For some reason some threads (maybe the ones in the Knowledge Base) don’t load the posts at the bottom but still allows for a new post. So I can’t read the recent posts here.
Anyhow, I have the pour times sorted pretty well now.
The induction cooktop I have is not especially sensitive temperature-wise at the lower end of its range which means that unlike say a gas cooktop, there is one extra step needed which is to to have the temperature setting higher (on the 4th out of 12 dots) for the first 2 minutes and then turn it down (to the 2nd dot) for the rest of the time..
This results in exactly 6 minutes from cold water and turning the cooktop on, to the start of the pour. Which based on everything I’ve read including the manual, is about right.
The get the duration of the pour fitting into a 30 second (the manual’s recommendation) and 45 seconds (Hoffman’s declared sweet spot), I simply alter the grind setting. In my case this meant grinding a lot finer because initially the pour was too fast.
Now that I have everything dialled in, the workflow is a lot smoother and I’m quite pleased with both the viscosity and flavor of the espresso.
But I would not want have to faff around trying figure that all when I am travelling from one Airbnb cooktop and the next. So the plan is to simply take the cook top with me. It weighs less than 2kg and I have one that is dual voltage so it’ll be good for anywhere between 110v and 240v.
I’m quite pleaseed with the 9basista and now that I’ve figured things out I’ve decided to use this as my new travel espresso machine and as a result I’ll sell the Flair 58 that I had as my travel machine.
I’ll pair it with a Lagom Mini that arrives this week which I plan to run alongside the Varia VS3 which I’ve been using exclusively with the 9basista up until this point.
