dfk41 I would like to confirm that the Crem One 2B R-LFPP Dual has landed. After @dfk41 gently sent the reminder (that I had missed the 1st time) I was interested (initially on behalf of a friend of mine who is currently looking for their coffee machine). I sent them all the info and the links to Dave’s original videos from 2019 (I do remember watching it back then and wondering whether this would outpace V and Bianca at the time). My friend (who already had their heart on Mara X) came back with no interest, which made the whole situation a no brainer.
Last Saturday I fired up the car and off we went (my wife has always been a big supporter of my hobby so she joined me for the ride). After almost four hours we reached Byfleet, and found the house where Doreen was waiting for us.
Doreen was very nice and had asked me to bring my own ground coffee. She told me that she could not let me have the machine unless the machine was up and running.
Understanably, I had a bag with “freshly” (four hours old) ground coffee and we switched the machine on. Filled the tank with water from the Osmio (obviously before switching it on) and waited until the brew temperature rose to 94.5 deg C. The machine started with uploading the software and the version on the screen read 1.07, quite old firmware but still up and running. After a few minutes waiting, the itch was too much to wait any longer (as I said the temperature was already sitting at 94.5 deg C) I pulled the trigger, pardon, the lever up. I heard the pump coming up but nothing came out from the group head. Being Dave’s machine this was the last thing I would have expected so I was very surprised. Doreen did not have any knowledge when the last time when the machine was used so I assumed that since the last review that was quite a few years back, the machine has not been used. I have tried a few times switching it off and on but to no avail, it didn’t budge. Little could be done at this stage so I convinced Doreen that she had nothing to worry about and I could look into the issue once I get the machine home, which I did. We left with the machine in the back and drove to the “sunny” North West.
As you can imagine during the driving hours my thoughts were around what could have gone wrong. We got home and the first thing to do was to try it again, once again no cigar. @dfk41 advised to empty the brew boiler (a very handy way to drain it with just a switch at the bottom) to get a potential air lock out of the system. After doing it twice, the pump pressure started to show on the manometer. So the air lock was a fact, but still no water. The only culprit left to look at was the Gicleur aka Jet in the mushroom of the group head. On Monday morning, despite I had a lot to do, I could no longer wait and opened the brew head. DaveC had advised the forum members quite a few years back to buy a special adjustable spanner from Amazon that had plastic guard and could easily take on 36 mm nut. I placed a thick towel on the machine front to prevent any damage and off I went. Took out the upper part of the mushroom and not surprisingly the jet was blocked.
I have plenty of citric acid and thought that this should be a question of some soaking in the solution, I started with 5% by weight and around 30-40 deg C water. After one hour it was clear that this was not the right dose in both concentration and water temperature so I ramped up both to 10+% by weight and boiling temperature. I pre-heated the mushroom in normal water prior putting it in the citric acid hot solution. Another 30 minutes passed by my thin stainless steel wire would still not pass through, so it was clear it was not working.
Crem (ex. Expobar) have one of the smallest jet diameters in the market at 0.6 mm, very easy to get blocked with scale, but most importantly I realised that no matter what I need to make sure that the citric acid solution “wets” the scale inside. There is a so-called capillary phenomenon when it comes to wetting small crevices especially from water full of acid or salt with high surface tension, this is why I added some dishwashing liquid to make sure the system wets well (the dishwashing liquid reduces the surface tension and makes wetting easier). This solved the puzzle. After another fresh dose of 10+% by weight citric acid and boiling water plus dishwashing liquid and 30 minutes wait time the stainless steel wire went through the hole and the jet was unblocked. The relief was immense as I had started to doubt myself. Meanwhile I had ordered two more jets (in the post coming tomorrow) as they are so cheap and at this size one might need one tomorrow. I also bought a new Viton head gasket and quite a few washers and o-rings to justify the £5 delivery cost (the jets were £0.3 each). Then I greased the o-ring on the mushroom and the brew valve with Molykote 111 and re-assembled the mushroom followed by putting it back in the brew head.
It is needless to say that I immediately filled the tank again and switched the machine on. This time around it did what was expected, the water came out through the group head.
Now I need to update the firmware, I have got the latest 1.17 (the guys at Crem were very quick in answering my email with the firmware request, they even explained to me that if I wanted to change the plastic flowmeter with the new metal one what I would need to do, I was impressed after reading about how little information was out there, btw I found a uk website selling parts for Crem which is a great relief as well) and will do it later this week.
The journey so far has been great fun and I am very grateful to @dfk41 for his support and timely advice. @MediumRoastSteam has also been very helpful, he provided me with the latest firmware he had when I first asked so did @Niels_Peter a big thank you to him too. In the next few days I will take out my Vesusvius and will replace it with the Crem. I am curious whether volume profiling can give some extra flavours compared with the profiling of the V. I will report back.
I am also grateful to the late DaveC for bringing this beauty to the market, although it didn’t have the success Bianca, for example, did.
Anyway, it became a very long post and no one likes reading long posts.
Enjoy your day!
Cheers
PS I apologise for not having any pictures but opening an E61 Group head is kind of well known especially on this forum.
