use it and will likely sell it to recoup some costs. There are too many amazing blends available from specialty/local roasters for me to piddle with it. Needless to say, my espress/latte game puts 99% of coffee houses to shame.

None of these machines are built for heavy duty use. If you are serious about roasting and selling you will need a semi commercial type machine. The hot top is not that.

I have a Cafe Gene and with roasting about 2 pounds every two weeks my first one lasted around 7 years and that's with allowing total cool-down between each batch. I have another Cafe Gene which I've had around 3 years.
now.

There is a machine made for commercial roasters to take with them to shows and things to roast on site (the name escapes me) but it's difficult to use unless you have mucho experience in roasting.

Welcome to the big time Prodigy

That my friend is one fine set up you have, so glad you're enjoying it like you are.

I greatly appreciate your input spendur, I have been pushing my Fresh Roast to it's limits for just me and a friend. 8-10 batches 3 times a week. And some weeks 4 times. So eithr way I need to upgrade.
I've looked at the Cafe Gene, I knew someone on here had mentioned it.

I may seriously have to rethink this whole idea...........

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

None of these machines are built for heavy duty use. If you are serious about roasting and selling you will need a semi commercial type machine. The hot top is not that.

There is a machine made for commercial roasters to take with them to shows and things to roast on site (the name escapes me) but it's difficult to use unless you have mucho experience in roasting.

Perhaps you're thinking of The San Franciscan Roaster SF-1.