propane vs gasoline

6 pounds of propane = 1 gal gasoline

Tie tying

Simplest web site for most popular tie knot methods:
http://www.brooksbrothers.com/TieKnots/tieknots.tem

Gaggia MDF

My dear old Gaggia MDF. I bought it from Zabars around 1996 or 1997 I guess. Maybe 1998 or 1999? Heavy, loud, a little messy, but pretty good. I left it on for a few minutes, walked out of the room, and when I came back all was silent. The coffee output hopper was jammed full of coffee. A few phone calls later (Wholelattelove.com and repairshack.com) and a bit of mess in my office and a couple hours, and I managed to have it working as before (or better, because it was clean), with a replacement fuse (2A, 5mmx20mm).

Tee Shirts

Here is an interesting reference to making the vector artwork. I have a bitmap image that I want to turn into a t-shirt.

Aftermath of thermosyphon restrictor installation

What a difference a little plug makes! An hour after I switched the machine on this morning, the portion of shot water that is overheated is very small, like .5 oz. Wow.

Thermosyphon restrictor installed

The group head (the thing that pushes water through the coffee), is a hot little beast after the machine (Expobar Office Control) has warmed up. Too hot in my unmeasured opinion. It's so hot that if you have waited half an hour to make a new shot of coffee, the water coming out of the group head will be sizzling. If you leave the portafilter off, you can see steam, bubbles, and dancing water coming out for about 3 ounces worth. So I finally emailed Expobar Australia and paid $14 AUS for a little teflon disc.
The reason the group head is SUPPOSED to be hot, is to prevent the shot water from cooling of on its way to making a good coffee. The way the group head gets hot, is that there is a "thermosyphon" that lets water circulate from the boiler to the head and back to the boiler. What this restrictor is for, is to slow down the heating loop just a little bit.

Top picture is where the top part of the thermosyphon loop attaches to the group head port, and where I planned to install the restrictor. Lower picture is the restrictor, a little teflon disc.

BTW, credit is due to http://www.home-barista.com/espresso-machines/installing-thermosyphon-restrictor-on-expobar-office-pulser-t2789.html

clockwise is hotter

Capucchino started tasting woody. shot length is too slow, but instead of fixing the shot duration I played with the temperature, because I'm always frustrated with that. I'm ordering a thermosyphon flow restrictor to lower the group head temperature. Note, I believe the boiler temperature is increased by turning the pressurestat CW as viewed from above. I send it back up to (maybe) about where it was for the factory settings, and got the steaming time down a bit. So.... I think the grind was one click too fine. I just wish I could measure what I'm doing... Until then, not bad.