Thursday, November 02, 2006


the vibiemme: more water and oops, he chokes

to continue from yesterday's micofoaming on the vibiemme domobar super electronic -- a.k.a. caesar -- this morning i had to rush outta the door to an early meeting and i just needed to pull a quick shot.

vibiemme thirsty lightso i dashed into the kitchen and turned caesar's half-moon knob to I. immediately the red "help! i'm thirsty!" light next to his "right-eye" pump gauge flicked on; sorry this isn't the greatest pic right now. . .

so i gave him an emergency quart of water and his forehead lights returned to a normal pattern while he filled himself. i then let him warm up for 20 minutes.

i'm near the tail end of my "desperation illy," so i wanted to use that up. this coffee is a tad old by now, and it was raining heavily this morning -- both factors that are definitely going to require you to adjust the grinder.

but i didn't have time for an intricate dialing-in-the-grind process today. so i just nudged my mazzer mini 2 notches finer and went for it.

sigh. not 5 seconds after i pushed caesar's manual pour button, the right-eye pump gauge swept up to 12 bar! oh no!

remember, for good coffee, caesar's gauge should read between 8.6 and 9.2. the coffee was ground waaay too fine.

and indeed, barely a dribble emerged from the spout. i'd choked him, poor thing.

so i tried moving the grinder back a notch; the gauge still flew to 10.

welcome to the joys of brewing espresso. . . with some fresh dancing goats i wouldn't be having this problem, now would i?

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posted by fortune | 7:55 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments