Vesuvius Pressure Profiling Machine - General Discussion

Meldrew

John_Yossarian Have not bought one yet. Have you noticed much difference between the tampers. I measured the basket and tamper and there is about 0.8m difference. Have been looking at various tampers and am not sure if to go with the decent v1 which has been reduced quite substantially the v3 is expensive. But is it a case of buy once. I doubt it. Also looking to either buy or make a wdt tool. I am waiting on some more beans this time from Hasbean and a vst basket. Will be trying the profile JahLaza has suggested and see how I get on today.

JahLaza

Meldrew here is my grand total of accessories. I find I have to do a little wdt with the niche. I think the wdt tool is a 2018 Bordeaux

John_Yossarian

Meldrew I personally am very happy with the 58.4 mm tamper. I also have a tamper on my grinder, where I can control the force of tamping with precision but rarely use it. I would not spend too much on a tamper. With the right grinder, as @DavecUK has noted, you do not need a lot of tamping to get good results.
I do not have wdt and the V still gives its best 😊

Meldrew

I prefer a Pinot Grigio. That looks perfect. I have been looking at the acupuncture needles otherwise I might just pinch a few of the wife’s sewing needles. I saw on YouTube where they recommended fine needles otherwise you can create clumping ?. It will at least give me an excuse to open a bottle of vino.

JahLaza

Hi All, just wondering how the newbies like me are getting on with the Vesuvius?! I found an interesting article on pressure profiling written by a cafe somewhere, see link below.

https://www.branchstreetcoffee.com/acidity-extraction-espresso/

They have about 3 relevant articles there actually if you keep an eye for the preceding and succeeding article links at the bottom. I am back at factory settings at the moment because I found the slower pump speed never really hit the pressure setpoint in a multi pressure profile. I’m also on a light roast and am following the experiment profile detailed on this article- 8sec@2bar,5sec@10bar then ramping down to 5 bar. I’m trying this as this bean is very fruity and similar sounding to that in the article so experimenting to see how it will work! Factory settings seem to work fine to achieve this. For a simple 2 bar preinfusion followed by 9 bar extraction I guess a slower speed would work if you wanted that slower more gradual transition from one pressure to another. How are you finding it?

Meldrew

I have kept my pump at 9kp and acceleration at 140 and have not made any major headway. I have had a few bitter flavours. So have been changing my grind but have decided to start again with the niche with a basic setting on the V and once I am happy I will be looking at trying something similar to yourself to see what flavours I can extract. You can go through some beans with all this trial and error though. Interesting read on the link you gave. We have had our coffee with milk which has been fine.The wife said it has been similar to drinking a coffee which has had some alcohol added, must admit it has been nice with the milk. The beans have been barrel aged in old bourbon barrels. Just need to get better flavours for the espresso then I have cracked it.

JahLaza

Hi folks, I’ve noticed the following on my Vesuvius and am just wondering if it’s normal behaviour? When I lower the lever to finish the shot, pressure is vented through the vent as normal. When I remove the portafilter it’s like more pressure is relieved and water ejects through the vent. I can’t say how much but thinking it’s probably more than it should, but just questioning if it’s normal as I would have imagined once the lever is lowered and it vents that any pressure should be relieved?

Edit:will video later

Caribbean

JahLaza It happens to me too and I think it happened on my previous E61 machines as well. I think it’s normal.

I asked Paolo about the water falling through the drainage chamber during the extraction and he told me that it is normal and common to all Vesuvius. Sometimes it can reach a pressure peak of 14-15b for a short moment and the spring is not that hard to resist it.

MediumRoastSteam

JahLaza When I remove the portafilter it’s like more pressure is relieved and water ejects through the vent.

Maybe you never really had enough time with the Diva (read: Lelit Elizabeth 😀) but the exact same happens: When you remove the PF, some water trickles down into the drip tray from the vent port.

Meldrew

I have not noticed this to be honest but will keep an eye on it and update if I have the same. Have been getting a few wet pucks that’s about it.

DavecUK

Moister pucks are a feature of pressure profiling, especially with reduced pressure at the end of a profile. This is because the “9 bar whoosh” isn’t there to pull/siphon the water off the puck.

If it vents then all pressure logically is off the puck, but again the nature of the beast will be a few drops from vent when puck removed. All sounds normal?

Meldrew

DavecUK Thank Dave. Thought it was me. Getting paranoid with trying to get it right and questioning myself.

Cuprajake

Meldrew dont buy the decent tamper, the force tamper is better for the money but having all 3 the normcore 58.4mm is the same as the decent but £150 cheaper

Meldrew

Cuprajake Thanks. Just ordered the Force tamper from BB.

JahLaza

MediumRoastSteam haha she really spoiled me in fairness!! Was thinking how clever/efficient she is today actually, real low maintenance lady Elizabeth

JahLaza

Took a quick video just there to display hopefully this is clear enough? Is this normal kind of water volume at the end? This is after the lever has been lowered and vent has already been open. I remove the portafilter at this point

MediumRoastSteam

I’ll let others with the Vesuvius confirm, but I think that’s normal. My theory (I might be totally wrong here) of why this happens is that while the PF is engaged, a vacuum may form towards the end. This is a similar situation when you keep water inside a straw by holding the straw vertically and covering one of the holes with your finger - water will not come out. As soon as you move your finger away, the water inside comes down. In the scenario of the coffee machine, the PF is doing a similar role to your thumb.

JahLaza

MediumRoastSteam yep, get that, but if the vent has already opened after the pump has stopped the vacuum shouldn’t continue. Yes I understand there’ll be residual build up but I wondered is that volume of water a little excessive each time? Pretty sure it wasn’t that much in the Elizabeth but I know it’s a different machine with different principles!

Edit:It’s fine of course I can live with it but just wondering. The coffee is really really good I have to say though

DavecUK

Normal…PI chamber is disabled, so the group holds more water.

rogher

Hello, I’m new to this group and have been reading this thread because I have a Vesuvius.

I thought I’d post my view regarding attempts to achieve a certain profile:

The pressures you set will be different to what you achieve because of so many variables (beans, grind, …). The pump will do its best to follow the profile you set but will always lag behind a little. Rather than fiddle with acceleration, I chose to anticipate the lag in describing the profile to aim for and then video the consequences (there being too much to pay attention to otherwise and you can review a video many times). Not being a pedant, I was reasonably happy with what I was getting in terms of output pressure, so did not change things much (who knows what the ‘best’ profile is, anyway?). If I knew the effects that different pressure profiles had on my coffee, I might be able to develop a profile that exceeded whatever a lever machine could do (more reliably) but what I get is good enough for me and I have little desire to ‘mend’ it.

DavecUK

rogher I think most people find a few go to profiles they like and just use those….for sure that’s what I do when I’m not testing.

JahLaza

rogher hi, thanks for sharing this. I’ve had mine about a month now. After the initial excitement of it and the flurry of changing settings around I’ve gone back to the factory settings for pump speed and kp and all the others are as they were shipped. I pretty much came to the same conclusion as you on this (so far!) - that I will design my profile around how the machine works (at current settings). I’ve been using factory shipped profile 1 pretty much all the time, this is meant to be close to a lever I think and I’m getting very good results. With more experience I may set up different profiles for different beans/roast levels but for now I’m keeping it simple and enjoying the coffee!

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