insects and Coffee

Coming right along… having some troubles with the steam boiler over filling, one of the steam valves not obeying my Restoration Commands, and a leaky connection on the brew boiler… but, the good news… ESPRESSO!

Yes. Sam and I pulled some pretty amazing shots of the Big Truck on the 2 Group Paddle Machine today.

So exciting to have it up and running, with most of the bugs worked out… still a few weeks off yet to Coffee Fest Seattle, plenty of time to finish polishing up the chrome and get it all together (still waiting on the glass side panels to show up from the glass people).

This weekend, I’m headed to SF hoping to be working at the Slow Food Nation event.

Yes it has been quite some time since I have posted to the insects and Coffee… and a lot of things have happened in both of these worlds…

First the Big News:

As of two and a half weeks now I no longer work for Batdorf and Bronson… I have moved across town and I now work with the folks at Espresso Parts and with Olympia Coffee Roasters.

It has been a great change for me… work is good >>> most of the past two weeks I have been working with Terry Z. and Dave Ringwood (the two leads on this project) restoring a Marzocco GS2 Paddle Machine and a Single Group GS Semi-Auto. Things are coming together quite nice with both of these Machines (we’ll have them both at the Espresso Parts Booth at Coffee Fest North West… the 2 Group will be fired up and ready to go!)

Been working the Cafe at Olympia Coffee as well, two days a week now. getting the feel for the Big Truck Espresso Blend and all that. Top Pick right now in the Cafe >>> Olympia’s Ethiopia Sidamo as SOE. Awesome! Heavy body, sweet, sweet, sweet, touch of fruit, and Coco finish… did I say Heavy? Yes!

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Finished up with the Mazzer/ROBUR MOD… (at least until tonights tweak idea…). Dave White has cut some out of a sheet of plastic with Espresso Parts <Laser Ingraver>, so clean and crisp. Actually looks like something real.

Did I say I love my new work? Well I do, great crew here at Espresso Parts.

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Other news >>>

The Carpenter Ant that I have in Captivity (that does not sound nice), rather I have homed in a NASA Space-Gel Ant Farm has 6 Eggs, 5 Larva, and 3 pupating young in Cocoons. Very exciting! I had just about given up on her laying viable eggs.

So…

Pretty strapped for time of late, I know, excuses, but I have been telling some you all out there that I would get this up on the site soon. So, without dragging on further here it is …no directions, no photos, nothing but “here it is.”

>>> the ROBUR dosing MOD template. (Back up online for download).

I’ll get some photos of an install up later this week, or rather early next week. And when I get the time I’ll write up some instructions on the PDF file as well.

Update: (Here are the photos up on FLICKR).

>>>basically,

• print template at 100%
• use template to cut a plastic MOD
• remove doser
• remove lever plate
• bend plastic MOD into shape
• replace lever plate (putting screws thru MOD holes to secure)
• replace doser.

For now, enjoy.

Made a major revision of my first doser(dosing) MOD… Going to post a
template and photos here shortly… but tonight, heading to bed, for
it is late and I have to be at the Cafe bright’n early.

Pretty excited about how well it works… so much better than the
early model… great distribution, tiny, tiny bit of waste(mostly due
to static).

elvin iPod message

Yes! The digital timer Mod works great. But… turns out, just as I had suspected, I need a tighter grip on the delay. The MDL grinds 16.5 grams of coffee in 2 seconds, and 23.3 in 3 seconds. And so, looks as tho I do really need to order the new IC for my circuit board.

Then, maybe I’ll rip in to the MDL or maybe take the Timer over to the Dancing Goats Espresso Bar and install it in the ROBUR (with the ROBUR I’ll have to bypass the switch, it has a starter mechanism in there that I am not familiar with yet—have not ripped a ROBUR switch apart yet).

Meanwhile, got a message from Roberto at NUOVA, he has a different Timing mechanism in his warehouse that may meet my needs with the MDL.

Here is what the current Timer MOD and box looks like (the external model that is, if I keep it as an external type I’ll have to trick it out in some retro-futuristic style) >>>

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Not very pretty, but hey, it works!

The most obvious is this web site, if you’ve been check’n it out in the past few days. I’ve been trying to tweak the CSS, not much luck yet. WordPress has so many little files and I’ve yet to figure out which ids and classes go to what, and how.

On to good things, I have not gotten the go ahead quite yet to rip in to and install a digital timer Mod on Nuova’s MDL (the grinder in on loan from them), and so I’ve made this external timer Modual that I can plug the MDL in to, or any thing for that matter.

I’ll be trying this out tomorrow, in spite of not having my newly programmed IC yet. The IC in my timer Mod has 1 second delays, I want 0.1 second delays (more control). I need to order the part from the original programmer… and well… he lives in Australia. It is going to take a little time. Maybe I’ll have it when I get back from Mexico. Yep!Heading to Mexico for a week, out of the dark wet Northwest for a bit.

We’ll, i’ve moved things to a new host… and so, starting over with the blog.

Going to jump straight into things and if i find any thing from the old site that may be interesting i’ll try and move it over into the archives at some point.

On to the exciting things!

I just got a new grinder from the folks at NUOVA Simonelli, the MDL… at first I thought that it might be too much of a machine for me to handle: on, off and that is it — 19 grams in 3-4 seconds, or there abouts.

The first stumbling block with this grinder was all the coffee spraying out into the dosing chamber leaving all the fine particulate stuck to the sides of the chamber, every once in awhile dropping to the bottom effectively changing up the grind on me. With NUOVA’s MDM the same thing happens. This is easily fixed on the MDM by holding your fingers in front of the throat of the grinder until the it clogs up and starts dropping the grounds straight down in to the doser. This was not the case with the faster MDL. With the MDL this clog would blow out very quickly. I messed around with a lot of ideas and finally came up with this…

I modified the throat of the grinder with this bit of plastic (from a milk jug) to stop the coffee from spraying out of the burrs, now the coffee drops straight down; no more static, no more spray.

Hands down my new favorite grinder.

Fast. Very fast. Too fast. I am now working on installing a digital timer.

—elvin