![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fixing the espresso machine.
The sneaky bastards at smallAppliance.com sent the espresso machine parts via USPS: they arrived today.
It's amazing what having full pressure through the steam tube and brew basket will do for the quality of your coffee drinks. It started a few months ago. The silicon seal of the boiler cap - the lid you unscrew to pour in the water - flattened with the almost daily use, and eventually some steam began escaping around the boiler cap. Not enough to seriously affect the functioning of the machine, but over time the leak got worse until the amount of steam coming through the steam tube/brew basket just about equaled the steam coming from under the boiler cap. This ultimately added minutes to the time it takes to steam the milk, and a bitter shot of espresso.
I replaced the boiler cap and the brew basket seal. The seal is really nothing more than a silicon washer of 3" across or so , and the area where it goes took some cleaning, make no mistake. Years of built up finely ground coffee dust took some serious chiseling to remove.
While I was at it, I cleaned the plastic body of the machine, and it looks now like it just came out of the box, even though it's several years old. My initial test pull was very promising.
It's amazing what having full pressure through the steam tube and brew basket will do for the quality of your coffee drinks. It started a few months ago. The silicon seal of the boiler cap - the lid you unscrew to pour in the water - flattened with the almost daily use, and eventually some steam began escaping around the boiler cap. Not enough to seriously affect the functioning of the machine, but over time the leak got worse until the amount of steam coming through the steam tube/brew basket just about equaled the steam coming from under the boiler cap. This ultimately added minutes to the time it takes to steam the milk, and a bitter shot of espresso.
I replaced the boiler cap and the brew basket seal. The seal is really nothing more than a silicon washer of 3" across or so , and the area where it goes took some cleaning, make no mistake. Years of built up finely ground coffee dust took some serious chiseling to remove.
While I was at it, I cleaned the plastic body of the machine, and it looks now like it just came out of the box, even though it's several years old. My initial test pull was very promising.