coffeemaster Shame you didn’t find us first.
Electra Verve = crap, awful machine, I reviewed one ages ago when it first came out. Gave them lots of engineering feedback which they completely ignored.
From memory you do have to run the Sunny quite hot to get good temps, or use an offset…if the production models kept that coding. See an excerpt from my engineering report below.
A major problem with the use of a non standard group and non standard portafilters is measurement of temperature. As the machine came set from the factory, I believe it to be 4 or 5C lower on brew temperature than actually displayed. The other concern I have is that this relationship may not be linear? e.g. for 91 I need 95 on the display, but for 94, I might need 99 on the display? I have a SCACE II, but the portafilter doesn’t fit….I have a device I made years ago for measuring temperature, but the basket doesn’t fit. This means my only way of measuring temperature is taste and appearance of coffees I know very well. Of course the user can increase temperature until they get the desired taste, but the displayed temperature is misleading I received the technical menu settings password this morning, but unfortunately the parameters that can be changed are very basic and there is no facility for changing the brew temperature “offset” in this menu. So we are stuck with whatever the hard coded temperature displayed is. An offset would have allowed me to make adjustments vs displayed and actual brew temps using a -10 to +10 offset parameter and should be added. Otherwise there are separate PID settings for each Boiler (thermoblock). What is unclear to me is whether the group heater runs at a set temperature e.g. 90C and the PID attempts to manage the temperature of the thermoblock? I say this because brew temperature does little to manage the temperature of the brew water due to the very small contact path. After a quick look inside I believe the group is passively heated by conduction from the thermoblock maintained at 80C until an espresso shot is performed?
The issues have been addressed by adding an offset parameter allowing the user to increase the actual thermoblock temperature for any displayed brew temp, e.g. if 93 I felt was 3C too cold, I can add an offset to make 93 3C hotter. The offset has a more than sufficient range. I am still experimenting to find the best standard value.
Espresso shots now look and taste better as I can reach the proper temperatures required!
